Indigeneity, cosmopolitanism and the nation : the project of NITV

The establishment of a National Indigenous Television Network (NITV) in Aus­tralia has been an important step in recognizing, sharing and mediating Indig­enous cultures on broadcast television. The product of many years of lobbying, negotiation and contestation, NITV now broadcasts 24 hours a day into Australian homes from its base in the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) network. NITV's location within one of the two publicly funded broadcasting channels constituted a sharp break from Indigenous television's prior history in community media, and debates about the implications of that rupture surrounded NITV's initial establish­ment. While developing as a separate free-to-air digital channel, NITV has had to deal with more far-reaching and perhaps intractable issues as it builds its identity and its audience - while remaining committed to the progressive cultural remit behind its institutionalization. That remit is one of the relatively small number of examples in recent times where cultural policy in Australia has taken on a straightforwardly progressive task and where an intervention in cultural devel­opment has the objective of delivering social benefit to the community. In this chapter, we suggest that NITV has adopted what is effectively a nationing role for the Indigenous media field in Australia, setting out to naturalize and embed the formations of Indigenous culture within mainstream or non-Indigenous conceptions of national identity.