Indigenous Digital Life

Settler societies habitually frame Indigenous people as a people of the pasttheir culture somehow frozen in time, their identities tied to static notions of authenticity, and their communities understood as in decline. But this narrative erases the many ways that Indigenous people are actively engaged in future-orientated practice, including through new technologies. Indigenous Digital Life offers a broad, wide-ranging account of how social media has become embedded in the lives of Indigenous Australians. Centring on ten core themesincluding identity, community, hate, desire and deathwe seek to understand both the practice and broader politics of being Indigenous on social media. Rather than reproducing settler narratives of Indigenous deficiency, we approach Indigenous social media as a space of Indigenous action, production, and creativity; we see Indigenous social media users as powerful agents, who interact with and shape their immediate worlds with skill, flair and nous; and instead of being a people of the past, we show that Indigenous digital life is often future-orientated, working towards building better relations, communities and worlds. This book offers new ideas, insights and provocations for both students and scholars of Indigenous studies, media and communication studies, and cultural studies.