Review of Outside Looking In: Viewing First Nations Peoples in Canadian Dramatic Television Series by Mary Jane Miller

• Main Author: Baltruschat, Doris
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 2010
• Subjects: American Studies; Cultural History; History; United States History; First Nations
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2600; https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/context/greatplainsquarterly/article/3573/viewcontent/Baltruschat.pdf

Mary Jane Miller sets out to answer the question "What are the stories that we tell and show to ourselves about Aboriginal peoples?" The strength of her book lies in its breadthin particular, the timeframe she chose, spanning the past fifty years, for investigating the portrayal of Aboriginal peoples on Canadian television. As a result, she provides a comprehensive overview of dramatic children and adult series, from Radisson to Forest Rangers and The Beachcombers, describing characters, themes, and topics in great detail. Her key point is that these series have mostly been produced from the "outside looking in." In other words, stories have been told from the dominant culture's point of view and, consequently, too often through a lens of stereotypes and prejudice. In recent years, however, with dramatic series such as The Rez and North of 60, many important themes-from culture clashes to questions of identity and cultural appropriation- have found their way into dramatic story lines. This is partly due to Aboriginal cultural advisers working together with writers of television drama, but also as a result of a slow, gradual shift toward increasing awareness and self-reflexivity in the 1990s and early 2000s.