CHON-FM commemorated 40 years as the radio voice of Yukon First Nations over the weekend break, with a show at Rotary Park in Whitehorse and honours for a few of its most popular voices.
Four years on, terminal personnel state CHON’s goal of making certain a put on the airwaves for Indigenous individuals is as vital as ever before.
“It’s always a matter of hearing yourself in broadcasting,” stated terminal supervisorJuliann Fraser “So if you don’t hear yourself or see yourself on TV, then you feel isolated, alone, excluded.”
In the very early 1980s, George Henry and Jan Staples undertaken transforming that. The pair interacted to prepare for the terminal– Henry rallying assistance and showing up at regulative hearings of the CRTC, Staples doing target market studies and completing reams of applications.
“We kind of joked that we started with a conditional three-year broadcast licence and a $20,000 debt,” Staples stated.
Henry, who died in 2021, also played a key role in establishing Northern Native Broadcasting Yukon, the culture that possesses CHON, and Television Northern Canada, the forerunner to the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN).
“In oral culture, in oral tradition, being able to tell stories and tell stories well is something I think people in the Yukon do really naturally,” Staples stated. “And people were thirsty for the sound of their own stories and language.”
CHON-FM early morning reveal host Charles Eshelman in the terminal’s workplace. (George Maratos/ CBC)
That link with Indigenous individuals backwards and forwards the Yukon River is what makes CHON so vital, stated early morning program host Charles Eshelman.
“CHON has always been the canoe that’s going down our river then stopping at various houses all at the same time,” he stated.
“We’ve got different hosts throughout the years and different people that have touched other people and relatives and
different decades of news stories and big events that people remember and that’s what makes it important.”
Henry and Staples were both honoured for their job Saturday, as was late Champagne and Aishihik First Nations Chief Bob Charlie, and Ben Charlie, that at 84 is CHON’s longest-running radio host.
Ben Charlie still functions 5 days a week. He stated he still enjoys playing songs, talking his Gwich’in language and talking with individuals from Alaska to the Northwest Territories.
“Somebody will call in and say what’s going on in their community,” he stated. “And I talk to a lot of different people that I used to know…. So I never get tired of this, put it that way.”
