In order to start a radio station in Canada, a collective (or not for profit society) must apply for a licence to broadcast from the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Television-Telecommunications Commission). 

The application can prove arduous and, often, the people involved in that process are volunteers in a community or of a campus of a college/university. But, what does it mean to apply for a licence if you have never ceded the rights and titles of the land (or air) you want to broadcast across?

This is the reality that SGaan Kwah Agang (James McGuire) is currently working in as a director of the Haida Gwaii Radio Society on the archipelago of Haida Gwaii.

“The modern rendition of HG radio is in the reclamation of Indigenous airwaves against a colonial law system,” he said in an interview with CICK News.

SGaan Kwah Agang is working to broadcast without the need of a CRTC licence. Haida Gwaii Radio is currently “broadcasting occasionally,” as their slogan says, online while figuring out how to acquire a frequency modulation for the people of Haida Gwaii.

The Haida Gwaii Radio Society has been incorporated since 2017, and has found new ways to connect with the residents (Indigenous and settlers) during the pandemic with artist coffeehouses, live sports reporting and Haida language programming.

Listen to CICK’s interview with SGaan Kwah Agang below: