Frontier Journalism

. Once upon a time the 'rush' was for fur, gold or oil, in communities called Hochelaga, the Klondike and Calgary. Each suffered decades of transient, rabble-rousing fortune seekers overwhelming the local population. A second invasion consisted of insufferably condescending do-gooders purporting to rescue that local population from further exploitation, outside influence and vested interest. Eventually, some of the newcomers settled among the oldtimers, adding new narratives and allegiances, until a new 'local' population emerged that behaved with an eye towards longer term community and well being. Nunavik and Nunavut are in their frontier phase right now and they are reacting pretty much the same as Prince George, Whitehorse, or Anchorage did before them. The excesses in resentment, nepotism, plutocracy and paternalism are only typical of peoples trying to shrug off a colonial past. Which is why today's residents of northern Québec and Nunavut are fed up with media stereotypes that harp on nothing but substance abuse and political shenanigans. The latest round in that battle has Makivik president Pita Atami and Nunatsiaq News editor-in-chief Jim Bell squaring off over the role of the press in all this. Atami feels that reporters are so obsessed with their watchdog role that it distorts most press coverage. Bell responds by accusing Atami of denying journalists sufficient access to information to report properly on northern leaders and their management of public affairs. Unfortunately for the communities they serve, there is a troubling element of truth in both points of view. Northern governments and businesses are not yet as transparent as they should be, while the press, both national and local, consistently fail to offer narratives of adaptation and innovation that suggest an alternative way forward. While Jim Bell rightly asserts that 'rapportage' involves more than the unfiltered transmission of raw news, he fails to address Mr. Atami's broader critique regarding Nunavik's and Nunavut's need for a better narrative. If 'one' means we are stuck and 'two' means dilemma, then choice begins at 'three' and Nunavut's intellectual, academic and media communities are failing dismally to provide a more choice-filled narrative of our history and our present. Historians and reporters have an obligation to accurately document the past, but as a community's intellectuals, they are also responsible and accountable for crafting a self-depicting narrative that helps more than it hinders If Mr. Atami's expression of frustration with the current play-by-play on polar affairs was not altogether up to Mr. Bell's standards for style and principle, that won't surprise the rest of us who continue to mourn the loss from our public commons of voices like those of the Experimental Eskimos and other thoughtful contemporaries. .