Environmental ethics and Indigenous identity in Wawatay News

This chapter is a discourse analysis of news stories about mining in northern Ontario, which were published in the Indigenous newspaper Wawatay News. It examines the claim that the traditional environmental knowledge of the Indigenous populations in North America functions as an ethnic symbol distinguishing First Nations people from other Canadians. It was found that few news stories about mining in 2011 in the territory of the readers of Wawatay News portrayed a modern version of traditional environmental knowledge. Instead, the dominant discourse in most stories was a conservative environmental ethic consistent with Euro-Canadian values. In conclusion, it is argued that the dominant environmental discourse of Wawatay News reflects the weak organizational structure of Indigenous newspapers in Canada.