James Frideres Case

James Frideres of the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary, Alberta is the writer of the article. His position at the university is not mentioned .It is a very interesting article entitled The Royal Commission on Aboriginal peoples: The Route to Self Government and it was published in volume 16 of the Canadian Journal of Native Studies (1996:247-266). The article is not open to comments due to its PDF format.

The article focuses on two principle objectives; firstly, it discusses the extent to which the print media covers the actions of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal peoples, and how the Commission is portrayed, secondly, it analyses the submissions made in round one of the Royal Commission hearings.

The author noted that they were unable to provide comparative data due to the small sample size of articles in distribution. I believe random sampling was used as a method of collecting data because articles were distributed in different provinces of Canada using popular media. It can be assumed that the audience to this Royal Commission, information circulation was the public. The tone of voice in the article is informative and the presentation structure is more analytical than argumentative.

Although Frideres gives an in-depth analysis of Royal Commissions in general, it can be argued that his analysis is subjective and some scholars might disagree with his notion that Royal Commissions sometimes play an obstructional role and too often provide government with an avenue to get away with not taking action. Some might argue that if the Royal Commissions can succeed in bringing an issue such as Aboriginal affairs to the fore, then they would have succeeded at least on that front.

One can also argue that the author’s methodology of ascertaining the media’s portrayal of the Commission through aspects such as where an article was placed in the paper and the word count may not be very reliable or convincing as it