This thesis argues that Canadian settler colonial statecraft and its hegemonic politics of recognition create the circumstances for Indigenous women and girls to be negatively represented in mainstream media. Mainstream media, especially news and journalism, have the power to pull audiences toward or push them away from a humanizing representation of Indigenous women and girls. Mainstream news media is a settler institution that reifies and upholds settler statecraft and the settler colonial project. I propose that combining the politics of recognition with self-recognition is a potential solution and path forward for Indigenous women and girls toward narrative reclamation. Though outright rejection of the politics of recognition may seem necessary, I argue that it is impossible to escape without it first coalescing with self-recognition, as we cannot enact our futurisms if we are not surviving. I provide context for the contemporary negative representation of Indigenous women and girls through an exploration of the colonial roots of systematic disempowerment associated with our representation as the ‘squaw.’ This negative representation perpetuates stereotypes that ultimately result in higher rates of violence against us and settler apathy toward these injustices. To exemplify the reality and gravity of negative representations against us, this thesis includes a case study into the mainstream news media representation of the life and case of Tina Fontaine, which analyzes three Winnipeg news outlets from 2014-2019. The final chapter delves further into how the politics of recognition and self-recognition can work together for narrative reclamation and collective Indigenous re-empowerment.