Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this paper contains discussion about disturbing events and issues, and names of deceased persons, which may be distressing.
I acknowledge the ancient boodja (land) I am on today which has never been ceded by the Wadjuk people of the Noongar Nation. I offer respect to the Elders and traditional custodians, past and present, and acknowledge their continued connection to Country, community and culture.
Indigenous Agency on Instagram from Australia
Abstract
Various Indigenous people utilise Instagram as a site of agency, community and self-representation to challenge perceptions of them in Australia. The purpose of this paper is to draw from Indigenous scholar’s findings to show why this is occurring, and how their cultural agency is challenging narratives about their identity and culture and the issues they regularly face. This paper will show what three different Indigenous people and groups are doing on Instagram to disrupt mass media rhetoric, maintain agency, and build community understanding beyond their own communities.
#AboriginalandTorresStraitIslanderPeople #Indigenous #instagram #agency #selfrepresentation
Preamble
Whilst it’s difficult to talk about this socio-culturally complex topic in one paper, especially without my preference for having an Indigenous co-author, I will attempt to cover some Indigenous people who are dominant on Instagram for various reasons. Before I do, it is important to first acknowledge that as a wadjulla of colonial settler descent, my background inextricably affects ways in which I see and understand Indigenous experiences on this land. I do not speak for Indigenous people and the consistent request presented to non-Indigenous researchers is to not talk about them, without them. As I am not permitted to have an Indigenous co-author for this paper, I have based arguments on Indigenous academic findings which are complex and extensive. I continue to learn from and listen to Indigenous voices and walk alongside those who generously make space for my learning and co-design in their spaces. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal Land.
Introduction
Indigenous people utilise Instagram as a way to express and explore their identities, maintain agency, engage with other Indigenous people, resist and challenge Australian perceptions and structural violence “by the state and its various manifestations, the mass media, science, the arts and so on” (Carlson 2016, 84). Indigenous academic Bronwyn Lumby calls these expressions and explorations cyber-Indigeneity, which can cut across sociocultural differences to produce new political collectives (Lumby, 2010; Carlson and Frazer, 2018). Some of the ways various Indigenous people use Instagram for cyber-indigeneity are by sharing posts containing lived experience, humour, creativity and subversion (Maddison, 2003; Lumby, 2010; Carlson and Frazer, 2018; Carlson and Kennedy, 2021), to communicate their messages. Various Indigenous people utilise Instagram as a site of agency, a third space of community and self-representation to challenge perceptions of them in Australia.
Some maximise the agency that Instagram affords, to challenge mainstream media which consistently stereotypes them in numerous harmful and condescending ways (Carlson and Frazer, 2018; Kennedy, 2020; Carlson and Kennedy, 2021). Not all Indigenous people use Instagram in this way, but those who do, stand by their right to do so, as do many of the Indigenous online community who support them. Shortly, I will examine how various Indigenous people are utilising Instagram in these ways, but first, we must be self-reflective about the socio-political social media environment Indigenous people are expected to endure across this continent in particular, in order to understand why they are forced to take certain positions. Whilst it would be commonplace to argue solely about the racist vitriol Indigenous people are forced to contend with on Instagram as Ariadna Matamoros-Fernandez (2017) does, I aim to examine what Australia is silent about, and Australia avoids discussing (Stanner, 2011).
‘The great Australian silence’
If we accept that whilst Australian society considers itself to be getting better at including minority groups (Nakata, 2013), meaningful progress is slow. I argue this doesn’t explain the “great Australian silence” (Stanner, 2011, 140) and that Indigenous people are still treated as “a melancholy footnote” (Stanner, 2011, 139). We only need to turn to Australia’s mainstream media to see the ongoing harmful stereotyping Indigenous people are forced to contend with (Carlson and Frazer, 2018; Kennedy, 2020). In addition to this, the majority of the non-Indigenous Australian population rarely acknowledge or discuss our real history on Instagram, let alone in respectful, truthful and meaningful ways. The layers of trauma we non-Indigenous people actively place onto media platforms need to be questioned, and it is not surprising that social media platforms such as Instagram have become a place that represents staunch collective agency and survival (Carlson, 2017; Carlson and Kennedy, 2021). We only have to look at popular non-Indigenous Australian Instagram profiles will millions of followers such as Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Riccardo, Miranda Kerr, Kayla Itsines, and Celeste Barber to understand that acknowledging which traditional lands they’re from, or on, is not a priority neither is conversation or content about this, nor Indigenous people, culture or issues. They are silent.
In contrast, by knowing that “social media weakens the spiral of the silence” (Irfan Chaudhry and Anatoliy Gruzd, 2020), many Indigenous people engage in practices such as proudly placing identifying symbols, Country and language or mob names in the Biography section of their profiles to various degrees, such as Ngumpie Weaving (2023) and Nathan McGuire (2023). This is not to say that all Indigenous people embody their indigeneity on Instagram this way. Some highly respected community members such as Moju (2023), Briggs (2023) and Alicia Johnson (2023) consistently express their pride and position powerfully through their carefully curated content, rather than on their Instagram biographical description. Their pride about their cultural connection and heritage is irrefutable.
Non-Indigenous self-reflection
By using a self-reflective approach, we can begin to understand some of the reasons why various Indigenous people counteract and “disrupt the colonial algorithm” (Fredericks et. al 2022, 158) in their own ways. The spiral of silence theory is helpful in understanding that in online society, people are willing to conceal their views and stay silent on matters that are considered taboo, such as racist discourse, as they do not wish to become an outcast from their community online or offline (Chaudhry and Gruzd, 2020). The issue with consistently practising this type of silent social behaviour is that it restricts mutual conversation and public healing processes about Australia’s violent socio-political history (Carlson & Berglund, 2021). As a result, conversation on Instagram is similar to a monologue, where non-Indigenous people prefer to share highlight reels of their lives whilst ignoring the truths and realities of the land they live on and the avoidable and deplorable issues Indigenous people are facing every day due to ongoing contemporary colonialism (Carlson & Berglund, 2021).
In contrast to the spiral of silence theory, extreme racist vitriol is aimed at Australia’s First Peoples on Instagram (Carlson and Kennedy, 2021), which is one reason the platform has become a popular site for Indigenous “connected online activism” (Duarte 2017, 1), resistance, community and self-representation across the continent (Lumby, 2010; Carlson and Kennedy, 2021). The Indigenous online community is extensive, and social media is useful for staying connected with remote communities for example (Carlson and Kennedy, 2021). Whilst Facebook is one of the most popular platforms many Indigenous people use to stay connected with family and friends, I will focus on ways in which Instagram is meaningfully used as a tool for agency, community and self-representation which is challenging popular Australian perceptions about Aboriginal people, through examples of Indigenous personalities on Instagram.
Identity and cultural autonomy
Whilst social media can be seen as a way to remain anonymous and separate ourselves online from our true identity, this is rarely the case for many Indigenous people who prefer to embody rather than disembody their cultural identity online (Carlson and Kennedy, 2021). There are people however who identify in real life as Indigenous but for many different reasons do not wish to specifically identify this way on Instagram whose names I respectfully refrain from naming as I don’t believe it is my place to identify them in this paper for the sole purpose of providing the reader with evidence. In addition, this position deserves another paper entirely, which I will not discuss here. For those who choose to express their Indigenous identity for various reasons, it is risky in these socio-political times (Carlson and Kennedy, 2021). Therefore to do so, is “an exercise in agency and cultural autonomy” (Farrell 2021, 153), but understood as necessary in order to change the narratives.
Dwezy
One person who uses Instagram to show pride in himself through creativity, humour and reality, is Dwesmond Wiggan-Dann (2023), an Indigenous LGBTIQ+ advocate from the Kimberley, and former participant in the popular television program “The Amazing Race Australia” (Mogford, 2023). He is an advocate who doesn’t write extensively about what he stands for, but rather shows his pride through his associations with his culture, ideas, people, costumes, places, and monuments he’s photographed with (Dwezy, Carlson and Kennedy, 2021). For example, one of his favoured hashtags is #blackanddeadlyalldayeveryday (https://www.instagram.com/p/CpV1dDdyzjp/ Sydney Opera House March 4 2023). According to Andrew Farrell, “in Australia, Indigenous LGBTIQ+ peoples are working at the margins to identify and address significant social, cultural and political disparities that ignore the community’s existence and its complex and unique needs” (2021, 140). By expressing his association with the range of queer and Indigenous concepts, he maintains agency, disrupting public perceptions of his identity and using it to self-represent (Lumby, 2010, Fredericks et al., 2022). By expressing himself in these ways, cuts through the rhetoric of minority discourse and creates a sense of community for Indigenous queer folk, like safe a “third space” (Aaen and Dalsgaard, 2017, 162) where intersections overlap one another and are celebrated in this space through Instagram. Wiggan-Dann also regularly posts photos of himself laughing with the sense of humour that Indigenous people are known to embody, even during difficult times (Neville et al., 2014).
Isaac Compton
Indigenous cultural dancer, singer songwriter and comedian Isaac Compton uses humour with reality to get his messages across in his videos using “Blackfella humour which is just that little bit different, and a part of kinship” (Carlson and Berglund, 2021, p11). His videos range from jokes within his community to jokes about racism and other issues. For example he made a video using the meme “Tell me you’re Aboriginal without telling me you’re Aboriginal” (@the_isaac_compton 21 March 2023 https://www.instagram.com/reel/CqCraFjDwoq/ ), which is funny within his community but also sends a message to his non-Indigenous followers who may be unaware. It’s a way of maintaining agency and using blackfella humour to educate non-Indigenous followers beyond their preconceived ideas about Aboriginal people. In another video, he uses the meme “But you don’t look Aboriginal” (@the_isaac_compton 22 March 2023 https://www.instagram.com/reel/CqEmGK0BP7V/ to satirise this statement by doing a rain dance using shake-a-leg dance moves in the bathroom to make the water come out of the shower. Historically, this statement has been used by non-Indigenous people to question people’s knowledge about their own identity (Lumby, 2010; Neville et al., 2014; Bailey, 2020). Bronwyn Lumby explains this constant questioning of identity works to “regulate who can and who cannot be Indigenous, and indeed what it means to be Indigenous” (2010, 73; Langton, 2011; Nakata, 2013). Therefore Compton is using “humour to deal with the onslaught of violence experienced daily” (Carlson, 2021, 21) and by satirising these types of serious denigrations on Instagram, Compton is maintaining his agency and dignity, staying connected within the Indigenous collective survival community through the “networked self” (Papacharissi 2010, 304), whilst educating the silent, public gaze at the same time.
Justice for Walker
One incredible Instagram account that has harnessed the power of Instagram in recent years is Justice for Walker (2023). Family and friends of Kumanjayi Walker have been utilising Instagram to advocate for social and lawful justice for their beloved murdered family member by publishing factual posts such as “Timeline Summary” (https://www.instagram.com/p/Cj1XmIMhraU/ 18 Oct 2022), and pushing for Police officer Zachary Rolfe to be held accountable by Australian law “New alarming Zachary Rolfe texts revealed” (https://www.instagram.com/p/CjCu6ViL_SM/ 28 Sept 2022). By carefully releasing facts about the case on Instagram after matters have been dealt with in court, they take ownership of the narrative, in order to defy the mass media’s racist versions of the facts and empower the public to make their own conclusions, which ultimately point to a culture of racist police and systematic failures of the justice system.
Not only have they advocated for justice, but they have also generously shared personal videos about who they are, and what Kumanjayi was like as young man, in order to quash racist attacks and perceptions about them and their culture and identity. For example on the third anniversary of Walker’s murder, they released a video entitled “Justice for Walker” which detailed some of the family’s experiences about the day that Walker died (9 Nov 2022 https://www.instagram.com/p/CkvSZj5B34v/ ) In another video entitled “Get to know the real Kumanjayi Walker” (11 March 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/CpoFs0QhGIk/) we hear some of his family members yarning (telling stories) about his personality and how they heard about his murder. These personal accounts work to maintain agency over the narratives about their family, their culture and Kumunjayi’s murder (IndigenousX, 2023); they work to connect with the national Indigenous community who are going through the same devastating common issues of murdered family members (IndigenousX, 2023); and they work to challenge perceptions about Indigenous people who are regularly and innocently murdered by non-Indigenous police officers (IndigenousX, 2023).
Conclusion
Various Indigenous people utilise Instagram as a site of agency, community and self-representation to challenge perceptions of them in Australia. The “great Australian silence” (Stanner, 2011, 140) about our violent colonial history is something Indigenous people recognise and use Instagram to challenge. They explore theirs and others identities in what Lumby calls cyber-Indigeneity, which can cut across sociocultural difference to produce new political collectives (Carlson and Frazer, 2018, 45). I have shown how Wiggan-Dann, Compton and the Justice for Walker group are successfully doing this through humour, creativity and subversion. This paper fits within the Indigenous Communities stream of the conference because it discusses Indigenous experiences on Instagram, based on arguments from Indigenous perspectives.
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Hi L, The thing is the paper is mainly concentrated on the African continent particularly.If you make an analysis of…