Indigenous Digital Life The Practice and Politics of Being Indigenous On Social Media Carlson Online Ebook Texxtbook Full Chapter PDF

Indigenous Digital Life: The Practice
and Politics of Being Indigenous on

Social Media Carlson
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/indigenous-digital-life-the-practice-and-politics-of-bein
g-indigenous-on-social-media-carlson/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Living in Indigenous Sovereignty 1st Edition Elizabeth

Carlson Manathara
https://ebookmeta.com/product/living-in-indigenous-
sovereignty-1st-edition-elizabeth-carlson-manathara/
Health Care and Indigenous Australians Cultural Safety

in Practice Kerry Taylor
https://ebookmeta.com/product/health-care-and-indigenous-
australians-cultural-safety-in-practice-kerry-taylor/
The Indigenous World 2022 36th Edition The

International Work Group For Indigenous Affairs (Iwgia)
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-indigenous-world-2022-36th-
edition-the-international-work-group-for-indigenous-affairs-
iwgia/
Media Infrastructures And The Politics Of Digital Time

Essays On Hardwired Temporalities 1st Edition Axel
Volmar
https://ebookmeta.com/product/media-infrastructures-and-the-
politics-of-digital-time-essays-on-hardwired-temporalities-1st-
edition-axel-volmar/
Legacies of Indigenous Resistance Pemulwuy Jandamarra
and Yagan in Australian Indigenous Film Theatre and
Literature Australian Studies Interdisciplinary
Perspectives Matteo Dutto
https://ebookmeta.com/product/legacies-of-indigenous-resistance-
pemulwuy-jandamarra-and-yagan-in-australian-indigenous-film-
theatre-and-literature-australian-studies-interdisciplinary-
perspectives-matteo-dutto/
Coded Territories Tracing Indigenous Pathways in New

Media Art 1st Edition Steven Loft Kerry Swanson
https://ebookmeta.com/product/coded-territories-tracing-
indigenous-pathways-in-new-media-art-1st-edition-steven-loft-
kerry-swanson/
Social Impacts of Digital Media 1st Edition Justin

Healey
https://ebookmeta.com/product/social-impacts-of-digital-
media-1st-edition-justin-healey/
The Sound of Silence Indigenous Perspectives on the

Historical Archaeology of Colonialism 1st Edition Tiina
Äikäs (Editor)
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-sound-of-silence-indigenous-
perspectives-on-the-historical-archaeology-of-colonialism-1st-
edition-tiina-aikas-editor/
Embodied Politics Indigenous Migrant Activism Cultural

Competency and Health Promotion in California 1st
Edition Rebecca J. Hester
https://ebookmeta.com/product/embodied-politics-indigenous-
migrant-activism-cultural-competency-and-health-promotion-in-
california-1st-edition-rebecca-j-hester/
Indigenous Digital Life
The Practice and Politics
of Being Indigenous on
Social Media
Bronwyn Carlson · Ryan Frazer
Indigenous Digital Life
Bronwyn Carlson • Ryan Frazer
Indigenous Digital
Life
The Practice and Politics of Being Indigenous
on Social Media
Bronwyn Carlson Ryan Frazer
Room 411 Arts Precinct
Macquarie University Macquarie University
North Ryde, NSW, Australia North Ryde, NSW, Australia
ISBN 978-3-030-84795-1 ISBN 978-3-030-84796-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Artwork by Balanggarra/Yolngu woman Molly Hunt / https://

mollyhunt.art
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
We would firstly like to thank all those who have participated in our field-
work over the years. From Nipaluna (Hobart) to Yirrganydji (Cairns),
from Muruwari, Ngemba, Weilwan and Yualwarri (Brewarrina) to Yawuru
(Broome), from Warrane (Sydney) and Naarm (Melbourne) and Meanjin
(Brisbane)—people across the continent have so generously shared their
experiences of being online. It is their stories that have given this book its
depth and richness. We also express gratitude to the Australian Research
Council (ARC) for funding the major projects from which this book has
been formed.
We are thankful to everyone who we have worked with throughout the
years, who have informed our research in productive ways; the Forum for
Indigenous Research Excellence (FIRE, now the Centre for Global
Indigenous Futures (CGIF)), the symposia that have come out of FIRE,
and everyone who participated in them: Cultured Queer // Queering
Culture: Indigenous Perspectives On Queerness (2015); Reterritorialising
social media: Indigenous people rise up (2015); Decolonising Criminal
Justice: Indigenous Perspectives on Social Harm (2016); Indigenous
Peoples Rise Up: An International Symposium on the Global Ascendancy
of Social Media Activism (2019); and Indigenous Futurisms (2019).
We would also like to thank our wonderful colleagues across the coun-
try who so kindly read and provided helpful, often scathing feedback on
different chapters in this book, including Sandy O’Sullivan, Madi Day,
Joseph Pugliese, Colleen McGloin, Gawaian Bodkin-Andrews, Yin
Paradies, Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández and Georgine Clarsen.
v
vi Acknowledgements
Bronwyn: I want to thank my partner Mike for being supportive of all

that I do and while he may never really be interested in what I am writing
about, he never fails to make me a lovely cup of tea. I am thankful for the
distractions my grannies provide me, Scarlet, Jack, Aurora, Evie, Phoenix,
Isaac and Baby G (Grace). I want to thank my colleagues in the Department
of Indigenous Studies who are truly the best mob that someone could
ever hope to work with: Sandy O’Sullivan, Tristan Kennedy, Madi Day,
Andrew Farrell, Tetei Bakic, Jo Rey and Ryan Frazer. When you get to
work with such inspirational people work becomes productive and enjoy-
able. A bunch of big dreamers who I am thankful to know.
Ryan: I want to thank my wife, Laura, for being endlessly supportive
and for texting me from upstairs when she’s made a salad for lunch; Sam
for being truly perfect; and Bernie, for sleeping at my feet for the entire
writing process. I also want to express my deep gratitude to Bronwyn, for
being such a benevolent ‘boss’ and generous colleague. This book is the
outcome of what has become such a productive and fun research partner-
ship. And finally, I’m thankful for being part of the Department of
Indigenous Studies, which is made up of such a caring, inspiring and
impressive group of scholars.
Abstract
Settler societies habitually frame Indigenous people as ‘a people of the

past’—their 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 technolo-
gies. 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 themes—including identity, community, hate, desire
and death—we seek to understand both the practice and broader politics
of being Indigenous on social media. Rather than reproducing settler nar-
ratives 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.
vii
Contents
Openings: The Social Life of Indigenous Social Media 1

1 Introduction: ‘nothing can replace the real thing’ 1
2 Online Identities, Care and Violence 4
3 The Social Life of Social Media 6
4 What Is this Book and Why Does It Exist? 7
5 Materials, Methods and Ethics 9
6 The Structure of the Book: Untangling Life on Social Media 12
References 18
Identity 21
1 Introduction: The Identity of Bruce Pascoe 21
2 Legislating Indigenous Identity 23
3 Self-Determination: To Determine One’s Self 26
4 Contemporary Debates: ‘What Defines an Aboriginal?’ 28
4.1 Contested Performances of Indigeneity Online 30
5 Embodying Indigeneity Online 31
5.1 Laying Claim to Indigeneity 31
5.2 Participating in Indigenous Digital Life 33
6 Challenging Indigenous Identity 35
6.1 Oh, You Don’t Look Indigenous 35
6.2 Performance Anxiety: Navigating Race Misrecognition 37
7 The Decolonising Logic of ‘taking the piss’ 38
7.1 The Politics of Devon 40
8 Closing: Equally but Variously Indigenous 41
References 42
ix
x Contents
Community 47
1 “Get the service taken out of the community” 47
2 The Problem of Community 50
2.1 Indigenous Communities 52
3 Kinship Communities 56
3.1 A Continuation of the ‘Great Black Bond’ 56
3.2 Community Is outside Social Media 59
3.3 Social Media Is Undermining Community 60
4 Identity Communities 61
4.1 Colonisation and Indigenous LGBTIQ+ Communities 63
4.2 Online Affirmation of Queer Indigenous Identities 64
4.3 Gay Indigenous Communities of Care 65
5 Closing: It’s Giving Us a New Form 67
References 69
Hate 71
1 Introduction: The Varieties of Online Hate 71
2 Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Racialisation and ‘Possessiveness’ 73
2.1 Towards an Understanding of Digital Racism 76
3 Four Forms of Anti-Indigenous Racism 77
3.1 Racist Stereotyping 78
3.2 Racist Humour 80
3.3 Anti-Indigenous Communities 83
3.4 Interpersonal Racist Abuse 85
4 The Experience of Online Racism 86
4.1 Encountering Racism Online: ‘almost a silly question’ 87
4.2 Responding to Racism: ‘there’s no point’ 89
5 Closing: Hate and the Settler Colonisation of Digital Territory 91
References 92
Desire 95
1 Introduction: Ambivalent Love 95
2 Digital Dating 96
2.1 Not Just Love: The Dangers of Digital Dating 97
3 Colonial Control, Disgust and Desire 99
3.1 Legislating Indigenous Sexuality100
3.2 Settler Disgust and Desire for Indigenous Women100
3.3 Settler Fear of Indigenous Men’s Sexuality102
3.4 Towards a Decolonising Digital Desire103
Contents xi
4 Digital Love and Care104

4.1 Long-Term Love (with a Catch)105
4.2 Queer Spaces of Care106
5 The Politics of Sexual ‘Preference’107
5.1 Sexual Desire and Racial Hatred108
5.2 Navigating Sexual Racism110
6 Body Sovereignty and Decolonising Desire111
6.1 Fuck White Beauty Standards112
6.2 Decolonising Sexual Preferences and Desire114
6.3 I’m Not Gonna Let them Colonise my Body115
7 Closing: Towards a Sovereign Erotic116
References117
Fun121
1 Introduction: The Social Media Playground121
1.1 Making Fun in the Colony124
2 Indigenous Humour Behind Digital Doors125
3 Koorioke: Singing, Silliness and Indigenous Joy128
4 Freewheeling Fun on #BlakTok131
5 Closing: Indigenous Life in All Its Realness and Silliness135
References137
Death141
1 Introduction: The Digital Afterlife141
2 Physical Death, Digital Life143
3 Sorry Business146
3.1 The Digital Life of Indigenous Death149
4 Death Notices150
5 Fulfilling Responsibilities153
6 Commemorating Life155
6.1 Handling Photos156
6.2 Maintaining Anniversaries158
7 Closing: A Living Culture of Death160
References161
Activism165
1 Introduction: ‘In this together’165
2 Indigenous Politics, Protest, Activism167
xii Contents
2.1 The ‘Connective’ Politics of Social Media169

2.2 Contagious Political Feeling and Moving171
2.3 The Emotional Politics of Indigenous Activism173
3 Aboriginal Lives Matter: Circulations of Pain and Anger174
3.1 Black Pain, Indigenous Pain: Shared Recognition175
3.2 A Movement Moment: Stop Black Deaths in Custody176
3.3 Indigenous Anger as a ‘Yes’ to Something Else178
4 Australia’s Shame, Indigenous Love179
4.1 What’s His Name Then?180
4.2 The Love of #IndigenousDads181
4.3 The Danger of Indigenous Love182
5 Closing: Our Resistance Is Written in Both Rage and Love183
References184
Histories189
1 Introduction: Forgetting and Remembering189
2 Settler Colonialism: A Cult of Forgetfulness192
2.1 ‘Aboriginal Histories’: Remembering Forgotten Things195
2.2 Indigenous Digital Memories197
3 January 26, 1788198
3.1 Challenging National Discourse on Social Media200
3.2 ‘Professional Mourners’202
4 Indigenous Lives Matter203
4.1 No Slavery in Australia204
4.2 The Policing of Settler Monuments206
5 Closing: To Remember What Settler Colonialism Forgets208
References210
Allies213
1 Introduction: ‘11 Things You Can Do to End Police Violence’213
2 Black Allies215
2.1 Three Directives of Allyship216
2.2 The Trouble with Allies217
3 Indigenous Allies218
3.1 Allying with Indigenous Movements219
3.2 The Well-Intentioned Settler221
3.3 Decolonising Together223
4 Online Allyship Discourse224
Contents xiii
4.1 Shutting the Fuck Up and Listening224

4.2 Get in Trouble with me225
4.3 Problem Allies226
5 Online Allyship Praxis228
5.1 Eavesdropping with Permission228
5.2 Amplifying people’s Voices230
5.3 The Limits of Online Solidarity231
6 Closing: Kill the Settler, Save the Man232
References234
Futures237
1 Introduction: Past, Present, Futures237
2 Settler Futures/Indigenous Pasts238
2.1 Indigenous Futurisms: A People of the Future240
2.2 The Futures in Indigenous Activism243
3 Indigenous Digital Futures245
3.1 Future Identities245
3.2 Future Communities247
3.3 Future Sovereignties249
4 Openings: Indigenous People Are Already Living in the Future250
References251
Index255
About the Authors
Bronwyn Carlson is a professor and Head of the Department of

Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University. She is the author of The
Politics of Identity: Who Counts as Aboriginal Today? (2016), which
includes a chapter on identity and community on social media. She is
widely published on the topic of Indigenous cultural, social, intimate and
political engagements on social media including co-editing and contribut-
ing to two special issues; the Australasian Journal of Information Systems
(2017) on “Indigenous Activism on Social Media’ and Media International
Australia (2018) on “Indigenous Innovation on Social Media” and an
edited volume with Rutgers University Press (2021) Indigenous People
Rise Up: The Global Ascendancy of Social Media Activism.
Ryan Frazer is postdoctoral research fellow at Macquarie University, cur-
rently working on a project that explores Indigenous people’s experiences
of online violence. In 2019, he completed his PhD at the University of
Wollongong, which drew on the work of Deleuze and Guattari to under-
stand the role of volunteer refugee resettlement organisations in produc-
ing territories of care, home and belonging. Since 2014, he has worked as
an associate research fellow in Indigenous Studies and has published
extensively on Indigenous people’s use of social media for activism, iden-
tity and community.
xv
Openings: The Social Life of Indigenous
Social Media
1 Introduction: ‘nothing can replace

the real thing’
In October 2008, I made my first Facebook post. It seems a lifetime ago

now. I was in the middle of a PhD, and I’d been conducting interviews
with Aboriginal people, discussing with them their identity and involve-
ment in the Aboriginal community. Unprompted, several spoke about
how they expressed their Aboriginality on their Facebook profiles, through
the images they shared and connections they formed. This piqued my
interest; Facebook was still very new, having only opened to the public
two years previously, and I hadn’t considered issues of identity or com-
munity in these still-novel, strange digital settings.
Back then, people tended to speak about life in two separate domains:
the online, ‘real’ world and the offline, ‘virtual’ world—which was, by
implication, not ‘real’. I became interested in whether ‘being Aboriginal’
online attracted the same sort of scrutiny Aboriginal people regularly
experienced offline. Several people I spoke to discussed how, in the sup-
posedly ‘real’ world, their identities had been questioned or challenged,
particularly in relation to their apparently ‘not looking Aboriginal’. And
indeed, it turned out those with Facebook profiles also experienced a high
level of surveillance around their identity. Some explained how, in an
effort to stave off these interrogations, they sought to visibly express their
Aboriginality through the pictures they post, the ‘gifts’ they exchange,
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_1
2 B. CARLSON, R. FRAZER
and the friends, events and other sites through which they network more
widely. For example, one participant explained:
I have lots of Aboriginal family and friends and we … post pics. I have other
Koori stuff too. Like you send each other, like, gifts, but not real gifts—like
pics really but [they] are meant to be gifts. You can join other groups, Koori
groups, and be involved in the discussion and post stuff about what you are
doing or who you are connected to. It’s cool because you can hook up to
mobs all over the country. (P10)
In lieu of them looking ‘visibly Aboriginal’, these signs, symbols and

expressions of Aboriginality marked these participants as Aboriginal in
what I then referred to as ‘cyberspace’—a term that seems so embarrass-
ingly dated only a few years later. In this way, it was possible for others to
“see I have a connection or that I am identifying as Aboriginal on there”,
as one person explained (P22). It seemed it was important for the people
to whom I spoke to be recognised as Aboriginal by other Aboriginal peo-
ple, and to thereby gain some degree of community recognition and
acceptance. As we will discuss throughout this book, particularly in chap-
ter “Identity”, Indigenous identity in Australia is formally confirmed
through distinct criteria, one of which involves being ‘accepted by com-
munity’ as Indigenous. One described how they friended Aboriginal peo-
ple on Facebook specifically to build their network of connections and
thereby demonstrate this specifically Indigenous connectedness.
This was all very interesting to me and I decided to present these find-
ings at the up-and-coming Indigenous Studies and Indigenous Knowledges
conference, 2009, held in Perth, and hosted by the University of Western
Australia and Nulungu Centre for Indigenous Studies on the University of
Notre Dame Fremantle campus. My presentation was titled, ‘Cyber-
Indigeneity: Urban Indigenous identity on Facebook’, which was later
published in a special issue of the Australian Journal of Indigenous
Education (see Lumby 2010). This was the first academic publication in
Australia to explore Aboriginal engagements on social media. It is hard to
believe that now, given that social media has become such an important,
pervasive and mundane part of most people’s lives. But, at the time, more
than a decade ago, the editors of the special issue wrote that my paper
“takes us on a journey through relatively unknown territory” and that it
“informs us of the possibilities and limitations afforded by this technologi-
cal space” (Henderson-Yates and Oxenham 2010, vi).
OPENINGS: THE SOCIAL LIFE OF INDIGENOUS SOCIAL MEDIA 3
While this may have been ‘relatively unknown territory’ for scholars,
Indigenous people had been actively, creatively and adeptly using digital
and internet technologies for years. As early as 1995, Wiradjuri scholar
Sandy Indlekofer-O’Sullivan was publishing about how artists, including
Aboriginal artists, formed communities of practice online. However,
Aboriginal people were mainly, and sometimes still are, discussed in rela-
tion to the ‘digital divide’—a schism between Indigenous and non-
Indigenous people’s use of technology (Ormond-Parker et al. 2013). This
apparent ‘divide’ is not only in relation to ownership of and access to
technology; it also points to the idea that Aboriginal people are considered
somehow technologically ‘deficient’ and incapable of engaging in the digi-
tal world. Arias (2019, x) describes a widespread “compulsion to perceive
Indigenous peoples as located outside of technology’s purview”—a ste-
reotype that harks back to early colonial narratives of Indigenous people as
‘backwards’, “archaic survivors from the dawn of man’s existence”, as
Attwood and Markus explain (1997, 20). This stereotype seems to hold
for Black people always and everywhere. André Brock Jr (2020, 40–1)
suggests that researchers are “morbidly fascinated with promulgating
‘fact’ about the limitations of and on Black folks’ internet use”.
After my presentation, an Indigenous woman invited me to join a
Facebook site dedicated to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholars.
The site was ostensibly for selected Indigenous people to openly and criti-
cally discuss Indigenous topics of interest. As a very recently fledged
scholar, I was delighted there was interest in my research—especially from
other Indigenous people. Membership to the group required a confirma-
tion of my Aboriginality, as granted by two existing members. I was
accepted and was asked to pose a question for the group. In line with my
research interests, I asked: “Can community recognition of someone’s
Aboriginality come from an online community?”
I was not prepared for the responses that followed. One person stated:
“Community Recognition is just that!!!”—implying that there is only one
form of ‘Aboriginal community’. It was clear that, although this was, in a
sense, a community group consisting of only Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people, ‘community’ as it relates to Aboriginal people was only
possible offline. Taken aback, I responded that my question had emerged
in the course of my research; that it was not an assertion of my personal
views, but instead was intended as an idea for academic consideration.
The discussion immediately shifted from my question to demands for
‘authentication’ of who I was; in particular, I was asked for documented
evidence of my Aboriginality. I responded that I did have a Confirmation

of Aboriginality.1 I was then asked for further corroboration: Was I a
member of an Aboriginal Lands Council?2 I again replied affirmatively.
Another group member still claimed I was “NOT Aboriginal” and said
they knew where I worked and where they could find me. Finally, I was
informed I would be removed from the group as my identity was under
question. My farewell was followed by, “and for the record community
recognition in cyberspace please, nothing can replace the real thing”.
I was shaken by the experience. It was my first hostile interaction on
social media, and I was unsure how to process what had happened. But in
retrospect, I can see this experience—the ferocity with which Indigenous
identity was interrogated online, the particular ideas of ‘community’ that
were being produced and defended, and the deeply unsettling feeling of
being attacked online—paved the way for my research career to come.
2 Online Identities, Care and Violence

After graduating in 2012, I applied for an Australian Research Council
(ARC) Discovery Indigenous Grant to further my interest in Aboriginal
identity on social media. I was fortunate to be awarded a grant for a proj-
ect titled ‘Aboriginal identity and community online: a sociological explo-
ration of Aboriginal peoples’ use of online social media’ (IN13010036,
2013–2016), and it was the first major research project in Australia that
focused entirely on Indigenous engagements with social media. The find-
ings resulted in a deeper and broader understanding of how Indigenous
people use social media to build, assert and maintain their identity, and
how they participate in various kinds of online communities. My co-author
on this book, Ryan, joined me on this project as a very green research
assistant. He had previously been a student of mine in Indigenous Studies
and was continuing his own postgraduate studies in human geography. We
travelled to several states and territories, talking to Indigenous people
about being online; and we found they were actively participating in social,
cultural and political activities on social media—something that would
seem entirely unsurprising to most people now, but was relatively new
knowledge at the time.3 As one person explained, Facebook had become
“just a continuation of our great Black bond, you know?” These platforms
had become a vehicle not simply for communicating and networking
among and between Indigenous people, but also a tool for sharing cul-
tural practices, norms and knowledges, agitating for social justice, seeking
help from others and providing care in turn (see Carlson 2013, 2016;
Carlson and Frazer 2015, 2016).
This last topic, the giving and seeking of help online, was mentioned by
participants in relation to a huge range of topics, including identity, rac-
ism, suicide and self-harm, parenting, education, employment, legal advice
and health-related concerns. These findings led to my successful applica-
tion for a second ARC Discovery Indigenous Grant, titled ‘An examina-
tion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander help-seeking behaviours on
social media’ (IN160100049, 2016–2018). Ryan also worked with me on
this project while he completed his PhD. This project provided a substan-
tial theoretically and empirically informed understanding of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander help-seeking behaviours on social media, a topic
which was largely absent from the literature at the time. We unpacked the
rich, complex networks of kinship, care and love that Indigenous people
both sustain and draw on in times of need. One young woman explained,
for instance:
With my weight loss, and I’m a survivor of DV [domestic violence], and

when a friend of mine might say something like: ‘Oh sis, I’m having a bit of
a rough patch,’ I know, like I can respond: ‘Yeah, I’ve been there’. Or I’ll say:
‘Sweet post, I can totally relate to that. I get it’.
The help-seeking project also revealed, however, that violence online in

its various guises—including cyberbullying, racism, hate speech, trolling,
lateral violence and abuse—was a significant issue for Indigenous people
and communities. As one person told us about copping online abuse,
quite matter-of-factly, “If you’re Aboriginal, you expect that”. Another
said that social media gave “free reign for racists”. And yet another
rebuked, when asked about seeing racism against Indigenous people
online, that it was “almost a silly question, sorry”.
In light of this, and in collaboration with the Aboriginal Health and
Medical Research Council NSW (AHMRC), we hosted the first forum on
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth and cyberbullying at the
Aboriginal Health College in Sydney in 2018. The event was attended by
the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, the National Mental Health
Commission and numerous youth organisations, Indigenous health pro-
fessionals and community members concerned with the paucity of infor-
mation about Indigenous people’s experiences with cyberbullying. We
also produced an extensive literature-based report, commissioned by the
AHMRC, on Indigenous youth and cyberbullying, which drew on litera-

ture from around the world (see Carlson and Frazer 2018b). We found
that the available research on cyberbullying tended to erase social and
cultural difference altogether, focusing mainly on white, urban popula-
tions, differentiating people only by age and binary gender categories.
This was concerning, as the work we’d done previous had made it abun-
dantly clear that we cannot assume Indigenous people’s online experiences
neatly match those of non-Indigenous people; and we thus shouldn’t
assume that experiences of cyberbullying would occur at the same rate, for
the same reasons, or with the same impacts as for non-Indigenous people
(see Carlson and Frazer 2021).
In 2019, I was awarded a third ARC Discovery Indigenous Grant enti-
tled ‘Indigenous peoples’ experiences of cyberbullying: An assemblage
approach’ (INED200100010, 2020–2022). Ryan had finally completed
his PhD and joined this new research project, still ongoing, now as a post-
doctoral research fellow. In this project, rather than assuming to already
know what online violence against Indigenous people looks like, and by
talking to Indigenous people across a range of different communities,
including youth, LGBTIQ+ people, people with disabilities and parents,
we’re hoping to unpack how Indigenous people themselves experience,
understand and respond to online violence in all its forms.
3 The Social Life of Social Media

From 2008, when the concept of Aboriginal identity on social media was
a novelty, to 2021, where social media is an everyday typical activity for
Indigenous people in Australia and around the world, there have been
profound changes in the social life of social media. In just two decades,
this communication mechanism has become thoroughly entangled in all
areas of social life. It has profoundly affected how we relate to one another,
communicate with one another, share and access information, express
ourselves, connect with one another, and understand ourselves, others,
and society more broadly. Social media has, in many respects, become a
lens or filter through which many of us see and are seen by the world. We
are still coming to grips with the changes that social media has brought on
our social, cultural, political and economic lives, not to mention its pro-
found effects on emotional and psychological responses. This is under-
standable—not only is social media, as we now know it, relatively new, it
is also constantly changing. When I first started researching social media,
the online world looked very different. Myspace was still relatively popu-
lar, Facebook was new, Instagram was non-existent, and no one could
even imagine the cultural force 15-second videos would soon have.
Moreover, there was still a sense that there was a meaningful distinction
between ‘offline’ and ‘online’ spaces. But no longer do we sit in front of a
computer that has its own desk and chair and ‘log on’ to the internet, sign
into a chat room or message board and, when we’re done, log off and
return to the normal world of embodied, fleshy, ‘real’ life. Instead, for
many of us, there is no distinction between online and offline worlds; they
are seamlessly enmeshed. We’re still in the relatively early stages of this
technological revolution, one that still seems to be gathering pace rather
than finding any sense of stability.
4 What Is this Book and Why Does It Exist?

This book is an account of Indigenous life on social media. We take a
broad, wide-ranging look at how social media has become embedded spe-
cifically in the lives of Indigenous Australians, what benefits it has brought,
how it has (re)shaped relations between Indigenous Australians and oth-
ers, what challenges and problems it presents, and how Indigenous
Australians use social media to build better lives and futures for themselves
and their communities. In short, the book seeks to outline a range of
aspects of the lived, everyday realities of being an Indigenous person on
social media.
Much of that which is contained in this book will not be news to
Indigenous Australians themselves. However, we believe that this book is
valuable for several reasons. First, it shatters the enduring myth that
Indigenous people are somehow necessarily anti-technology—that they
are a ‘people of the past’. Instead, the Indigenous people we talked to in
preparing this book, as well as so many people in our immediate social and
professional circles, use digital technologies just as much as non-Indigenous
populations. And not only that, they use them enthusiastically and with
great skill, innovation, creativity and joy. Instead of ‘looking back’,
Indigenous engagements with digital technology are often future-
orientated; they are about building better lives, communities and futures.
Second, it moves past the pervasive framing of Indigenous people as
being defined by that which they lack—what in policy and academic circles
is often called the ‘deficit’ model. Research on Indigenous peoples has
long focused disproportionately on the various social, economic and
health measures that position Indigenous Australians as ‘behind’, ‘lacking’

and ‘insufficient’—a discourse formalised in the Australian government’s
high-level commitment to ‘Closing the Gap’ between Indigenous and
non-Indigenous Australian’s health outcomes. Internet and digital tech-
nology studies have been no exception to this rule, often focusing on what
is often called the ‘digital divide’. That is, Indigenous people are under-
stood as lacking both the access to digital tools (and the benefits they can
provide) and the skills needed to use them proficiently.
In this book, we take a very different approach. Building on work in
Black Studies and Indigenous Methodologies, we instead approach
Indigenous social media as a space of Indigenous action, proficiency, pro-
duction, creativity and aliveness. We see Indigenous social media users as
powerful actors, highly engaged political and social agents, who interact
with and shape their immediate worlds with skill, flair and nous. There has
long been a strand of thought in Black American Studies called
‘Afrofuturism’ (Nelson 2002), which likewise posits Black people as cre-
ative agents, playfully engaging with new technologies, ideas and prac-
tices. ‘Indigenous Futurisms’, paying homage to Afrofuturism, weaves in
traditional knowledges and cultures with futuristic ideas and settings. The
term was coined by Anishinaabe scholar Grace Dillon to describe a form
of storytelling where Indigenous peoples use the speculative fiction genre
to challenge colonialism and imagine Indigenous futures. Taking inspira-
tion from this approach, we see Indigenous social media users as always
actively engaged with their own lives, working towards realising better
futures for themselves, their families and communities. Rather than ‘clos-
ing’ anything, in this book we instead seek to ‘open’ a diverse range of
issues, politics and practices of being Indigenous online.
Finally, we believe this book has value in how it documents the ways
that social media—its function, meaning and power—is different for
Indigenous people. Social media is not a ‘neutral’ space, somehow free of
the broader relations of power that structure the rest of the material world.
On the contrary, social media interacts with, extends and challenges these
power relations—relations based on race, gender, sexuality, class and, most
importantly here, one’s political relation to the land one occupies. In this
book, we see social media as a space that is always-already mediated
through racialised and colonised power relations. Being Indigenous online
is different to being non-Indigenous online in that social media provides
different opportunities for expression, connection and action, but also dif-
ferent challenges. Part of the aim of this book is to capture and highlight
these differences in experience and reveal the diversity of online lived

experience.
5 Materials, Methods and Ethics

Throughout this book, we draw on a wide variety of research materials,
including semi-structured interviews, qualitative surveys, articles from
news media, and ethnographic materials collected through ourselves being
social media users. Over the last three major research projects, we have
conducted in-depth interviews with more than 100 people from all states
and territories, including most capital cities, several regional cities, and
several smaller and more remote areas.4 This constitutes the main corpus
of qualitative material that we draw on throughout this book, and the
stories of participants provide the book with most of its content, ideas and
novelty. We also draw on three further sources of empirical material. First,
in 2015, we conducted an online survey of Indigenous social media users,
which asked respondents about their experiences online. We had over 80
people respond, and these people generously provided often detailed
accounts of experiences of racism, identity-expression, political activism
and community-making online. This survey provides some of the statistics
we cite through the book, and also some of the qualitative materials, par-
ticularly in chapters “Identity” and “Hate”, which focus on ‘identity’ and
‘hate’, respectively.5
Second, in preparation for this book, we conducted a news media anal-
ysis of stories relating to Indigenous people on social media. We used the
news media archive tool, Factiva, searching for all articles that included the
terms ‘Indigenous’ and ‘social media’ (and closely related terms, such as
‘Aboriginal’ and ‘Facebook’) that were published in Australia from the
beginning of time until the day we conducted the search in July 2020.
This returned around 1300 articles, about half of which were syndicated
duplicates. The remaining articles were then all read in chronological
order and then coded, using NVivo, based on their major focus (e.g. rac-
ism, community, activism). We are in the process of writing an article
based on our results, which will outline trends over time in media report-
ing on Indigenous social media use. We draw extensively on this material
throughout this book, as it allowed us to better frame each chapter within
broader public discourses around Indigenous people and/on social media.
Finally, we sometimes draw on materials we ourselves have spontane-
ously encountered on social media—what Kozinets (2019) describes as
‘netnographic’ data. Like those whom the book is about, we are both avid
social media users, and have spent an embarrassing amount of time scroll-
ing through the feeds of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and, much less
frequently, apps such as Snapchat, Tik Tok and Reddit. Over this time, we
have ourselves seen Indigenous digital life unfolding—the everyday
expressions of ‘being’ Indigenous online, the anger and action roused by
violent settler politics, the joy in sharing memes that celebrate Indigenous
life. Some of this material has found its way into this book. As media schol-
ars have long discussed, there are particular ethical issues in using empiri-
cal materials found on social media, even when it is ostensibly ‘public’
information (Moreno et al. 2013; Williams et al. 2017). Specifically, when
interacting online, most people would seldom consider that there might
be a researcher lurking around, observing them and extracting data from
them for their own professional projects. With this in mind, we have been
careful in handling this information. When we quote posts from people
who did not formally agree to be part of the project, these are anonymised,
and the text is generally altered to convey the general meaning of the post
without making it identifiable or searchable. Exceptions to this include
posts that have already been published elsewhere, such as in news stories,
and posts made by people who are unequivocally public figures, such as
verified Twitter users, otherwise known as ‘Blue Tick Mob’. Where it
wasn’t possible to anonymise data, we have sought permission from the
original poster.
In making sense of all of this material, the book is informed by several
distinct theoretical approaches. While we don’t jump into too much the-
ory throughout the rest of this book, instead hoping to directly illustrate
the workings of power through example and testimony, these ideas form
the conceptual grounding for our entire approach to knowledge.
First, we aim to centre Indigenous experiences, knowledges and ontol-
ogies. While acknowledging the broader unequal power relations that are
embedded and entangled within digital technologies, in this book we seek
to take a more ‘bottom-up’ approach to understanding digital cultures.
We centre and privilege the practices, meanings and understandings of
Indigenous people directly engaged with social media technologies. This
bottom-up approach allows us to remain sensitive to the agency of
Indigenous people, to their individual and collective belief systems, their
politics, and the creative, innovative and sometimes surprising ways in
which they engage with social media. In doing so, we draw on ideas from
what is sometimes called ‘Indigenous Standpoint Theory’ (see Nakata
2007), which is an approach to research that acknowledges the ways in

which knowledge-making practices are always embedded within diverse
and distinct knowledge systems, such as Indigenous ontologies, and exist-
ing political arrangements, such as Indigenous sovereignty and settler
colonialism. Privileging the voices and practices of Indigenous people acts
as a kind of ‘corrective’ to the dominant approach to research, which tends
to objectify, essentialise and, in turn, infantilise Indigenous peoples. Too
often, social research has reproduced the relations of domination that
define settler-colonialism. While we’re certainly interested in how
Indigenous people are subjected to these power relations, and how digital
technologies are entangled in them, we want to do so from the perspective
of Indigenous people themselves. Being online is a process of meaning-
making, which can only be understood by centring the voices of Indigenous
people themselves.
In concert with this grounding of the knowledge holder, Indigenous
Standpoint Theory necessitates great reflexivity on the part of the
‘knower’—in this case, us, the authors, but also you, the reader. This
involves understanding knowledge as always produced and interpreted by
people who are socially, politically and culturally positioned within par-
ticular lifeworlds—which, mostly importantly for this book, concerns
one’s relation to the land one occupies. It’s important to acknowledge,
then, that I am an Aboriginal woman who was born on and currently live
on the lands of the Dharawal people. I also spent much of my childhood
growing up on Wadawurrung, Jawoyn and Antakirinja Country, as well as
some time in Aotearoa. I currently work on Dharug Ngurra, the home-
lands of the Wullumattagal people, and I pay my respect to the ancestors,
Elders, and peoples of these Countries. Ryan, on the other hand, is not
Indigenous; he is a white, settler academic, with English and Scottish heri-
tage, whose family has more recently lived along east-coast Australia, on
the lands of the Dharawal, Yuin, Eora, and Bundjalung peoples. His politi-
cally, economically and socially privileged positionality as a white, straight,
cis-gendered male settled on the colonised lands of other people inevitably
informs, shapes and distorts his particular capacity as a knowledge holder,
knowledge producer and knowledge sharer.
Second, we draw heavily on the work of scholars of settler colonialism,
such as Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2015), Martin Nakata (2007), Eve
Tuck (with Gaztambide-Fernández 2013) and Patrick Wolfe (2006), who
have each produced powerful accounts of the function, form and goals of
settler colonialism. While ‘classical’ colonialism sought primarily to extract
resources, including spices, industrial materials, and enslaved people from

colonised land, settler colonialism seeks to destroy existing Indigenous
society so it can be replaced with settler society (Tuck and Gaztambide-
Fernández 2013). Settler colonialism, as Wolfe (2006, 393) has influen-
tially argued, “is an inclusive, land-centred project that coordinates a
comprehensive range of agencies, from the metropolitan centre to the
frontier encampment, with a view to eliminating Indigenous societies”.
While colonialism and social media might seem worlds apart in time
and space, in this book we aim to show this absolutely is not the case. The
techno-utopian discourse of social media is that it has produced entirely
new modes of being. But this powerful myth glosses over how broader
relations of power extend to, and are extended through, social media tech-
nologies. Clearly, digital sociality is not absent of the inequalities that are
responsible for much violence in the broader social-material world.
Instead, relations of class, gender, sexuality, race, religion and so on exist
online too—though often in augmented and sometimes highly distorted
forms. Extending this line of thinking, we understand social media as key
relational platforms through which settler colonialism is extended, trans-
formed, challenged and sometimes defeated; and a key aim of this book is
to understand how the enduring political structure of settler colonialism,
including its mandate to ‘eliminate’ Indigenous peoples and ‘replace’
them with settler society, is both extended and challenged through
social media.
6 The Structure of the Book: Untangling Life

on Social Media
Unsurprisingly, the experiences of Indigenous social media users are far

too diverse, rich, and fluid to contain within a single book. Social media,
like social life more broadly, is ever-changing: the platforms are continu-
ously being updated, functions are added and removed, new platforms are
constantly being released; online cultures, modes of expression, and forms
of relating are rising and falling away with great speed; and people’s lives
are a torrential river of experiences, events, sensations, emotions and ideas.
Everything, it seems, is always happening at once.
Considering all this, this book offers a very partial look into (some)
Indigenous peoples’ use of social media within a very defined period of
time (circa 2010–2020). We aim not to provide a comprehensive account
of Indigenous digital life, but instead offer openings into some of the ways
social media is extending and changing what it means to be Indigenous,
how Indigeneity is expressed and understood, how Indigenous people
relate to one another and the world around them, and what opportunities
social media has created in making possible other futures. In short, we
want to think through some of the ways people are ‘being Indigenous’ on,
through and with social media, and the political consequences of this.
We have divided the book into ten major chapters, each of which cen-
tres on a core theme or aspect of digital social life. We move through a
range of broad topics, hoping to capture some of the key events, ideas and
experiences of Indigenous digital life. These divisions are, in many ways,
rather arbitrary, as social life rarely fits into neat little boxes. One’s ‘iden-
tity’ is inseparable from the ‘communities’ to which one belongs, for
instance; and while we have a separate chapter for ‘activism’, there is a
sense that just being Indigenous is political—as we’ll discuss, in the context
of the settler state, simply claiming one’s identity as Indigenous is a con-
tentious political act. For this reason, the chapters often leak into one
another, and there are refrains that will be heard again and again through-
out this book.
With this proviso in mind, we close this opening chapter by offering a
broad outline of each of the chapters.
Chapter “Identity” explores the politics of ‘who counts’ as Indigenous
as it increasingly plays out on social media. We ask: how is social media
entangled in the claiming, challenging and changing of Indigenous iden-
tity? We follow the enduring settler discourses of Indigeneity, which have
invariably sought to control, contain and confuse ‘who counts’ as
Indigenous, and trace how these have been translated into the new digital
spaces social media makes possible. Across three major sections, we discuss
how social media sustains and transforms expressions of Indigenous iden-
tity: through (re)claiming of Indigenous identity, calling Indigeneity into
question, and playing with settler stereotypes—which we describe as the
decolonising strategy of ‘taking the piss’.
Chapter “Community” turns to more collective forms of being, look-
ing specifically at how notions of ‘community’ intersect with social media
use. Despite the protestations of those who were provoked by my ques-
tion back in 2008, Indigenous people are deeply engaged in producing
and sustaining different forms of community online. Again grounding the
discussion in the political development of the ‘Aboriginal community’ in
Australia, we then unpack what we came to see as two relatively distinct
forms of community that have emerged through social media: ‘kinship

communities’, grounded in relations between peoples and places; and
‘identity communities’, which form around particular subjective experi-
ences and social signifiers. In the first instance, we unpack the diverse
practices and understandings of Indigenous digital communities as they
intersect with more ‘traditional’ forms of community. In the second, we
look specifically at a subgroup within the broader Indigenous community:
the articulations of digital community by gay Indigenous men.
Chapter “Hate” attends to one of the most salient aspects of social
media for social, cultural and ethnic minorities: their capacity to become
vehicles of hate. While social media companies reproduce sunny branding
of connection, belonging and community, these platforms are very often
violent, unsafe places for Indigenous people. Drawing on the media
archive discussed above, we outline several relatively distinct forms of
online hatred of and racism against Indigenous people. Rather than under-
standing online racism as an unfortunate by-product of an otherwise ‘neu-
tral’ or even liberatory technology, we seek to demonstrate how it ‘works’
as a direct extension of the settler colonial project, which aims towards the
silencing, erasure and disappearance of Indigenous peoples.
Chapter “Desire” turns to questions of love and desire on social media,
looking at Indigenous people’s experience of hooking up, dating and find-
ing love online. While we were originally hoping to counter-balance the
torrent of negativity contained in chapter “Hate” with stories of fun, love
and pleasure, the people we spoke to invariably brought us back to issues
of racism, hate and violence in seeking love. First, we discuss their stories
of using sites and apps for dating and hooking up, and some of the success
they had in finding love and friendship. Second, we unpack and problema-
tise the idea of sexual ‘preference’, in which Indigenous people are often
framed as sexually undesirable, arguing that ‘preference’ is often just racist
subterfuge. Finally, we discuss Indigenous peoples’ efforts to reject colo-
nial discourses of desire, to interrogate their own internalised sexual pref-
erences, and to assert sovereignty over their own bodies.
While Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are clearly platforms for hate,
violence and myriad of forms of Indigenous elimination, they are also
spaces where Indigenous people share their love, creatively express them-
selves through memes, reaction GIFs and jokes, where they make fun of
each other and, most importantly, make fun of the colony. Chapter “Fun”
explores three arrangements of Indigenous fun online: Indigenous-only
Facebook groups, in which users reminisce about their childhoods, post
images of nostalgic foodstuffs, and satirise colonisers; #BlackfullaTwitter

and, more specifically, the #Kookioke event in which Indigenous people
shared candid videos of themselves playfully covering classic songs; and
#BlakTok, where Indigenous people subvert fixed ideas of Indigeneity.
Social media, we argue, is often a playground of Indigenous creativity,
freedom and fun.
Chapter “Death” looks at how traditional Indigenous expressions of
Sorry Business—practices relating to death, dying and loss—intersect with
new digital technologies. Practices of death, mourning and commemora-
tion are hugely significant realms of social life for Indigenous peoples. In
this chapter, we unpack three ways that social media is maintaining,
extending and changing practices of Sorry Business. First, we discuss some
of the ways it is changing norms around how news of a death is handled;
second, we look at how social media is extending old and producing new
ways of mourning and grieving; and finally, we explore various practices of
commemoration, such as the sharing of photos and maintenance of anni-
versaries. Through this, we highlight some of the major tensions shifting
norms around digital Sorry Business is bringing Indigenous peoples, and
argue that the digital life of death illustrates the dynamic, living cultures of
Indigenous peoples.
The next four chapters address four more saliently political aspects of
Indigenous digital life. Chapter “Activism” looks at practices of online
Indigenous activism, focusing particularly on the role of emotion in
Indigenous activism. We ask: What does the expression and circulation of
emotion on social media ‘do’ in Indigenous activism? Looking at two
‘movement moments’ in Indigenous activism—the Aboriginal Lives
Matter and #IndigenousDads campaigns—we attend to the political affor-
dances of different emotions, seeking to understand what the emotions of
pain, anger and love do in the context of Indigenous social media activism.
Just as Indigenous people’s anger threatens the stability of the social order,
we argue that so too does Indigenous love become a danger to an order
premised on the pathologisation of Indigenous family life. The circulation
of emotion works to bring new political collectives into being, we argue,
bonded through Indigenous expressions of pain, anger and love, working
towards new Indigenous futures.
Chapter “Histories” builds on this discussion of Indigenous political
activism, and looks specifically at how Indigenous people are using social
media to challenge persisting settler myths about the Australian nation.
Situating this counter-discourse within the broader political context of the
so-called History Wars, we unpack how social media now figures in the ad
hoc ‘decolonial remembering’ around the Australian nation. First, we dis-
cuss the event at the heart of the Australian national narrative: the arrival
of British colonisers and their claim to territory on 26 January, 1788,
which is popularly framed as a ‘peaceful settlement’. While this date is
celebrated each year as a national holiday, Indigenous people have long
challenged the foundational myth of ‘peaceful settlement’, and instead
mourn the day as ‘Invasion Day’. We discuss how social media has changed
the political dynamics of this debate, and has offered new opportunities
for Indigenous people to speak back against dominant narratives of peace-
ful nationhood. In short, we argue that it is through social media that the
History Wars are now playing out in the ad hoc, ‘horizontal’ publics that
social media affords, constituting what we describe as the History Wars 2.0.
Chapter “Allies” turns the focus around, and we unpack the politics of
settler allyship with Indigenous political movements on social media.
Understanding ‘ally’ as a particular political subjectivity, we ask: What
place do non-Indigenous peoples have in Indigenous political movements?
And how is social media now entangled in sustaining settler solidarity with
Indigenous peoples? We illustrate concretely the ways that being an ally to
Indigenous people does not equal being an ally to racial justice, and
explain that the figure of the ‘ally’ is neither straightforward nor unequiv-
ocally good. Drawing on both impromptu online discussions and semi-
structured interviews with non-Indigenous allies, we then analyse two
major roles that social media now play in ally politics: first, as a space in
which Indigenous people themselves critically debate what constitutes an
‘ally’ and what role allies (might) play in Indigenous political movements;
and, second, as a platform through which non-Indigenous people might
attempt to effect forms of allyship.
Finally, to conclude, in chapter “Futures” we reflect on implications
social media have for Indigenous futures. We ask: What futures do they
open for Indigenous people, and which do they foreclose? How are
Indigenous people already imagining and practicing other futures through
social media? And how might they be used to actually realise Indigenous
futures unconstrained by settler logics? First, we discuss the politics of
Indigenous futures in settler society—which, to anticipate the point, are
necessarily non-existent. We then turn to recent developments in what
Anishinaabe scholar Grace Dillon (2012) calls ‘Indigenous Futurisms’.
While mainly an aesthetic movement, Indigenous Futurisms emerge at the
intersection of Indigenous creative expression and Indigenous imagina-

tions of possible other worlds, which exist outside or beyond settler poli-
tics. We seek to build on Dillon’s work by expanding understandings of
what actually constitutes Indigenous Futurisms. While scholarship so far
has largely focused on the artistic forms of sci-fi, speculative fiction and the
visual arts, we argue that futures are also always embedded within every-
day articulations of Indigeneity—of desire, community, love, hope and
fun. To illustrate this point, we then look back through the chapters of this
book, drawing out moments in which present moments opened other
possible futures: in sustaining news forms and expressions of Indigeneity,
in producing new ways of being together, and in imagining entirely
new worlds.
Lastly, before we continue, a note on terminology: throughout this
book, we use a wide variety of different terms to refer to Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. Modes of self-identification are
constantly shifting (see Carlson et al. 2014; Roberts et al. 2021), and
there is often a contentious politics around the nomenclature used to
describe, identify or categorise Indigenous peoples (which is something
we will discuss throughout this book). Most often, we use the term
‘Indigenous’ to encompass both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people generally (and even sometimes to refer to Indigenous people glob-
ally). When we are referring specifically to either Aboriginal or Torres
Strait Islander peoples, we will use these terms. Where possible, however,
we have attempted to use the most specific term possible—this might
include terms like ‘Koori’, which is a term that encompasses many
Aboriginal people from the states of New South Wales and Victoria, or
even more specific terms such as ‘Dharug’, ‘Arrernte’ and ‘Wiradjuri’,
which identify the specific nations and clan groups with which people
identify. Indigenous people identify themselves in a huge variety of ways,
and the people we spoke to regularly described themselves more generally
as ‘Indigenous’, by their specific nation or clan affiliation, or even by the
region in which they live. In each case, we have sought to follow and
respect the participants’ own mode of identification, and this is reflected
through the differential participant attributions we have included through-
out this book. Additionally, we have also included more colloquial terms
that many Indigenous people regularly use to refer to themselves and their
communities, such as blackfulla/blakfulla (and other spelling variants),
black/blak, and mob.
Notes
1. A Confirmation of Aboriginality is a certificate that acknowledges that you
are known to your community as an Aboriginal person. A Confirmation can
be asked of you when applying for Indigenous-specific services or programs.
It is a quasi-legal document that is signed by representatives of the commu-
nity and includes a common-seal by an Aboriginal organisation. See Carlson
(2016) for a more detailed account.
2. Aboriginal Land Councils are organisations that represent Aboriginal affairs
at state or territory level. They are generally regionally based and were
formed with the intention of providing a body to represent Aboriginal peo-
ple within the region.
3. When explaining his new role to friends and family, Ryan would regularly be
asked: “Do Indigenous people even use Facebook?”
4. Each of these projects abided by and embodied Indigenous and university
ethical guidelines. They were approved by university ethics committees:
IN13010036, The University of Wollongong, HE13/32; IN160100049,
Macquarie University, 5201700667; INED200100010, Macquarie
University, 52020664615936.
5. For more details about this survey, and more results from it, see Carlson and
Frazer (2018a, 2020).
References
Arias, A. (2019). Indigenous Interfaces: Spaces, Technology, and Social Networks in
Mexico and Central America. University of Arizona Press.
Attwood, B. & Markus, A. 1997, The 1967 Referendum or when Aborigines
didn’t get the vote, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Studies, Canberra.
Brock, A. Jr. (2020). Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures,
New York University Press, New York.
Carlson, B. (2016). The Politics of Identity: Who Counts as Aboriginal today?.
Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.
Carlson, B. (2013). ‘The ‘new frontier’: Emergent Indigenous identities and social
media’ in Harris, M., Nakata, M. & Carlson, B. (Eds.), The Politics of Identity:
Emerging Indigeneity, University of Technology Sydney E-Press, Sydney.
Carlson, B., Berglund, J., Harris, M., & Poata-Smith, E. S. (2014). Four scholars
speak to navigating the complexities of naming in Indigenous studies. The
Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 43(1), 58–72.
Carlson, B. & Frazer, R. (2015). ‘It’s like going to a cemetery and lighting a
candle’: Aboriginal Australians, Sorry Business and social media, AlterNative:
An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 11(3), 211–224.
Carlson, B. & Frazer, R. (2016). ‘Indigenous activism and social media: The
global response to #SOSBLAKAUSTRALIA’. In McCosker, A., Vivienne, S.,
& Johns, A. (Eds.), Rethinking Digital Citizenship: Control, Contest and
Culture, Rowman and Littlefield International: England, pp. 115–130.
Carlson, B. and Frazer, R. (2018a). ‘Social Media Mob: Being Indigenous Online’,
Macquarie University, Sydney.
Carlson, B. and Frazer, R. (2018b). ‘Cyberbullying and Indigenous Youth: A
Review of the Literature’, Commissioned by the Aboriginal Health and Medical
Research Council of NSW, Macquarie University, Sydney.
Carlson, B., & Frazer, R. (2020). The politics of (dis) trust in Indigenous help-
seeking. in S. Maddison & S. Nakata (eds), Questioning Indigenous-Settler
Relations. Springer: 87–106.
Carlson, B. & Frazer, R. (2021). Attending to Difference in Indigenous People’s
Experiences of Cyberbullying: Towards a Research Agenda, in J. Bailey,
A. Flynn, & N. Henry (eds), The Emerald International Handbook of Technology-
Facilitated Violence and Abuse. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Dillon, G. (2012). Walking The Clouds: An Anthology Of Indigenous Science
Fiction. University of Arizona Press.
Henderson-Yates, L. and Oxenham, D. (2010). Introduction, The Australian
Journal of Indigenous Education, vol. 39, supplement, iv–viii.
Idekofer-O’Sullivan, S. (now O’Sullivan) (1995). ‘Geta.new@dress: Artists inhab-
iting cyberspace’. Object: Craft Council of NSW publication, Issue 1.
Kozinets, R. V. (2019). Netnography: The essential guide to qualitative social media
research. Sage.
Lumby, B. (2010). ‘Cyber-Indigeneity: Urban Indigenous identity on FaceBook’,
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, vol. 39, supplement, 68–75.
Moreno, M. A., Goniu, N., Moreno, P. S., & Diekema, D. (2013). Ethics of social
media research: common concerns and practical considerations. Cyberpsychology,
behavior, and social networking, 16(9), 708–713.
Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). The White Possessive: Property, Power, and
Indigenous Sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press.
Nakata, M. N. (2007). Disciplining the savages, savaging the disciplines. Aboriginal
Studies Press, Canberra.
Nelson, A. (2002). Introduction: Future Texts, Social Texts, 71(20.2), 1–15.
Ormond-Parker, L., Corn, A. D. S., Obata, K., & O’Sullivan, S. (Eds.). (2013).
Information technology and indigenous communities. Canberra, ACT: AIATSIS
Research Publications.
Roberts, Z., Carlson, B., O’Sullivan, S., Day, M., Rey, J., Kennedy, T., Bakic, T.,
& Farrell, A. (2021). A guide to writing and speaking about Indigenous People
in Australia. Macquarie University.
Tuck, E., & Gaztambide-Fernández, R. A. (2013). Curriculum, Replacement, and

Settler Futurity. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 29(1), 72–89.
Williams, M. L., Burnap, P., Sloan, L., Jessop, C., & Lepps, H. (2017). Users’
views of ethics in social media research: Informed consent, anonymity, and
harm. In The ethics of online research. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of
Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520
601056240
Identity
Assimilation means that the Aborigines must lose their identity, cease to be
themselves, become as we are. [But] suppose they do not know how to
cease being themselves? (W.E.H. Stanner 1958, cited in 1979, 50)
“Are you full blood Aboriginal?”

“Yeah my dads Ernie Dingo and my mum is a roll of Devon
“[laughing emojis].” (Post shared on a closed Aboriginal Facebook
page, 2020)
1 Introduction: The Identity of Bruce Pascoe

In 2014, historian Bruce Pascoe published a book called Dark Emu. It
directly challenged the deeply embedded settler narrative that, pre-
colonisation, all Aboriginal peoples were hunter-gatherers. Instead, it
detailed a wide range of sophisticated agriculture, engineering and build-
ing practices by Aboriginal people prior to the arrival of the British, and
which continued for some time after their arrival—small villages of stone
buildings, advanced fishing technologies, the widespread cultivation of
crops, including native grains for bread. The evidence contained in
Pascoe’s book, which draws exclusively on documents produced by early
settlers, challenges much of the justification used for the unlawful claiming
of the continent as terra nullius and the long-held belief by many settlers
that Aboriginal people somehow just wandered aimlessly around an empty
land until their arrival.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 21

Switzerland AG 2021
B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_2
As the book gained popularity and Pascoe’s complication of the ‘hunter-

gatherer’ Indigenous identity gradually became accepted as fact, it began
attracting increasingly frenzied criticism from conservative commentators.
As we discuss further in chapter “Histories”, to challenge the founding
myth of terra nullius is, for many Australians, still a great offence. But
Pascoe was guilty of yet another particularly egregious crime: he claimed
to be Indigenous. And so as sallies on Pascoe’s scholarly rigour invariably
floundered, his claim to Indigeneity became the focus of attack.
The accusations intensified in early 2020 when Pascoe found himself
the subject of an investigation for identity fraud. Indigenous business-
woman Josephine Cashman had alleged that Pascoe was financially bene-
fiting from falsely claiming to be Aboriginal and requested that Home
Affairs Minister Peter Dutton make inquiries. In a remarkable move,
Dutton actually referred the allegation to the Australian Federal Police,
who promptly determined there had been no offence committed. Dutton
maintained the referral was merely standard practice, and no reflection of
his personal views.
Among her many posts from the time, Cashman tweeted:
[Pascoe] disrespects elders, stole their identity & made our kids feel ashamed
of their proud hunter-gatherer history. He is privileged but took advantage
of $allocated to impoverished Aboriginal ppl by the generous Australian
taxpayer. He plays the victim & you’re continuing his abuse. (@
Josieamycashman, June 3rd 2020)
The case of Bruce Pascoe caused much consternation among Indigenous

groups. Pascoe had apparently claimed to be of Tasmanian, Boonwurrung
and Yuin descent (Fryer and Perry 2020). But Michael Mansell, chair of
the Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Council, publicly stated that Pascoe is not
a Tasmanian Aboriginal person; likewise, Jason Briggs the chairperson of
the Boonwurrung Land and Sea Council, also denied that Pascoe is a
descendent of their community (Topsfield 2020). The debate around
Pascoe’s Indigeneity spilled over into social media, where it raged for
months (see Latimore 2020). “Bruce Pascoe is not Aboriginal full stop –
he is a gammon fulla”,1 one person tweeted; another posted “Pascoe is a
Professional bullshit artist”.
But Pascoe also found much more welcoming figures—both in com-
munity and on social media. The issue of identity is often precarious for
Indigenous people, especially those of mixed descent, whose ties to
IDENTITY 23
community are often more difficult to recover from the wreckage left by
settler colonisation (Carlson 2016). Aboriginal scholar Marcia Langton
commented: “We all know that it is very difficult for some Aboriginal
people to prove comprehensively they are Aboriginal because of lack of
records, because of members of the family lying, because of shame about
having Aboriginal ancestry, because of the hatred of Aboriginal people”
(Langton, cited in Fryer and Perry 2020). Yuin Elders Uncle Ozzie
Cruise, Uncle Max Harrison and Uncle Noel Butler all stated publicly that
Pascoe is a Yuin man. If ‘community recognition’ is an important factor in
the claim to Indigenous identity, as outlined in the national definition of
Aboriginality, then it seems indisputable that Pascoe should be accepted as
Aboriginal. This view was also affirmed online. One person tweeted,
“[Indigeneity] is about who claims you”. Gamillaroi and Torres Strait
Islander writer and actor Nakkiah Lui also tweeted:
Bruce Pascoe is Aboriginal and his Aboriginal community has confirmed

that. Surely at some stage this constant criticism (that has a very political
agenda) becomes defamation. (Nakkiah Lui, Tweeted Jan 28, 2020)
In this chapter, we unpack one of the most heated and controversial

debates in contemporary Indigenous politics as it increasingly plays out on
social media—that is, the question of ‘who counts’ as Indigenous. We ask:
How is social media entangled in the claiming, challenging and changing
of Indigenous identity? In the next section, we unpack the political history
of Indigenous identity in Australia, grounding it within broader questions
of Indigenous sovereignty and the settler project of Indigenous elimina-
tion. Next, we trace how these debates have persisted within contempo-
rary politics, particularly around the contested figure of the ‘light-skinned’
Indigenous person. In the three sections that follow, we explore how these
politics are now playing out online, through (re)claiming of Indigenous
identity, calling Indigeneity into question and playing with settler stereo-
types—which we describe as the decolonising strategy of ‘taking the piss’.
2 Legislating Indigenous Identity

The debate around Bruce Pascoe’s claim to Indigeneity cannot be under-
stood without some understanding of this historical policy and regulatory
context that governed Aboriginal people across the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries. Indigenous people’s identities have always been an anxious
obsession of settlers. From the moment of invasion, settlers sought to

define, categorise and contain what it means to be Indigenous (Carlson
2016). Despite there being hundreds of highly heterogeneous, indepen-
dent and autonomous nations of Indigenous people across the continent,
the first inhabitants of Australia were identified by British invaders using a
single all-encompassing term: ‘the Aborigines’.
The invaders brought with them not only convicts and troops, but also
very specific sets of ideas about race and human evolution. Drawing on
Enlightenment thinking and ideas from Social Darwinism, Indigenous
people were invariably understood as inferior, positioned low on the
‘Great Chain of Being’; white people, on the other hand, quite conve-
niently occupied a spot just below God and the angels. Settler anthropolo-
gists sought to document this ‘inferior’ and, therefore, ‘doomed race’,
writing papers and books about who Indigenous people were (Nakata
2007). They were remnants of ‘original man’, they were ‘primitive natives’
and ‘wandering savages’ (Turner 1904, cited in Attwood and Markus
1997, 1). These ideas were held not only by researchers, but were widely
popular, reproduced readily by politicians, media and the broader popula-
tion alike. They justified the treatment of Indigenous people, and justified
the taking of their land and resources.
Through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the issue of
Aboriginal identity became an increasing concern for state and national
policy. While ‘full-blooded’ Aboriginal people—supposedly ‘inferior’ in
every way to white settlers—were expected to ‘naturally’ die out, the
growing population of ‘part-Aboriginal’ people became subject to increas-
ing anxiety. As more and more people were born with Aboriginal and
European heritage, the previously clear separation between who counted
as ‘Aboriginal’ and who did not became progressively blurred.
To rectify this, administrators and legislators increasingly relied upon
‘blood quantum’ models, with ‘preponderance of blood’ tests becoming
the primary method through which to determine Indigeneity. The blood
quantum was first introduced in New South Wales legislation in 1839,
which defined the ‘full-blood’ and ‘half-caste’ Aborigine, before spreading
across all other states and territories. More complex and increasingly finely
graded categories of blood admixtures were legislated over time, including
the quarter (quadroon), eighth (octoroon), and even three-, five- and
seven-eighths in some places (see Reay 1951). As John McCorquodale
(1997, 29) argues, it was through this classification system that a “new
IDENTITY 25
species of legal creature was created and sustained as a separate class, sub-
ject to separate laws and separately administered”.
These convoluted, often contradictory categories of identity were
enforced through major pieces of legislation, such as the 1869 Aboriginal
Protection Act, the 1886 half-Caste Acts and the 1905 Aborigines Act,
which variously sought to segregate, ‘protect’ and assimilate Indigenous
populations. In 1937, at the Initial Conference of Commonwealth and
State Aboriginal Authorities, assimilation of ‘part-Aboriginal’ people
became formal policy at a national level.
[T]his conference believes that the destiny of the natives of aboriginal ori-
gin, but not of the full blood, lies in their ultimate absorption by the people
of the Commonwealth, and it therefore recommends that all efforts be
directed to that end. (quoted in Reynolds 1972, 172)
And indeed, concerted effort was put towards this end. The Western
Australian Chief Protector, A.O. Neville, for instance, developed a detailed
plan to assimilate Aboriginal people into the broader Australian society.
The explicit goal was to ‘breed out’ the skin colour from Aboriginal peo-
ple to reach the goal of a White Australia (Carlson 2016). Those deemed
‘full blood’ would, it was hoped, die out; those identified as ‘half-castes’
would be removed and institutionalised away from families. Controlling
marriages among ‘half-castes’, particularly women, and ‘encouraging’
intermarriage with the lower classes of white men was also part of the
strategy. In this way, it would be possible, according to Neville, “to merge
them into our white community and eventually forget that there were ever
any Aborigines in Australia” (Neville 1937, cited in Manne 2004, 219).
The goal, in Neville’s words, was “to breed white natives” (Neville 1947,
75, cited in Alber 2016, 295).
This concerted, but generally ad hoc approach to Indigenous absorp-
tion, assimilation and erasure led to a mess of legislation around ‘who
counted’ as Aboriginal. In his history of Indigenous policy, McCorquodale
(1986, 1997) identifies 67 different definitions of Aboriginality across 700
pieces of legislation. In different times and places, ‘part Aboriginal’ people
were often considered not Aboriginal but also, importantly, not white; and
very often, one Act would categorise a person as Aboriginal, and yet
another would categorise them as not-Aboriginal. Historian Peter Read
(1998, 170) describes this increasing mess a “practice of [Aboriginal]
extinction by legislation”. He argues that the confusions and
contradictions produced through this sprawling array of policy aimed at

defining and containing Indigenous people was neither an accident nor a
sign of incompetence, but an intentional programme designed “to puzzle,
divide, and ultimately cause to vanish, the Indigenous people who contin-
ued to pose a problem by their unwillingness to disappear” (Read
1998, 170).
By defining who Indigenous people were, who ‘counted’ as Indigenous
and who did not, settlers could both justify and efficaciously enact centu-
ries of deleterious policy. These policies had immediate, material and rela-
tional effects, leading to the separation of Indigenous people from their
families, communities and sovereign lands. On the other hand, however,
they also denied the right of Indigenous people to negotiate, determine
and articulate their own identity—they couldn’t just freely choose to ‘be’
Indigenous; their identities were always determined from outside. This
containment and erasure of Indigeneity is what colonial scholar Patrick
Wolfe (2006, 388) describes as the ‘settler logic of Indigenous elimina-
tion’, which involves first “the summary liquidation of Indigenous peo-
ple”, through both violence and ontological erasure, combined with the
establishment of “a new colonial society on the expropriated land base”.
3 Self-Determination: To Determine One’s Self

While ontological questions of ‘identity’ are always historically grounded,
and Western debates around one’s “individual psychology of the Self”
(Lemert 2019, 25) are relatively recent developments, Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people have always had their own systems of knowl-
edge that established their subjectivities in terms of their relationships to
other humans, more-than-humans and to Country. As Durrumbal, Killilli
and Yidinji social worker Tileah Drahm-Butler (2015) writes, “identity is
our strong story”. It is not uncommon for Indigenous people to establish
a connection with each other by asking about such relationships. Kalkadoon
and Bandjin narrative practitioner Justin Butler explains that “This telling
of our identity goes back into distant history, before colonisation” (2017,
23). Colonisation has certainly impacted Indigenous relationality, and
determining who is Indigenous in the aftermath of so many violent colo-
nial policies and practices—such as those set out above—has at times been
a difficult, if not insurmountable, task.
In the post-war era, however, Australia’s explicit assimilationist policies
became increasingly untenable. Instead, the moral tide seemed to be
IDENTITY 27
somewhat changing, and after decades of Aboriginal organising, activism

and protest—including the Freedom Rides, Wave Hill Walk-Off and
establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy—Indigenous policy began
to enter what was widely described as the ‘self-determination era’. Policies
of assimilation and the corresponding tools for establishing Indigeneity
were gradually dropped in favour of those that handed power to Indigenous
peoples themselves.
To this end, the ‘three-part assessment’ was introduced by government
in 1981 as a means of identifying Indigenous people for the purposes of
administering resources and funding. In the government’s definition, a
person could be accepted as Indigenous if they are “a person of Aboriginal
or Torres Strait Islander descent and who identifies as an Aboriginal or
Torres Strait Islander, and is accepted as such by the community in which
he (she) lives” (Gardiner-Garden 2002–03, 4). Proof of the last require-
ment requires a supporting letter from an Aboriginal or Torres Strait
Islander council or organisation. Colloquially referred to as a ‘Confirmation
of Aboriginality’, the supporting document is generally required in order
to apply for scholarships and to work in ‘identified’ positions and access
services designed specifically for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peo-
ple. It is not a trivial or sentimental document; it is a quasi-legal docu-
ment, which can be and is used to evidence claims of Indigeneity
(Carlson 2016).
This new self-determined framework for establishing Indigenous iden-
tity was imperfectly and inconsistently realised in practice. While most of
those who seek a formal Confirmation of Aboriginality document already
identify and already know their family lineages, the issue of being recog-
nised and accepted “by the community in which he/she lives” can provide
a stumbling block given the diasporic history of many Indigenous com-
munities (Carlson 2016; Fredericks 2013). As Aboriginal psychologist Dr.
Tracy Westerman recently explained on Twitter, “all I see is the collateral
damage created 4 indigenous people who as a direct result of assimilation
policies cannot “prove” connection. It is so retraumatising” (15 Jan 2020).
Moreover, considering the Indigenous community is tasked with con-
firming claims of Indigeneity, one would assume that there is a consensus
on what constitutes ‘the community’. But as we discuss in more detail in
chapter “Community”, the notion of ‘community’ in relation to Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples is complex. Kamilaroi/Uralarai
researcher Frances Peters-Little suggests that past government policies,
such as segregation and assimilation, and community organisations have
been largely “shaping ‘who’ and ‘what’ constitutes an Aboriginal commu-

nity” (2004, 198). While throughout colonial history new Indigenous
communities emerged through enforced relocation and dislocation from
ancestral Country, the axiom ‘the Indigenous community’ has only
become entrenched in popular discourse since the 1970s to streamline
government funding to Indigenous people. The often-absurd conse-
quences for seeking confirmation of Aboriginality by community was
highlighted in the case of Dallas Scott, who had clear Aboriginal heritage
and openly identified as Aboriginal all his life—only to be rejected when
he applied for a Confirmation (Overington 2012). This issue is further
compounded by the fact that the working definition does not specify from
which ‘community’ one needs to gain acceptance; and indeed, it doesn’t
even specify that it must be an Indigenous community at all.
4 Contemporary Debates: ‘What Defines

an Aboriginal?’
Identity disputes have far from disappeared in the so-called self-

determination era (Noble 1996; Huggins 2003; Paradies 2006; Lamb
2007; Heiss 2007; Bond 2007; Ganter 2008; Gorringe et al. 2011;
Carlson 2016). In 2011, for instance, the NSW Aboriginal Education
Consultative Group (AECG) published a report after becoming “increas-
ingly concerned about the increased level of community concern regard-
ing issues of Aboriginal identity” (2011, 9). The report states that, “the
issue of Aboriginality and identity is one of the most critical issues in con-
temporary Aboriginal affairs” and it notes the “growing community con-
cern and uncertainty about who is and who is not Aboriginal and how
Aboriginality is defined and determined” (AECG 2011, 5).
The three-pronged definition has also not been happily accepted by
settlers who dispute the claims of some Indigenous people to Indigeneity,
often by drawing on their own stereotypical views of what an Indigenous
person ‘should’ look like and act like (Fforde et al. 2013). Indeed, there
are some public figures who seem to have built their political and media
careers on challenging Indigenous people’s identities. One Nation leader
Pauline Hanson and right-wing media commentator Andrew Bolt are two
particularly prominent examples: Hanson, throughout her political career,
in an effort to sow political division, has repeatedly asserted that Aboriginal
people receive more financial benefits than other Australians. She was
IDENTITY 29
interviewed in 2016 by Bolt on his programme, the ‘Bolt Report’, to dis-

cuss the ‘problem’ of Indigenous identity. Hanson, apparently unaware of
the well-established three-part assessment, rhetorically asked: “What
defines an Aboriginal?” Her claim was that there is no definition, the
implication being that anyone can claim to be Aboriginal.
Bolt himself has a history of disputing Indigenous people’s identity. In
2009, he published a series of columns targeting Indigenous people in
regard to their identities. In one article, titled ‘White is the New Black’
(2009), he objected to successful ‘light-skinned’ Aboriginal people ‘choos-
ing’ to be Aboriginal when they could have, according to him, chosen any
one of a number of non-Aboriginal heritages. Bolt was implying that there
are people of Aboriginal descent who should not count as Aboriginal or be
able to claim to be Aboriginal. At the heart of his allegations was the logic
that such ‘choices’ were motivated by, or at least conveniently embraced
because of, an ensuing professional elevation that would not otherwise
have been accorded on talent alone. Nine of those targeted by Bolt
brought a case against him under the Racial Discrimination Act (1975)
and he was found guilty.
Interestingly, both Bolt and Hanson have made public assertions that
they are ‘Indigenous’—each claiming that they were born in Australia and
are therefore ‘Indigenous’ to the land. In 2019, Hanson confronted a
group of young Indigenous women, telling them, “I’m Indigenous, I was
born here, I’m native to the land. So, you know, I’m Australian as well,
and I’m Indigenous”. Tuck and Yang (2012) identify the widespread set-
tler desire to ‘become Indigenous’, and thereby claim a legitimate connec-
tion to the stolen land they occupy. Hanson continued to pester the young
women. “Do you know the word Indigenous? It means native to the land,
I was born here”, she said. In what quickly became a laughable moment
for Indigenous people on social media, Hanson then asked, “Where’s my
land if not Australia?”, to which one of the young women responded by
telling Hanson that her land was, “um, England”.
In what has become a ritual for members of the One Nation political
party, Mark Latham also made news headlines after he too joined their
bandwagon and raised questions about Indigenous identity. Similar to
Hanson, he claims:
Australians are sick and tired of seeing people with blonde hair and blue eyes
declaring themselves to be Indigenous, when clearly, they have no recogni-
sable Aboriginal background and are doing it solely to qualify for extra
money. (Latham cited in Han 2019, np)
Latham’s assertions centre on the idea that Indigenous people receive

funding or extra funding not available to other Australians because they
claim to be Indigenous. Reverting back to ‘preponderance of blood’ tests,
One Nation stated they would “tighten the eligibility rules for Aboriginal
identity to require DNA evidence of at least 25 per cent indigenous (the
equivalent of one fully Aboriginal grandparent)”. Like Bolt, Latham’s
logic lies in the argument that if you don’t ‘look’ Aboriginal, you should
want to aspire to be ‘Australian’, as opposed to being Indigenous—an
argument that would have received support from the notorious ‘Chief
Protector’ and enthusiastic assimilationist A.O. Neville.
4.1
Contested Performances of Indigeneity Online
blak people should never stop taking selfies and they should always unasham-
edly share them to the world. It was not long ago that our portraits were
only taken as a means to record what they thought was our demise. They
also, took our photos to study us, as an attempt to provide evidence of their
argument that we were to inferior to the white race. We need to celebrate
and document us FOR US, it’s important. (Posted on Facebook, Jan 15th
2020, by Gabi Briggs)
Evidently, questions of ‘who counts’ as Indigenous are as contentious as

ever. Settler anxiety around Indigenous people’s identity, particularly
those with mixed heritage, continues to bear out in public, political and
private discourse—both offline and online. While only our first major
research project specifically focused on questions of identity, in almost all
interviews and surveys we conducted over the last 8 years, identity was
always raised as a topic of importance in Indigenous people’s digital lives.
As Anaiwan and Gumbangier artist Gabi Briggs suggests above, one can-
not just ‘be’ Indigenous online; instead, asserting Indigenous identity
online is inherently, invariably a political act, entangled in much longer
histories of settler colonialism.
This is not what was initially expected from digital life. Early tech
visionaries believed that the internet would provide a ‘disembodied’ space
where subjects could freely shift and change and experiment with their
identities (Bell and Kennedy 2000; McCormick and Leonard 1996). This
IDENTITY 31
fracturing of identity was succinctly captured in a cartoon by artist Peter

Steiner published in a 1993 issue of The New Yorker, which features a dog
sitting at a computer telling his canine companion that “on the internet
nobody knows you are a dog” (Sardá et al. 2019, 558). To some extent,
this vision has been fulfilled—the anonymity, or pseudonymity, of the
internet has created many opportunities for both escaping and playing
with identities.
For many Indigenous people, however, this online playfulness has never
been realised. In the rare early studies that focused on Indigenous people
and the internet, it was clear that Indigenous people did not ‘stop’ being
Indigenous just because they were online. In his study of Inuit identities
online, for instance, Neil Christensen (2003, 23) found Inuit “are gener-
ally embedding offline life into cyberspace”. “The Internet is not necessar-
ily a space to hide in”, he observed, “nor is it a space that mysteriously
filters away the cultural identity of people” (2003, 23). Likewise, our own
research clearly demonstrates that Indigenous people embody rather than
disembody their identity when interacting online and particularly on
social media.
For the remainder of this chapter, we aim to unpack this establishing,
challenging and asserting of Indigeneity as it plays out online. We ask:
What happens when someone claims Indigeneity on social media? First,
we discuss how social media has become an important space through
which Indigenous people perform, express and establish their Indigeneity.
Second, we look at how Indigeneity is being challenged online, particu-
larly for those with mixed ancestry and light skin. And finally, we close by
exploring how social media offers a space in which Indigenous people can
‘play’ with identity, draw on and mock stereotypes, and in the process
reaffirm their own collective sense of identity.
5 Embodying Indigeneity Online

I (and I cannot stress this enough) am proud to be Aboriginal. (Twitter,
August 2020)
5.1 Laying Claim to Indigeneity

There are a range of highly recognisable symbols consistently deployed to
claim membership to the Indigenous community. None are more recogni-
sable than the Aboriginal flag, designed in 1971 by Luritja artist Harold
Thomas. From the moment social media was introduced to Australia,

Aboriginal people have used different characters and colours to approxi-
mate the Aboriginal flag online—such as the emoticon [−o-], by including
a sequence of black, yellow and red emojis, or by putting a filter on their
profile picture. As one interview participant explained, in order to express
their identity, “At different times, I might change my photo to have an
Aboriginal flag or Aboriginal style” (Female, 30s, Sydney). It wasn’t until
as late as 2017 that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags them-
selves were formally added to Twitter’s emoji library—the release corre-
sponding with the week that hundreds of Aboriginal leaders gathered at
Uluru to call for a roadmap to treaty, constitutional recognition, and an
Indigenous voice to parliament, in what became known as the Uluru
Statement from the Heart. While the two tiny illustrations might seem to
pale in significance to the Statement, they are nonetheless part of the same
political programme of claiming Indigenous identity and, ultimately,
sovereignty.
From the early days of social media, Aboriginal people have publicly
expressed their pride in being Aboriginal. Way back in 2013, for instance,
Gamilaroi man and founder of IndigenousX Luke Pearson tweeted:
There is a FB [Facebook] page called “I am proud to be Aboriginal” that

has over 10 k likes – take that, FB trolls: -) (@IndigenousXLtd, posted, 29
May 2013).
This forthright pride in identity, directly challenging the project of

colonial elimination, is seen frequently in many social media profiles and
Twitter handles, particularly those of Aboriginal public figures, scholars
and activists. For instance, community organiser for ‘Warriors of the
Aboriginal Resistance’ (WAR), Tarneen Onus Williams’s Twitter handle
is, “assigned blak at birth” and Yuin scholar Marlene Longbottom’s is
“Hon member of the Far Black”. The political nature of claiming
Indigeneity online is not contained only to those who explicitly identify as
Indigenous activists. As one person we spoke to explained, “In my descrip-
tion on Twitter and Instagram I specifically state that I am an Aboriginal
woman” (Female, 20s, Penrith). And as one survey respondent explained,
“My Aboriginality is the focal point of my identity both in society and
online. Specifically on Facebook, my photos and page and friends all high-
light my Aboriginality” (Male, 18–24, Redfern). Another person we
talked to explained: “Whenever someone asks me what nationality I am
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Het huwelijk werd kerkelijk ingezegend. Evenals bij dat, tusschen
Van Velton en Louise indertijd, was onder hen, die bij de plechtigheid
tegenwoordig waren, slechts een enkele, die, zooals men het
noemde, aan religie „deed.”
Iedereen leefde het leven „zoo maar.” Men was het er over eens, dat
er een godsdienst m o e s t zijn, en als er een [147]dominee of een
pastoor kwam met een inteekenlijst voor een weeshuis of eenig
ander liefdadig doel, of zelfs voor verbeteringen in een kerkgebouw,
dan teekende men in met genoegen en soms voor aanzienlijke
bedragen. Maar overigens hield men er zich niet mee op. Doch bij
geboorten, huwelijken en sterfgevallen voelde men aan de
godsdienstige instellingen groote behoefte. Van Velton zou ’t niet
kerkelijk inzegenen van een huwelijk in zijn familie ploertig gevonden
hebben; het had op hem denzelfden indruk gemaakt als iemand, die
in zijn hemdsmouwen een receptie bezocht. Thuis werd er nooit van
godsdienst gesproken, en hij wist niet eens of zijn kinderen in
Holland hun belijdenis hadden gedaan, wat hem ook volstrekt niet
interesseerde,—maar gedoopt waren ze, en ook zijn jongste kind. Al
had hij het water in stopflesschen uit Nova Zembla moeten laten
komen,—gedoopt zou er zijn geworden. Een h e i d e n , foei! En een
begrafenis zou er, onverschillig van welk gehalte de doode was, ook
nimmer in z i j n familie zijn gehouden, zonder dat aan het geopend
graf een stichtelijk woord was gesproken. Dat was a d a t .
Veel heeren en dames woonden de plechtigheid bij.
Hortense zag er uit als een gelukkige bruid, dus dubbel schoon, en
aan Fournier was niets bijzonders op te merken.
De waarheid was, dat hij de f l a i r had gekregen van het „iets”,

waarop Louise doelde, en dat ze niet onder woorden kon brengen,
toen ze Van Velton zeide, dat het voldoende was om Hortense voor
een zuur-bier toekomst te vrijwaren. Inderdaad schaamde hij zich
half en half voor zichzelven om de s o o r t van genegenheid, welke
hij het meisje toedroeg.
Het was zoo volkomen in strijd met zijn begrippen. Maar [148]’t
scheen wel, dat alles wat hem in eenige verhouding deed staan tot
die familie, lijnrecht in tegenspraak moest wezen met zijn opvoeding
en zijn denkbeelden.
Mevrouw Van Velton-Van der Linden was in het zwart gekleed

zonder eenig sieraad.
Het was, vonden de aanwezige dames, een eenvoud om van te

schrikken.
„’t Is alsof ze in den rouw is,” meende de een.
„Ze heeft n i e t s aan,” zei een ander, altijd doelende op de sieraden.

„Het is alleen ijdelheid.”
„Ze ziet er slecht uit.”
„Nietwaar? En dat voor zoo’n jong vrouwtje. Hoe oud schat je haar?”
„Och oud! Ik heb haar nog gekend met haar schooljurkje aan! Ze kan
hoogstens twee, drie en twintig jaren wezen.”
„Ze kon best voor tien jaren ouder doorgaan.”
„Op zijn minst. Toen het dochtertje van Van Velton hier pas kwam,
stak ze heel ongunstig af bij haar mooie stiefmoeder.”
„Nu, dat is thans heel anders.”
„Ja. ’t Is wezenlijk een ander meisje geworden, hè? Het witte satijn
en de paarlen staan haar prachtig.”
De dominee sprak en de fluisterende gesprekken werden gestaakt.
De getrouwde dames raakten onder den invloed. Zij herdachten haar
eigen trouwdag; de herinnering kwam sterker en idealiseerde. Haar
vervlogen jeugd en haar verdwenen c h a r m e s daagden op voor
haar geest. En dan het vertrouwen, waarmee ze toen een toekomst
ingingen, die in de werkelijkheid niet altijd aan de verwachtingen had
beantwoord! [149]
Er waren oogen, die zich vulden met tranen. Het was niet om de
woorden van den geestelijke, noch om het bruidje in ’t wit satijn,
noch om den bruigom in zwarten rok,—’t waren weemoedige
herinneringen aan eigen liefs en eigen schoons, aan eigen jongen
levenslust en levenskracht; ’t was een stille hulde aan ’t beeld van
vervlogen illusiën en genoten zaligheid, dat nog zoo heerlijk schoon
bleef, al was het opgegaan en verdwenen in de nevelen van den tijd.
Louise trok haast nog meer de aandacht dan de bruid zelve.

Iedereen viel het op, dat zij er zoo slecht uitzag en zoo verouderd
was.
De dames constateerden het niet zonder S c h a d e n f r e u d e : de

heeren vervielen in beschouwingen over de physische gevolgen van
huwelijken tusschen personen van zeer verschillenden leeftijd.
Van al de personen, die de trouwplechtigheid bijwoonden, was—

Louise niet medegerekend—dokter Van der Linden zeker daar ’t
minst voor zijn genoegen.
Na het gesprek met zijn dochter, waarin zij hem het onbehoorlijk
gedrag van haar man had bekendgemaakt, kwam hij uiterst zelden
ten huize van Van Velton.
En als hij kwam, was het nog slechts, wanneer hij wist dat er
menschen waren. Dan ging hij zijn kleinzoon bezoeken, hield hem in
de achtergalerij een half uurtje op den schoot, verrukte ’t kind door
fraaie stukjes speelgoed en doosjes met lekkernijen,—maar zorgde,
dat hij het niet te lang maakte en hij onder een of ander voorwendsel
vertrok voor de andere gasten heengingen. [150]
Hij had een hekel aan Van Velton gekregen en hij was bang
geworden voor Louise.
’t Frappeerde hem ook dat zij er zoo vervallen uitzag.
Als hij alles goed overwoog, dan was het toch eeuwig jammer dat zij
niet getrouwd was met dien Fournier!
Aan het schitterend diner hield Van Velton een korte, droge speech.
Hortense hoorde het aan zonder eenig spoor van aandoening of van
sympathie op haar gelaat. Zij zou God danken als het was
afgeloopen, want ze was doodmoe van het staan op de receptie en
van de drukte der laatste dagen; zij had slechts één verlangen alleen
te zijn.… dat wil zeggen: alleen met h e m .
Ze zag daar in het minst niet tegen op. Waarom zou ze ook? Hij was
immers de man harer keuze.
En die man zag daar wel tegen op. Hij had niets tegen Hortense wat
haar persoonlijkheid betrof, maar het denkbeeld, dat er in zijn
verhouding tegenover haar een valschheid schuilde van zijn kant,
wilde hem niet verlaten, en elk der woorden, dien dag gesproken en
doelende op die wederzijdsche genegenheid, welke alle
levensstormen tart, hinderde hem; hij wist te goed dat hij niet geven
kon wat van hem werd verwacht, omdat hij het niet bezat.
Geen woord, geen blik was tusschen hem en Louise gewisseld. Zij
was naar het jonge paar toegekomen en had Hortense met bijzonder
groote innigheid gekust; toen had ze hem de hand gereikt, haar
groote oogen hadden hem een oogenblik aangezien zonder glans of
uitdrukking, en met overigens vriendelijk gezicht had ze hem
toegeknikt. Eenigszins verward had hij haar hand gedrukt,—en dat
was alles geweest. [151]
Voorzichtig klopte Van Velton een paar weken later aan de deur van
Louise’s kamer.
„Mag ik binnenkomen?”
„Jawel!”
Zij lag te bed. Ze had in den laatsten tijd erg aan koortsen gesukkeld
en dat had haar schromelijk doen vermageren.
Vóór het bed speelde de kleine, die er gezond en frisch uitzag, maar
bij het binnenkomen van den oorsprong zijns bestaans al even
weinig vreugde betoonde als deze zelf.
„Hoe gaat het?”
„Zoo.”
„De dokter is bij me geweest; hij vindt het noodig dat je voor een
maand of wat naar boven gaat.”
„Hij heeft het me ook gezegd, maar ik heb er weinig lust in.”
„’t Is toch zoo heilzaam.”
„Voor andere gestellen misschien, maar voor het mijne niet. Ik kan
heel goed tegen de kou in Europa, maar niet tegen de kille berglucht
hier op Java; daar krijg ik buikziekte door.”
Een idée vloog hem door het hoofd, dat hem wonderlijk bekoorde.
Europa! Zij keek hem aan, en hij had een gevoel, alsof ze zijn
gedachten las op zijn gezicht.
„Ik wil wèl,” ging ze voort, „voor een of twee jaren naar Holland gaan.
Dat zal goed zijn voor mij en voor ’t kind ook.”
„Wel.… ik heb er niets tegen. Ik zal het den dokter.….”
„’t Is niet noodig, want ik heb hem er al over gesproken. Hij vond het
goed, maar niet n o o d z a k e l i j k , en raadde het [152]niet aan,
omdat hij meende dat het zoo’n derangement voor ons zou zijn.”
„En wanneer zou je dan willen gaan?”
„Hoe eer hoe liever.”
Van Velton kreeg nog een idée.
„Als je papa eens meeging?”
„Dank-je.”
Hij drong er niet op aan, maar schreef een kort briefje aan zijn
schoonvader met de mededeeling van het plan en een bedekte
zinspeling op de wenschelijkheid, dat ze onder geleide reisde. Geen
uur later zat dokter Van der Linden bij zijn dochter.
„En daar heb je me gisteren niets van verteld?”
Hij behandelde haar niet, maar kwam toch elken dag eens naar haar
kijken.
„Het is vanochtend pas opgekomen.”
„Ik heb een plan.”
„En dat is?”

„Ik ga mee.”
„Dank u. Ik ga alleen.”
„Dus,” zei haar vader zeer geraakt, „je wilt van mijn gezelschap niet
gediend zijn?”
„Neen. Ik heb volstrekt geen reden om daarop gesteld te wezen, pa.

Daar hebt u me niet naar behandeld.”
Hij drukte de lippen samen; het deed hem erger aan dan hij wel
wilde bekennen. Om zijn aandoening te verbergen, liep hij met de
handen op den rug ’t vertrek op en neer. Hij had veel willen zeggen,
veel verklaren en toelichten, maar hij was er niet toe in staat.
Daarom nam hij zijn hoed en zei norsch: [153]
„Ik zal morgen wel eens terugkomen om met je te spreken.”
Zijn ontroering had haar getroffen, vooral omdat hij niets had gezegd
wat hem kon verschoonen of dat verwijtend was voor haar.
Hij was toch haar vader, en afgescheiden van die leelijke

geschiedenis, was hij altijd goed voor haar geweest.
Toen ze nog samen woonden en zij nog een meisje was, had hij
haar altijd in alles haar zin gegeven en haar volkomen meesteres
gelaten over huis en goed, zonder ooit rekenschap te vragen van
wat ze deed. Nooit had hij haar iets geweigerd; nooit haar iets
opgedrongen, dat haar onaangenaam was.
Den volgenden dag, toen hij met een ernstig gezicht naast haar
kwam zitten en met zekere plechtigheid begon te zeggen:
„Louise, je hebt me gisteren.…” viel zij hem met een driftig gebaar in
de rede.
„S o e d a h , papa, het was niet goed van me. Ik weet wat u wilt
zeggen. Zwijg er maar over. We gaan samen naar Holland.”
Hij keek haar onderzoekend aan.
Welk een vreemd schepseltje was zij toch!
„Het is goed, Wies. We zullen samen gaan. We hebben thuis samen

altijd een rustig en aangenaam leven geleid. Dat zullen we ginder
ook wel, nu met ons drieën.”
Hij verweet haar niets. Geen hard woord kwam over zijn lippen.
Zeker, ze had een goed en gezellig h o m e gehad bij hem!
Haar zwakheid, na die koortsen, maakte dat de ontroering haar te

sterk werd. Ze lei haar vermagerd gezicht tegen zijn schouder,
zooals ze dikwijls bij hem had gezeten ’s avonds [154]in de
achtergalerij, toen ze nog een kind was, en in stilte vloeiden haar
tranen.
Dokter Van der Linden kon niets zeggen om haar te troosten,

vanwege het iets dat hem in de keel zat; alleen streelde hij haar
rijke, blauwzwarte haren en drukte haar bemoedigend de hand.
„Kom, Wies,” zei hij, toen hij zijn eigen zenuwen weer meester was,
„kom, je moet nu niet daaraan toegeven.”
Met een zucht richtte zij zich op.
„Ach paatje, ik ben zoo ongelukkig!”
„Dat zal wel beter worden. Als je weer geheel hersteld bent en we
hier uit dat vervloekte mooie huis zijn, dan komt alles terecht. Dan
gaan we een heerlijke zeereis maken. Te Napels aan den wal, ’n
reisje door Italië, niet vliegend, maar op ons gemak. Midden in den
zomer komen we in Holland; we blijven er tot den winter. Dan eens
naar Parijs.… A l l o n s , het leven is op die manier nog zoo kwaad
niet; dat zal je meevallen.”
Het fleurde haar wezenlijk op. Glimlachend hoorde ze haar vader

over al ’t genot spreken, dat die reis hun kon verschaffen.
Hij had ’t kind op de knie genomen en liet het paardje rijden, zoodat
het gilde van pret.
„En dan gaan we ’s middags toeren met dit jonge mensch,” lachte hij
tusschen de exercitie door, „en dan kleeden we hem keurig netjes
aan.… en dan gaan we buiten met hem in het gras rollen.… dan
krijgt hij ’n kleur als ’n perzik.…”
Het scheen dat Van Velton de stoomvaartmaatschappij betooverd

had, want ofschoon er op de eerst vertrekkende [155]boot g e e n
plaats was, slaagde hij er toch in plaats gemaakt te krijgen voor zijn
familieleden.
Zijn uiterste best had hij gedaan, en gedurende de dagen, die het
vertrek voorafgingen, was hij zoo extra vriendelijk en dienstvaardig,
dat Louise niet kon nalaten het te appreciëeren, al begreep ze heel
goed uit welke bron dat voortkwam.
Royaal was hij zeker. Zij kon niet spreken van iets, dat ze gaarne
mee zou nemen, of het was er, onverschillig wat het kostte; hij
opende haar een onbeperkt krediet te Amsterdam, wat hij overigens
onbezorgd kon doen, omdat hij wel wist, dat ze er toch nimmer
misbruik van zou maken.
Maar het streelde haar toch, dat hij zulk een onbeperkt vertrouwen in
haar stelde. Hij gaf haar een vrij groote som aan sovereigns mee en
een veel grootere aan wissels,—kortom hij hield zich in dit opzicht
bijzonder kranig, zooals dokter Van der Linden, die daardoor weer
meer was toegenaderd, met een soort van bewondering getuigde.
Op den dag der afreis was Van Velton de affabiliteit en de

toeschietelijkheid zelf, en toen hij met de T j i l i w o n g terugvoer,
wuifde hij nog lang, nadat men daarmede aan boord van den
stoomer had opgehouden, met zijn zakdoek.
Een zucht van verlichting ontsnapte hem toen hij den doek in den
zak stak, zich omkeerde en ging zitten.
Goddank, goddank! Dàt was afgeloopen!
Naast hem zat een bekende, die een jongetje had weggebracht, dat
zijn opvoeding in Europa moest krijgen. Nu en dan veegde hij zich
een traan uit het oog.
„Het is hard, meneer Van Velton, ze te zien vertrekken.”
„Zeg dat wel,” zei deze met een gelegenheidsgezicht. [156]
„Hij is nog zóó jong.”
„Ja, maar zijn moeder en zijn grootvader zijn bij hem.”
„Pardon, hij gaat alleen.”
„Hm?”
„Ik sprak over mijn zoontje.”
„O.… dat verandert. Ik dacht dat u het over mijn kleine had.”
„Ja, het is voor u ook een heele zaak.”
„Welke zaak?”
„Dat mevrouw en ’t kindje zoo naar Europa gaan.”
„O ja! ’t Is verschrikkelijk. Ja, man, dat is erg onaangenaam.”
„Was mevrouw ziek?”
„Ja.”
„Dat kon men haar wel aanzien. Die jongen van me is ’n aardige
kerel. Ziet u, ik had hem graag hier gehouden, maar er gaat niets
boven een opvoeding in Holland.”
„Neen zeker niet.”
„Daarom zei ik tegen mijn vrouw: het m o e t ; het is in zijn eigen

belang. Voor geen geld had ik mijn vrouw mee naar de boot
genomen. Het zou een scène van belang zijn geweest.”
„Zeker, zeker. Neen, dat is heel verstandig van je.”
„Het heeft me ook erg aangegrepen,” ging de geschokte vader voort,

terwijl de tranen hem weer in de oogen kwamen. „Men hecht zoo
aan de kinderen.”
Van Velton was woedend. Hij had het kunnen uitschreeuwen van
pret over het heuglijk feit, dat hij ’t heele zootje zoo netjes en zoo
vlug naar Europa had geëxpediëerd, en daar [157]kwam nu die man
hem aan de ooren leuteren over dien kwajongen!
„Heb je ook nog Mumm in voorraad; van die je laatst hadt?”
„Welzeker. Hoeveel wilt u hebben?”
Van Velton deed een bestelling, welke de ontroerde vader verheugd

in zijn boekje aanteekende; hij kon nog wel wat van „dat goed”
gebruiken voor de schepen, en dan hield dat vervelende mensch zijn
mond over zijn vadersmart.
„Hoe is het toch met die beschadigde factuur, waarvan je me laatst

sprak?”
De afleiding hielp, en zonder verdere aandoenlijkheden, maar

sprekende over zaken, bereikte Van Velton den Boom.
Hij ging dien dag niet naar het kantoor. Het stond vooreerst niet, met
het oog op de verplichte droefheid, en dan, hij wilde genieten van
zijn heerlijk verlaten huis.
Hij liet champagne en havana’s vóórbrengen en liep daarbij op en

neer, alsof hij zijn achterstand in vertoon als baas en meester ineens
wilde bijwerken.
Hortense was niet aan boord geweest; zij was ziek, en er deden zich
bij haar verschijnselen voor, die Van Velton deden vreezen, dat hij
spoedig een gelid verder achteruit zou gaan in de rijen der
menschheid.
Fournier was „voor zaken” op reis; bezoek viel er van dien kant dus
niet te verwachten. Gelukkig! Hij wilde dien heelen dag alleen zijn.
Alleen met zijn groot, prachtig gemeubeld huis, waarin hij nu weer
den staf kon zwaaien; waarin hij geen kindergeschreeuw meer zou
hooren, en niet langer zou blootstaan aan verwoede hatelijkheden
en nijdige [158]gezichten; waar hij weer den moed zou hebben om te
doen en te laten wat hij verkoos.
Toen Louise het gezicht van haar man niet meer kon zien, loosde zij
een zucht van verlichting. Eindelijk zou ze dan van hem ontslagen
raken! Eindelijk zou ze niet langer genoodzaakt zijn die gehate
valsche tronie elken dag te zien!
Zij had niet meegedaan aan de comedie, die bij het afscheid nemen
was gespeeld door Van Velton en den dokter, al had haar vader er
ook op aangedrongen, dat ze, om de wereld te bedriegen, zich
minder onverschillig zou toonen.
Toen hij van boord vertrok, had ze „bonjour!” gezegd op een toon,
zóó minachtend, dat het Van Velton, hoe gewoon aan haar manier
van spreken, en hoe daartegen ook gepantserd, door merg en been
was gegaan, en de dokter een kleur had gekregen, wat wel een
buitengewone beschaamdheid te kennen gaf.
Doch Van der Linden wilde haar den eersten indruk niet bederven
aan boord.
„Zit je daar goed, Wies?” vroeg hij. „Is het daar niet winderig?”
„Neen pa, ik zit hier goed. Ik zou hier nu goed zitten al was het op
naalden, pa. Nooit, nooit heb ik begrepen welk een afschuw ik heb
van dien leelijken kerel!”
„Sst, Louise! Spreek toch zoo hard niet. ’t Is hier zoo gehoorig!”
„’t Kan me niet schelen; ik ben er zóó b o s è n van!”
De reis ging voorspoedig en oefende op de jonge vrouw een

gunstigen invloed uit. [159]
’t Gezelschap der reisgenooten was minder aangenaam. Heeren, die

van den ochtend tot den avond speelden; zieken, die, altijd knorrend,
hun levers lieten repatriëeren; dames, lijdende aan bloedarmoede en
zeeziekte; woelige ondeugende kinderen, waartegen dokter Van der
Linden zijn kleinzoon herhaaldelijk moest beschermen,—dat waren
met eenige officieren, een suikerfabrikant en een paar Engelsche
reizigers voor machinen-fabrieken zoowat de medepassagiers van
Louise.
Maar de heerlijke, zuivere zeelucht deed haar goed. De koorts
verdween, en soms had ze een gevoel, alsof ’t leven opnieuw voor
haar aanving. Dan schenen haar de wolkjes zoo mooi, die aan den
blauwen hemel dreven, de golfjes zoo helder, die spelend
uiteenspatten tegen den wand van ’t schip; dan klonk het klapperen
der zeilen haar zoo vroolijk in de ooren, dan voelde ze dat haar
krachtig gestel de overhand nam en haar gezondheid terugkeerde.
Zij werd aan boord bejegend met een voorkomendheid, die veel
dames ergerde. „Zij betaalden toch net zoo goed haar passage,” als
die dame van ’t Koningsplein te Batavia, maar tegen deze was de
commandant altijd het voorkomendst, en de administrateur ook, en
de hofmeester en de bedienden vlogen voor haar.
Het was waar. Maar ofschoon zij haar passage evengoed betaalden,
hadden die dames geen echtgenooten, die elk jaar duizenden pikols
suiker en koffie met booten der Maatschappij lieten afschepen.
En iedereen moet toch zorgen dat hij in de eerste plaats zijn beste
klanten tot vriend houdt, en dat deden die dames ook, wanneer ze
bijzonder beleefd en gedienstig waren voor [160]de echtgenooten van
heeren, die hooger stonden op de maatschappelijke ladder, dan haar
eigen mannen; maar dat begrepen ze niet.
Er heerschte een groote naijver onder de dames. Louise had dat

opgemerkt, en daarom trok zij zich meer terug. Wat raakten haar die
menschen?
Slechts met een paar families ging ze geregeld om: die van den
gepensioneerden kolonel Van Stralen en van den suikerfabrikant
Beynen. Een jong marine-officier, ook als passagier aan boord,
maakte haar regelmatig het hof, en zóó was ze niet, of ze liet zich
dat met gratie welgevallen.
Ze was immers een mooi vrouwtje; ze wist, dat ze het was, en ze
nam de hulde aan haar persoonlijkheid als iets, dat haar rechtmatig
toekwam.
Zóó zaten ze in een kring op en bij de kap van de kajuit hun kopje
chocolade te slorpen.
„Nu ziet u eens, mevrouw Van Velton,” zei de luitenant ter zee Van
Hoven, „hoe heilzaam de zee is. Den eersten dag aan boord zag u
er bepaald slecht uit, en nu.…”
„Slecht uit, meneer!” riep de kolonel lachend: „dat is wat moois! Ik

vind, dat mevrouw Van Velton er nooit slecht uitzag.”
„Laat den kolonel maar praten, meneer Van Hoven,” zei mevrouw
Beynen. „Hij is vanochtend weer op zijn plaagstoel; hij heeft mij ook
al het hoofd warm gemaakt.”
„Ik wou, dat ik daartoe nog in staat was; maar mijn baard is te grijs,
mevrouwtje.”
„Mevrouw Van Velton weet wel, dat ik „slecht” bedoel in den zin van
ziek,” meende de luitenant. [161]
„Jawel, jawel! De jongelui weten er altijd wel wat op te vinden. Nu, ik

liet het er niet bij, dokter, als ik u was.”
Dokter Van der Linden, behaaglijk in een rotanstoel uitgestrekt, zei,

dat hij ’t hen maar samen liet uitvechten, terwijl hijzelf met een kijker
naar een schip in de verte tuurde, en met Beynen disputeerde over
de gewichtige vraag of het een mee- dan wel een tegenlegger was.
Nieuws had men elkaar niet meer te vertellen. Iedereen had zijn
voorraad geestigheid in de weken, die men tusschen de reelings
bijeen was, uitgeput, ’t Was meest b i t j a r a - k o s o n g , wat men nu
ten beste gaf, en de kleinigheden, die men waarnam, boezemden
levendige belangstelling in.
„Ik heb al driemaal de reis gemaakt,” zei de kolonel, „en altijd heb ik
me voorgenomen mijn tijd nuttig te besteden door een werk te
schrijven over de bewapening van het leger; het is er nooit van
gekomen, en ik zie niet, dat er ook nu iets van komt.”
„Precies zoo ging het mij; ik heb een brochure in het hoofd over de
titrage van suiker en ik had me voorgesteld, die aan boord uit te
werken. Er staat nog geen letter op ’t papier.”
„En,” voegde mevrouw Beynen er bij, „er zal wel niets van komen,
vent.”
Ook de dames verkeerden in ’t zelfde geval, met werkjes, die zij

gedurende de reis van plan waren geweest uit te voeren.
„Brieven schrijven,” meende mevrouw Van Stralen, „dat gaat nog. U

schrijft ook elken dag?” vroeg ze den marine-officier.
„Ja, mevrouw, maar geen brieven.” [162]
„Een boek?” vroeg de kolonel belangstellend.
„Betrekkelijk. Ik houd mijn dagboek bij.”
Dat vond men interessant; iedereen speet het, dat hij of zij het ook
niet deed. Als men dien luitenant zag, dacht men onwillekeurig aan
dat dagboek, en had iedereen wel eens gaarne willen weten, w a t
zoo’n jonge man daar toch wel inschreef.
In den namiddag wandelde Louise met mevrouw Van Stralen op het

dek heen en weer, terwijl mevrouw Beynen zat te praten met den
kolonel.
Dat laatste zag men nogal eens. Wel had de kolonel gezegd dat hij
door zijn grijzen baard volmaakt onschadelijk was, maar dat meende
hij niet, en, voor zoover dat tegenover zijn eigen vrouw kon
geschieden, maakte hij werk van de vrouw van den suikerlord, die er
niets van merkte en wien het ook trouwens niet schelen kon, zoodat
hij er minder op lette. Intusschen keek de kolonel steeds met
vriendelijke blikken naar den gevulden hals en de mollige armen der
suiker-lady, en waagde de oude krijgsman zich in gedachten telkens
op zeer glad ijs.
„Ik zou toch wel eens willen weten,” zei mevrouw Van Stralen, „wat
die Van Hoven alzoo in zijn dagboek schrijft.”
„Is u daar zoo nieuwsgierig naar?”
„Ronduit gezegd, ja.”
„Waarom? Het zal, dunkt me, juist zoowat zijn als andere
dagboeken.”
„Heb je er wel eens een gelezen?”
„Nooit anders dan in boeken.”
„Nu, zie je wel? Dat zijn de ware niet; die maken de romanschrijvers
maar zelf.” [163]
„Ze zullen het, zou ik zeggen, nog mooier doen, dan iemand die
geen schrijver is.”
„Mooier misschien; maar een wezenlijk dagboek is w a a r , en

daarom is het me te doen. En ik vind dien Van Hoven nu juist
iemand om ’n echt dagboek te schrijven.”
„O, hij is een zeer ontwikkeld mensch.”

„Juist. En me dunkt, hij heeft zoo’n goed oordeel.”
„Maar wat woudt u dan toch eigenlijk weten?”
„Wat ik weten wil? Wel,” zei mevrouw Van Stralen zacht aan haar
oor, „ik wil weten wat hij van ons schrijft en van de anderen in de
„club.””
„Club” was de naam, die de andere passagiers hadden gegeven aan

het gezelschap, waartoe Louise behoorde en dat zich weinig met de
anderen inliet.
Zij kleurde even. Het interesseerde haar ook zeer. Daar kwam hij
aan, met zijn frisch en opgewekt gezicht, zijn goedgebouwde figuur
en zijn vlugge bewegingen. Een knappe jongen was hij.
„Mag ik meewandelen, dames?”
„Welzeker.”
„Dan kunt u in uw dagboek zetten: Hedennamiddag, zóóveel glazen

in de wacht, op en neer geloopen met twee dames.”
Men lachte.
„Dat schijnt u toch maar erg te interesseeren,” zei hij in antwoord op

de ondeugende scherts van mevrouw Van Stralen.
„Heer neen! ’t Kan me hoegenaamd niets schelen. Wat zegt u,

mevrouw Van Velton?” [164]
„Dat hangt van den inhoud van ’t boek af. Misschien wil meneer Van
Hoven ’t ons wel eens laten lezen.”
Hij kreeg een kleur en zei een beetje verlegen:

„Neen, dat kan ik niet, mevrouw. In zijn dagboek.…”
„Nu?” vroeg mevrouw Van Stralen erg nieuwsgierig.… „Ga verder.”

.… „moet men zoo goed als biechten, en dat kan men maar zelden
tegen anderen.”
Naast Louise gaande, trachtte hij het gesprek op een anderen boeg
te wenden, maar mevrouw Van Stralen liet hem niet los.
Zij riep haar man, zij riep Beynen en diens vrouw, dokter Van der
Linden en de geheele club, om hen voor te stellen een jong officier,
die bepaald zonder zonde was, omdat hij elken avond biechtte.
Men schertste en had een pleizier van belang, en Van Hoven nam
handig zijn partij en maakte grappen mee.
Omstreeks middernacht ontwaakte Louise Van der Linden door een

zacht kloppen aan de deur harer hut. Het was stil aan boord, de
passagiers sliepen; slechts door de ventilatie-openingen boven aan
den wand der hutten drong hier en daar het geluid door van een
slaper, die onbescheiden ronkte; nu en dan verhief zich ’t gekrijsch
van een zuigeling, spoedig vervangen door het tijdelijk neuriën van
een meereizende baboe; daarna bepaalde zich alles weer tot de
bekende geluiden van den stoomer.
Verschrikt en wantrouwend rees Louise op van de couchette.
„Wie is daar?”
„Ik,” zei een zachte stem. „Doe open.” [165]
„Wie is het dan?”
„Ik.… mevrouw Van Stralen.”

Voorzichtig deed ze open en tegelijk schoof de vrouw van den
kolonel naar binnen. Ze was een beetje bleek en zenuwachtig. Van
onder haar kabaja haalde ze een in zwart linnen gebonden boek te
voorschijn, van het formaat en het aanzien van een gewoon
koopmansboek.
„Ik heb het!”
Louise keek haar verwonderd aan.
„Wat bedoelt u?”
„Wel, het dagboek van Van Hoven.”
„Heeft hij het u toch gegeven?”
„Wel neen, ik heb ’t laten wegnemen.”
„Mijn God, mevrouw, hebt ge het laten wegnemen?”
„Wel ja. Er steekt immers geen kwaad in. Ik heb zijn kamerjongen
een fooitje gegeven; die heeft het stilletjes uit zijn hut gehaald en zal
het er straks weer inleggen. Maar ik wil toch weten wat die marine-
luitenant wel van ons in dat boek schrijft.”
„Maar is het niet verschrikkelijk indiscreet?”
„Gekheid, ’t Is immers met geen kwade bedoeling; een aardigheid,

anders niet. En hij zal er niets van te weten komen.”
Omdat zij met haar kind reisde, genoot Louise des nachts van een
licht, dat in een hoek van den wand bevestigd en door een lantaarn
beveiligd, alle waarborgen opleverde tegen brand.
Samen in sarong en kabaja zaten ze naast elkaar op den rand der

couchette. Mevrouw Van Stralen hield het dagboek [166]geopend op

Indigenous Digital Life The Practice and Politics of Being Indigenous On Social Media Carlson Online Ebook Texxtbook Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Indigenous Digital Life The Practice and Politics of Being Indigenous On Social Media Carlson Online Ebook Texxtbook Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Indigenous Digital Life The Practice and Politics of Being Indigenous On Social Media Carlson Online Ebook Texxtbook Full Chapter PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Indigenous Digital Life: The Practice

and Politics of Being Indigenous on

Living in Indigenous Sovereignty 1st Edition Elizabeth

Health Care and Indigenous Australians Cultural Safety

The Indigenous World 2022 36th Edition The

Media Infrastructures And The Politics Of Digital Time

Coded Territories Tracing Indigenous Pathways in New

Social Impacts of Digital Media 1st Edition Justin

The Sound of Silence Indigenous Perspectives on the

Embodied Politics Indigenous Migrant Activism Cultural

ISBN 978-3-030-84795-1 ISBN 978-3-030-84796-8 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Artwork by Balanggarra/Yolngu woman Molly Hunt / https://

Bronwyn: I want to thank my partner Mike for being supportive of all

Settler societies habitually frame Indigenous people as ‘a people of the

Openings: The Social Life of Indigenous Social Media 1

4 Digital Love and Care104

2.1 The ‘Connective’ Politics of Social Media169

4.1 Shutting the Fuck Up and Listening224

Bronwyn Carlson is a professor and Head of the Department of

1 Introduction: ‘nothing can replace

In October 2008, I made my first Facebook post. It seems a lifetime ago

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

In lieu of them looking ‘visibly Aboriginal’, these signs, symbols and

evidence of my Aboriginality. I responded that I did have a Confirmation

2 Online Identities, Care and Violence

With my weight loss, and I’m a survivor of DV [domestic violence], and

The help-seeking project also revealed, however, that violence online in

AHMRC, on Indigenous youth and cyberbullying, which drew on litera-

3 The Social Life of Social Media

4 What Is this Book and Why Does It Exist?

health measures that position Indigenous Australians as ‘behind’, ‘lacking’

these differences in experience and reveal the diversity of online lived

5 Materials, Methods and Ethics

2007), which is an approach to research that acknowledges the ways in

resources, including spices, industrial materials, and enslaved people from

6 The Structure of the Book: Untangling Life

Unsurprisingly, the experiences of Indigenous social media users are far

forms of community that have emerged through social media: ‘kinship

images of nostalgic foodstuffs, and satirise colonisers; #BlackfullaTwitter

intersection of Indigenous creative expression and Indigenous imagina-

Tuck, E., & Gaztambide-Fernández, R. A. (2013). Curriculum, Replacement, and

“Are you full blood Aboriginal?”

1 Introduction: The Identity of Bruce Pascoe

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 21

As the book gained popularity and Pascoe’s complication of the ‘hunter-­

The case of Bruce Pascoe caused much consternation among Indigenous

Bruce Pascoe is Aboriginal and his Aboriginal community has confirmed

In this chapter, we unpack one of the most heated and controversial

2 Legislating Indigenous Identity

obsession of settlers. From the moment of invasion, settlers sought to

contradictions produced through this sprawling array of policy aimed at

3 Self-Determination: To Determine One’s Self

somewhat changing, and after decades of Aboriginal organising, activism

been largely “shaping ‘who’ and ‘what’ constitutes an Aboriginal commu-

4 Contemporary Debates: ‘What Defines

Identity disputes have far from disappeared in the so-called self-­

interviewed in 2016 by Bolt on his programme, the ‘Bolt Report’, to dis-

Latham’s assertions centre on the idea that Indigenous people receive

Openings: The Social Life of Indigenous Social Media 1

4 Digital Love and Care104

2.1 The ‘Connective’ Politics of Social Media169

4.1 Shutting the Fuck Up and Listening224

As the book gained popularity and Pascoe’s complication of the ‘hunter-

Identity disputes have far from disappeared in the so-called self-