Storytelling, technology, and justice: the National Film Board of Canada’s role in human rights education

Abstract

This article explores the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) as a site of human rights education (HRE). It applies a critical global citizenship education lens to consider how four NFB works—Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, Bear 71, The Orchid and the Bee, and Biidaaban: First Light—might support epistemological justice. The term ‘Canadian aporetic condition’ identifies governance pressures in which Canada’s public commitments to rights, reconciliation, environmental responsibility, and democratic inclusion operate in tension with settler colonialism, institutional hierarchy, ecological extraction, and technological control. The analysis identifies four pedagogical mechanisms: documentary witnessing, interface authorisation, embodied attention, and consent comprehension. These mechanisms invite audiences to consider evidence, participation, vulnerability, and representation. NFB materials teach audiences to recognise rights conflict, epistemic authority, ecological vulnerability, and civic responsibility, making institutional authority, public accountability, and contested knowledge visible for classroom, community, and digital learning.