'A lifeline to the land and to the people': Radio's role in the culture of northern Sask.
CBC
Abel Charles throws on a pair of headphones and pulls his radio studio microphone closer to his face.
He’s seconds away from beginning another episode of Missinipi Achimowin — a daily, hour-long Cree-language show on Missinipi Broadcasting Corporation, or MBC, out of its studios in La Ronge.
It’s something he loves doing.
“In broadcasting, I’m supposed to be here, I think,” said Charles. “I get to listen to elders, visit elders and my cultural knowledge is enriched.”
Charles, 67, found his love for radio growing up on the trapline in northern Saskatchewan and listening to radio broadcasts about the Vietnam War.
He was eventually recruited to work for Northern News — a service of what was then the Department of Northern Saskatchewan — which broadcast news, events and messages to people in the province’s north.
After the service was shuttered in the early 1980s, he joined MBC and has spent the better part of the last 15 years as host of Missinipi Achimowin.
These days, he spends his mornings getting caught up on the news. Then he gets to work finding people he can interview in Cree.
“It’s time we tell our stories,” said Charles. “We’re not anti-non-Indigenous. We’re just telling you the oral tradition from their perspective, how we see things.”
Charles is one of dozens of hosts on radio stations dotting northern Saskatchewan. Often small, low-powered FM outlets, the stations serve as a critical link in remote areas.
It’s something Tom Roberts knows well. A former CBC and MBC radio broadcaster, he calls radio “a lifeline to the land and to the people" of the north.
Before FM signals reached northern communities, two-way radios were a common way to transfer information and stories — an integral part of the Cree culture he grew up in.
“This gentleman in one part would tell an Indian legend; not a crackle on the two-way radio,” he said. “It was two-way radio, but it was radio and people listened and enjoyed that.”
He said radio and the Cree language often share similarities.
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