Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (July 26/02) - Jazz plays on a small CD player. Their second floor office overlooking 52nd Avenue is cluttered with the remains of a long working day.

Dene-za Antoine (left) and Amos Scott have different personal reasons for working in the media. - NNSL photo

On the wall hang various quotations on anarchy, feminism and media, but one by former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver stands out.

"Information is the raw material for new ideas, if you get mis-information, you get pretty (screwed) up ideas," reads the quote.

Dene-za Antoine, 25, says this is one of the reasons he decided to work for the Native Communications Society (NCS) in Yellowknife.

"I want to bring an authentic Dene perspective and I believe Dene means human being," said Antoine. "Also, what I learn, I get to share."

Antoine and Amos Scott, 24, recently joined the society, which runs CKLB Radio, and is heard in most communities in the Northwest Territories.

They both work the radio -- they did a live feed from the Dene Assembly in Fort Simpson -- and on the television side of things with the society. They have a weekly 30 minute slot to fill on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) channel.

The duo differs on their reasons for working in the media but they both do it for the same ends.

"Over the course of my lifetime, I'd like a collection of work that speaks for something," said Scott.

Antoine quotes Smoke Signals actor Gary Farmer who said First Nations should get involved in media to provide an authoritative First Nations voice -- an echo of the APTN slogan that says, "history would have been told differently if our reporters had been there." Antoine and Scott have a weekly Friday night show on CKLB. The 10:30 p.m. shows features music that isn't usually heard on the mostly country station, said Scott. "We try to push boundaries," said Antoine. Scott is going to Mount Royal College in Calgary to study journalism this fall. He plans to study print journalism but his experience with television while working at NCS has him thinking about film.

Antoine is staying in the fall and currently working on two historical radio documentaries on the Horn Plateau and Treaty 11.

"I am very proud to continue on with the tradition of NCS and I'll be working for, by and with the Dene people," said Antoine.