Rural radio and the everyday politics of settlement on Indigenous land

Abstract

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Country Hour radio programmes are produced regionally and promote specific understandings of rurality. This article presents an analysis that shows Indigenous people and issues are rarely sources or topics in Country Hour, and that stories about Indigenous land use are generally broadcast only if the land is used in a way that is seen as ‘productive’ through settler colonial eyes. It also argues the programme should include Indigenous voices and understandings of the land in imagining this space. It makes a theoretical contribution to media studies by extending on concepts of the ‘rural imaginary’ and ‘settler common sense’ to argue that the programme perpetuates a discourse that legitimates and valorises the use of ‘rural’ space for non-Indigenous people, concepts and activities. Indigenous people are noticeably absent and silent. Country Hour is therefore conceptualised as a media space that continues to transmit settler colonialism and its attendant myths.

Decolonising public service television in Aotearoa New Zealand: telling better stories about Indigenous rurality

“…CC offers a powerful, existing platform from which to tell the many stories of Māori farming to both mainstream and Indigenous audiences. Greater acknowledgement of the country's colonial history must occur as part of a broader cultural conversation in Aotearoa NZ (Shaw, 2021), as in other settler-colonial nations, and we agree with Waller et al (2020) that rural broadcasting is an ideal site for such work. We argue that CC is uniquely placed, given its enduring popularity, close connection to audiences who live and work on the land, and where there are clearly relevant and suitable stories to be told, to better acknowledge and contextualise NZ's colonial history to a mainstream audience.…”

“…Media and communication scholarship has only recently begun to grapple with the complicity between mainstream media and settler-colonial practices. Waller et al’s (2020) study of Australia’s Country Hour radio show is one of the first to interrogate how specialist rural programming’s preoccupation with productivity discourses marginalises Indigenous people and concerns while legitimising and valorising settler-colonial ideals and values. Arguing that media have a duty to be more inclusive, Waller et al document just two examples (from their national dataset of 291 stories) that include Indigenous perspectives, but 45 stories that were ‘missed opportunities’.…”

“…CC funders, producers and indeed many viewers are invested in what Waller et al (2020) term the valorising of rural values but as Howard’s comments suggest, this gloss can only be maintained without a full acknowledgement of NZ’s colonial history, how land was lost to Māori, and the ongoing consequences for Indigenous wellbeing. As a Māori woman thoroughly embedded in the agricultural sector, Lisa’s attachment to CC has gradually been eroded by her growing awareness that this history is not well recognised.…”

“…Touted as ‘quintessentially New Zealand’ and tapping into aspects of national identity such as connection to the natural world (Bell, 1996), attachment to place (Relph, 1976) and ‘Kiwi ingenuity’ (McCreanor, 2005), it tells the real-life stories of people who live and work on the land. These stories are told within a well-recognised formula, centred around themes of progress and community and with a positive spin (Fountaine, 2020; see also Waller et al, 2020). NZ is one of many nations where ‘the countryside is intimately and inextricably linked to notions of national identity’ (Agyeman and Spooner, 2005: 199), but the substantial economic role of the country’s agricultural sector elevates rurality and farming as touchstones of national storytelling and popular culture.…”

An agenda for Australian rural sociology: Troubling the white middle-class farming woman

“…Through a genealogy of the Australian alternative agriculture movement he demonstrates how the colonial logics of dispossession are perpetuated through the stories told about farmers and farming. Drawing on a case study of the ABC radio program Country Hour, Waller et al (2019) exemplify this thesis, revealing how the show promotes an 'agrarian imaginary' through what Ritkin (2014) labels 'settler common sense'.…”