First Nations' pop-cultural heroes: Indigenous communication practices in the age of mass media

This doctoral thesis examines innovative forms of media making in Australia with a focus on a new generation of writers and artists working in popular media formats that are not getting sufficient attention in scholarly literature. This thesis situates two in-depth case studies of Australian Aboriginal media franchises, Jordan Gould and Richard Pritchard's Wylah the Koorie Warrior (2022-) and Jonathon Saunders' Zero Point (2016-), within the dual histories of First Nations media production and mainstream appropriations of First Nations identities within popular culture. As I study the criticism of two Disney films, Pocahontas (1995) and Moana (2016), I find that tackling problems of representation with seemingly effective strategies of cultural research and consultations with cultural experts is not, in fact, a straightforward and infallible solution. By investigating how Gould, Pritchard, and Saunders engage with pop-cultural production and what messages they intend to communicate to their cross-sectional audience, I unpack some of the complexity of Indigenous engagement with contemporary mass media in general, and Indigenous identity representation specifically. These franchises reveal insights into the complex, multilayered, and politicised space of Australian Indigenous mass media. By analysing forms, storylines, readerships, business models, political contexts, positionality of authors, and historical trajectories, I find that this field represents a novel development in Australia and that Indigenous media creators negotiate utilisation of media technologies to articulate their own relatively autonomous concerns. The Indigenous identity of the media creators I worked with does have a profound impact, that is both enabling and limiting, on their production process, funding, career and marketing opportunities, and relationship with their audience. I find that the meaning and place of Indigenous cultural identity in the current socio-political state of Australia is the subject of intense negotiations linked to political, cultural, and social divides within society. In the end, I explain that viewing Indigenous communication practices as relatively autonomous components of Indigenous cultural systems helps in viewing Indigenous mass media use without leaning into the essentialist rhetoric of Indigenous cultural authenticity or social amalgamation into the wider Western society.

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