From Radio Skid Row to the Reconciliation Station

This chapter analyzes the role of the state in Indigenous audio media, focusing on governmental oversight at Australia’s largest country music station, and also one of Australia’s more successful Aboriginal-run broadcasters, 4AAA “Murri Country” radio. 4aaa is both a successful broadcaster and an educational institution, one that seeks to support young Indigenous Australians by providing educational certification in media and other technical and workplace skills. Training young Indigenous Australians has also provided a means to secure financial resources at a time when governmental support for Indigenous broadcasting has decreased. These endeavors also implicate media organizations in additional regimes of fiscal and managerial oversight. In focusing on 4AAA’s interests in expanding their work into education, the chapter thus outlines the complications faced by an Aboriginal organization as it moves into a more entrepreneurial relationship to the state and as forms of government and Aboriginal advocacy collide in the voice itself.