Television and the Eskimo People of Frobisher Bay

Abstract

In 1972, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) extended its Frontier Television Service to the people of Frobisher Bay in the Northwest Territories. Although certain other northern communities had been receiving the service for more than a year, no television programmes had ever before been transmitted to a predominantly Eskimo community lacking any previous experience of the medium. … The reaction of the Eskimo people to the service was investigated after a year by means of a survey. A questionnaire was distributed to heads of households, not only in the area served, but also, for purposes of comparison, in the community of Fort Chimo, Quebec, which was without television. Commencing in February 1973, 131 out of a total of 200 Eskimo heads of household within the Frobisher Bay community were interviewed, and in mid-July 1973, 84 out of a total of 96 heads of household in the community of Fort Chimo were surveyed. … Interviews were … conducted by Eskimo people native to, and familiar with, the study area and the local dialects. … It was possible to draw certain conclusions from the results of the survey, the most striking of them concerning social attitudes. After one year of television, the Frobisher Bay respondents were more inclined to put forward ideas for the employment of their children than were the respondents in Fort Chimo. It was apparent that the role of the daughter in relation to the mother had changed, and that there was increasing acceptance of the idea that a daughter could, if she wished, seek employment. In Frobisher Bay, there was more interest in opportunities for travel to locations outside the North, and respondents were more national than local in their preferences. They were more aware of international problems and could propose solutions to them. … An unhappy fact that emerged from the investigation was that many participants felt their opinions were valueless. … Some future study might serve to reveal whether the native peoples' fundamental understanding is being greatly enriched, and their horizons broadened, by visual information being presented to them over such considerably increased periods of time. …