Indigenous Digital Life: The Practice and Politics of Being Indigenous on Social Media 3030847950, 9783030847951

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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 Room 411 Macquarie University North Ryde, NSW, Australia

Ryan Frazer Arts Precinct Macquarie University 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 fieldwork 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 country 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

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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 enjoyable. 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 partnership. 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 technologies. Indigenous Digital Life offers a broad, wide-ranging account of how social media has become embedded in the lives of Indigenous Australians. Centring on ten core 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 narratives of Indigenous ‘deficiency’, we approach Indigenous social media as a space of Indigenous action, production, and creativity; we see Indigenous social media users as powerful agents, who interact with and shape their immediate worlds with skill, flair and nous; and instead of being ‘a people of the past’, we show that Indigenous digital life is often future-orientated, working towards building better relations, communities and worlds. This book offers new ideas, insights and provocations for both students and scholars of Indigenous studies, media and communication studies, and cultural studies.

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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

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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 

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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

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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 

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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 contributing 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, currently 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 understand the role of volunteer refugee resettlement organisations in producing 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, identity and community.

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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 involvement 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 community 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 supposedly ‘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 Switzerland AG 2021 B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_1

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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 embarrassingly 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 people, and to thereby gain some degree of community recognition and acceptance. As we will discuss throughout this book, particularly in chapter “Identity”, Indigenous identity in Australia is formally confirmed through distinct criteria, one of which involves being ‘accepted by community’ as Indigenous. One described how they friended Aboriginal people 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 findings 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 technological 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 relation 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 digital world. Arias (2019, x) describes a widespread “compulsion to perceive Indigenous peoples as located outside of technology’s purview”—a stereotype 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 critically 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 confirmation 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

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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 project titled ‘Aboriginal identity and community online: a sociological exploration 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 findings 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 cultural practices, norms and knowledges, agitating for social justice, seeking

OPENINGS: THE SOCIAL LIFE OF INDIGENOUS SOCIAL MEDIA 5

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, racism, suicide and self-harm, parenting, education, employment, legal advice and health-related concerns. These findings led to my successful application for a second ARC Discovery Indigenous Grant, titled ‘An examination 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 substantial 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 professionals and community members concerned with the paucity of information about Indigenous people’s experiences with cyberbullying. We also produced an extensive literature-based report, commissioned by the

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AHMRC, on Indigenous youth and cyberbullying, which drew on literature 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 populations, differentiating people only by age and binary gender categories. This was concerning, as the work we’d done previous had made it abundantly 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 entitled ‘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 profound effects on emotional and psychological responses. This is understandable—not only is social media, as we now know it, relatively new, it is also constantly changing. When I first started researching social media,

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the online world looked very different. Myspace was still relatively popular, 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 specifically in the lives of Indigenous Australians, what benefits it has brought, how it has (re)shaped relations between Indigenous Australians and others, 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

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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 technology studies have been no exception to this rule, often focusing on what is often called the ‘digital divide’. That is, Indigenous people are understood 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, production, 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 creative agents, playfully engaging with new technologies, ideas and practices. ‘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 inspiration 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 ‘closing’ 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 different challenges. Part of the aim of this book is to capture and highlight

OPENINGS: THE SOCIAL LIFE OF INDIGENOUS SOCIAL MEDIA 9

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, particularly in chapters “Identity” and “Hate”, which focus on ‘identity’ and ‘hate’, respectively.5 Second, in preparation for this book, we conducted a news media analysis 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. racism, community, activism). We are in the process of writing an article based on our results, which will outline trends over time in media reporting 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 spontaneously encountered on social media—what Kozinets (2019) describes as

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‘netnographic’ data. Like those whom the book is about, we are both avid social media users, and have spent an embarrassing amount of time scrolling 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 scholars have long discussed, there are particular ethical issues in using empirical 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 theory 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 ontologies. 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

OPENINGS: THE SOCIAL LIFE OF INDIGENOUS SOCIAL MEDIA 11

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 existing 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 particular 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 homelands 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 heritage, whose family has more recently lived along east-coast Australia, on the lands of the Dharawal, Yuin, Eora, and Bundjalung peoples. His politically, 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

12  B. CARLSON, R. FRAZER

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 influentially 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 technologies. 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, transformed, 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 continuously 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

OPENINGS: THE SOCIAL LIFE OF INDIGENOUS SOCIAL MEDIA 13

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 centres 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 ‘identity’ 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 contentious political act. For this reason, the chapters often leak into one another, and there are refrains that will be heard again and again throughout 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 identity? 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 identity: 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, looking specifically at how notions of ‘community’ intersect with social media use. Despite the protestations of those who were provoked by my question 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

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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 experiences 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 understanding online racism as an unfortunate by-product of an otherwise ‘neutral’ 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 finding 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 problematise 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 colonial discourses of desire, to interrogate their own internalised sexual preferences, 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 themselves 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

OPENINGS: THE SOCIAL LIFE OF INDIGENOUS SOCIAL MEDIA 15

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 commemoration 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 anniversaries. 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 affordances 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

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so-called History Wars, we unpack how social media now figures in the ad hoc ‘decolonial remembering’ around the Australian nation. First, we discuss 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 peaceful 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 unequivocally 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

OPENINGS: THE SOCIAL LIFE OF INDIGENOUS SOCIAL MEDIA 17

intersection of Indigenous creative expression and Indigenous imaginations of possible other worlds, which exist outside or beyond settler politics. 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 everyday 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 globally). 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 throughout 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.

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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 community 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 people 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.

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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 inhabiting 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.

20  B. CARLSON, R. FRAZER 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 building 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 Switzerland AG 2021 B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_2

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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 businesswoman Josephine Cashman had alleged that Pascoe was financially benefiting 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 community and on social media. The issue of identity is often precarious for Indigenous people, especially those of mixed descent, whose ties to

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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 elimination. Next, we trace how these debates have persisted within contemporary 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 stereotypes—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 understood without some understanding of this historical policy and regulatory context that governed Aboriginal people across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Indigenous people’s identities have always been an anxious

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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, independent 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 conveniently occupied a spot just below God and the angels. Settler anthropologists 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 population 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 increasing 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

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species of legal creature was created and sustained as a separate class, subject 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 origin, 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 people 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 absorption, 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

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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 continued 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 centuries of deleterious policy. These policies had immediate, material and relational 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 elimination’, which involves first “the summary liquidation of Indigenous people”, 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 knowledge 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 colonial 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

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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 requirement 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 people. It is not a trivial or sentimental document; it is a quasi-legal document, which can be and is used to evidence claims of Indigeneity (Carlson 2016). This new self-determined framework for establishing Indigenous identity 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 recognised and accepted “by the community in which he/she lives” can provide a stumbling block given the diasporic history of many Indigenous communities (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 confirming 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

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been largely “shaping ‘who’ and ‘what’ constitutes an Aboriginal community” (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 consequences 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 “increasingly concerned about the increased level of community concern regarding issues of Aboriginal identity” (2011, 9). The report states that, “the issue of Aboriginality and identity is one of the most critical issues in contemporary Aboriginal affairs” and it notes the “growing community concern 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

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interviewed in 2016 by Bolt on his programme, the ‘Bolt Report’, to discuss 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 ‘choosing’ 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 settler desire to ‘become Indigenous’, and thereby claim a legitimate connection 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-

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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 unashamedly 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 cannot 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

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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 generally embedding offline life into cyberspace”. “The Internet is not necessarily 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, particularly 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 recognisable than the Aboriginal flag, designed in 1971 by Luritja artist Harold

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Thomas. From the moment social media was introduced to Australia, Aboriginal people have used different characters and colours to approximate 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 themselves were formally added to Twitter’s emoji library—the release corresponding 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 description 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 highlight my Aboriginality” (Male, 18–24, Redfern). Another person we talked to explained: “Whenever someone asks me what nationality I am

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[online], I tell them straight up that I’m Aboriginal” (Female, 18–24, Wollongong). While these users centre their belonging to more ‘pan-Indigenous’ political collectives, others aim to foreground a more grounded sense of who they are, who they are connected to and where they are from. Across social media platforms Indigenous people are declaring their relational and highly heterogeneous identities with specific peoples and places, such as scholar Chelsea Watego, whose Twitter profile states: munanjahli – yugambeh – south sea – watego – williams – slockee – oncewasbond – health worker – researcher – lecturer – public health – indigenous studies #WildBlackWomen.

Similarly, prominent activist and writer Celeste Liddle’s profile asserts: Arrernte, Unionist, feminist, @EurekaStreet column, freelance commentator. Accidentally anarchic. Middle-aged punk. Views on this acc my own. Melb dweller.

This naming and claiming of Indigenous belonging is an intentional political practice, aimed towards particular political ends. By explicitly aligning with more ‘pan-Indigenous’ or ‘Bla(c)k’ collectives, one works to strengthen and solidify a collective political unity that resists settler attempts at erasure. By claiming belonging to more specific nations or clan groups, one emphasises the heterogeneity of Indigenous identity, deconstructing more ‘essentialist’ notions of Indigeneity, and highlighting the political specificity of Indigenous claims to Country and sovereignty. Both equally work to oppose the settler project of Indigenous elimination. 5.2  Participating in Indigenous Digital Life The claiming of identity does not need to be done only in this direct, explicit way, however. Instead, when asked about how they expressed their identity online, many participants explained that their identity as ‘Indigenous’ could be ascertained simply through their ‘being’ Indigenous online. As one survey respondent explained, “I can show people my Aboriginality through pictures without having to state it awkwardly” (Female, 18–24, Dharawal). In our first research project, we directly asked if participants identified as Indigenous in these kinds of ways on social

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media. The vast majority of people said they did, describing a range of practices that directly aimed to express their Indigeneity. I do, yeah. Because I’m always sharing things as well. Like yesterday it was Hoodie Day [in support of Indigenous education program AIME] and I made sure I’d uploaded that, because they’d said, ‘Everyone try and upload a picture’. (Female, 20, South Coast NSW) I have a few things on my page that also indicate that I’m Aboriginal. I have ‘liked’ pages that are Aboriginal and some pictures and my family and some of the pages are for Aboriginal people, specifically for jobs and health and things like that (Female, 18–24, Wollongong) It just sort of comes up naturally, it’s not something that I go out and declare, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m Aboriginal’. But I’m there talking about Aboriginal rights and racism and Aboriginal education. So I mean most people would logically assume that I am Aboriginal (Male, 35, Sydney)

Participants also explained how social media allowed them to recreate the ‘natural’ networks of family, kin and community, that embedded them within a distinctly Indigenous relational system (Akama et al. 2017). I guess [you can tell someone’s Indigenous by] who you’re following and even on Facebook your friends groups and who you belong to. You can identify people quite quickly, Aboriginality-wise, by just the social networks they are in, it’s easy enough. I mean, surnames is probably the easiest way to do it. (Male, mid-30s, Sydney) I reckon you can tell from people’s content. So if I can’t work out from the [family] name, or obviously if I knew them, or pictures or stuff like that, then I think from their content and what they’re posting about you can work it out that way. (Male, mid-30s, Sydney)

Indigenous people draw on the affordances of digital technologies to express, perform and claim their identities and celebrate their collective survival of colonialism. Pride in being Indigenous is displayed through a range of actions including specific pages, like “I am proud to be Aboriginal”, emojis, profile pics, cover photos, the people one follows and are followed by, as well as tweets, retweets, posts and handles. Online, they engage in the practice of (re)constructing Indigenous identity; both intensifying a

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pan-Indigenous political unity and solidarity, and claiming their heterogeneous attachments to their particular nations and clan groups. These diverse online practices invariably place them within a matrix of social connections that act as documented evidence to claims of kinship, country and local recognition (Carlson 2013, 160).

6   Challenging Indigenous Identity However, ‘identifying’ as Indigenous online is not always a straightforward matter. The three-pronged definition has evidently not resolved questions of Indigeneity. As the cases of Hanson, Bolt and Latham make clear, there is still a complex politics around who gets to claim Indigenous identity; and the boundaries of ‘who counts’ as Indigenous are still covetously maintained and enforced by both settlers and Indigenous peoples alike. Kowal and Paradies (2017, 102) describe, for instance, the enduring but often inaccurate stereotypical characteristics of Indigenous people in Australia: “dark skin and eyes, particular facial features, cultural distinctiveness and low socio-economic status”; and they note the trouble that arises when people defy this expectation—usually in the form of disbelief in one’s claim to Indigeneity. For exactly these reasons, participants in our research often expressed mixed feelings about being ‘openly Indigenous’ on social media. This was revealed clearly in results from an online survey we conducted in 2015, in which over half of the respondents admitted they had been intentionally selective with what they post in regard to their identity. 6.1  Oh, You Don’t Look Indigenous One of the most consistent comments that Indigenous people deal with on digital platforms is that they don’t ‘look’ Indigenous. Kowal and Paradies (2017, 106) describe this inaccuracy of recognition by others as ‘race misrecognition’, where “one is not seen as who one ‘really’ is”. Online, Indigenous people are frequently asked “what percentage” Indigenous they are. Despite identification now officially being based solely on heritage, self-identification, and acceptance in community, the question of skin colour is clearly a matter of great debate. People we spoke to provided many examples of this: “apparently I’m not Black enough for some” (Female, 45–54, Awabakal); “Non-Indigenous people [have questioned me] based on the fact that I don’t look ‘Aboriginal’ to them”

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(Female, 25–34, Gadigal); “if you look at my Instagram, people wouldn’t assume that I’m Indigenous, because of the way that, you know, I’m light-­ skinned and people don’t consider that as being Aboriginal” (Queer, 20, Dharug). One participant explained how difficult these ideas around Indigenous phenotypes could be for those who didn’t neatly match the stereotype: I feel like with like the Black Lives Matter kind of thing … you see this ‘white’ person talking about these issues. And it’s like, a lot of people can’t see past the fact that not all Indigenous people are dark-skinned, and they don’t live in the bush, and they don’t like hunt kangaroos and that kind of thing. So many intelligent people cannot see past that fact; it is difficult, especially in an online space, to be able to come out as a loud and proud Black person, ‘But you’re white?’ (Female, 20, Central Coast NSW)

People we spoke to described the toll this relentless suspicion around their identity could take on their social and emotional well-being. As the person above finished by explaining, “I feel like that is like the worst thing” (Female, 20, Central Coast NSW). Likewise, another said: I feel a lot of the same feelings of being, like, sad or disappointed or angry. It really makes me question my identity further and question how I want to present myself at work. It’s like, I’m very proud to be an Aboriginal woman. But it’s also very difficult at times, when you just feel like you’re constantly having to justify parts of your identity to people. It gets tiring. And it’s like, I don’t want to keep having to do this. (Female, 23, Central Coast NSW)

Significantly, for many of the people we spoke to, and particularly those with lighter skin, challenges to their identity also came from inside community itself. “We do it to ourselves and to each other”, one younger participant explained. For instance, he described “someone post on a dating site, ‘If your great great grandfather was Aboriginal, don’t talk to me. We’re not the same.’ But he and I were both light-skinned.” Another described a time he posted a message in support of the Aboriginal Lives Matter movement: And someone even messaged me and was like, from mob and said, ‘You’re not allowed to do that. That’s not your flag to use.’ I was like, ‘Tell me why’. And it turned out we were both Dharug. And I was like, this is lateral violence. (Queer, 20, Dharug)

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6.2  Performance Anxiety: Navigating Race Misrecognition Participants responded in diverse ways to this relentless misrecognition. As Kowal and Paradies (2017, 108) note, those who are not ‘recognisable’ as Indigenous often perform their Indigeneity in other ways, “such as wearing identifiably ‘Indigenous’ jewelry or using specific linguistic cues”. Similarly, some light-skinned Indigenous participants expressed anxiety that their profiles might not express their Indigeneity at first glance, and they felt a need to overtly ‘Indigenise’ their profile. One participant said: “Yes, because I have fair skin I have had people say I am not really Aboriginal” and another commented that they actively engage in online conversations on Indigenous issues and make an effort to relay an Indigenous identity. “Looking at my physical features, most people say I look South American or Irish,” they explained. But in order to still clearly articulate their Indigeneity, they said, “I have [on my profile] that I work at the Aboriginal Medical Service. I like and share Aboriginal pages and posts. I share my political opinions on Indigenous matters.” For others, however, having their identity constantly called into question caused them to not openly identify. “I am not too open about my Indigenous background on social media sites because I am light-skinned and have found that people pass judgement and make assumptions about my entitlements”, one young woman explained (Female, 18–24, Darwin). Another young woman, who had both Aboriginal and Irish ancestry, spoke at length about how difficult it was to identify as Aboriginal when she had ‘pale’ skin. “And so I sort of hide that side”, she explained. “I tend not to show or represent my Indigenous side because I don’t want the whole conflict of: ‘But you’re not?’” (Female, 21, Griffith). A young Indigenous man said: People say ‘Oh, you don’t look Aboriginal’. And then they’ll talk about something like, you know, dole budging, or, you know, taking our money, blah, blah, blah. So, I don’t do that for that very reason. (Male, 26, Tasmania)

And yet another young Indigenous woman explained, she refrained from posting about her scholarly achievements because she was afraid of the comments it might provoke from people who can’t accept a ‘high achieving’ Indigenous woman. Indigeneity is closely linked with notions of lack and deficiency; and any deviation from this colonial narrative is seen as evidence of one’s ‘inauthenticity’ (Fforde et al. 2013).

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And I think it’s definitely stopped me from like posting things... it’s like, I don’t want to put this up because I’m quite concerned with like the reaction, or like the judgments or comments I’m gonna face from it. (Female, 20, Central Coast NSW)

A.O. Neville—the figure who held the title ‘Western Australian Chief Protector of Aborigines’ (1915–1940)—explained that the goal of assimilation was “to breed white natives” (Neville 1947, 75, cited in Alber 2016, 295). There is perhaps an ironic sense in which his vision has come to fruition. But far from erasing Indigeneity, a sense of a unified Indigenous identity—encompassing both darker- and lighter-skinned Indigenous people—has remained strong. This “refusal to be white”, as Kowal and Paradies explain (2017, 106), is a direct expression of Indigenous strength and sovereignty. “When a light-skinned Indigenous person identifies as Indigenous”, Kowal and Paradies write, “they refuse to concede the historical state project of assimilation” (2017, 108). Instead, they go on to explain, “Maintaining their Indigenous identity is a form of defiance and survival” (Kowal and Paradies 2017, 109). This does not mean that identifying as Indigenous online—whether one has either light or dark skin—is a simple or easy matter. Instead, the people above described the hurtful interrogation of identity they were subjected to, the relentless race misrecognition, and the continuous attribution of pejorative stereotypes when one was eventually accepted as Indigenous. Evidently, one cannot just ‘be’ Indigenous online; instead, one must both constantly perform and protect and defend one’s claim to Indigenous identity.

7   The Decolonising Logic of ‘taking the piss’ As the participants above make clear, responding to endless challenges to one’s Indigeneity—based on the old colonial categories of skin colour, blood quantum and disadvantage—is exhausting. It is in this way that Indigenous people are confined to what Aboriginal scholar Yin Paradies, following Ang (2001), describes as a “prison-house of identity” (2006, 356). Within this ‘prison-house’ are what he calls the ‘fantasies’ of Indigeneity: cultural alterity, marginality, stereotypical physicality, moral and epistemological superiority (2006, 356). Paradies identifies as “Aboriginal-Anglo-Australian-Asian” (2006, 356); he does this to counter the discursive imposition of a singular identity, and to provide more

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space for the multiple identities inhabited by Aboriginal people (see also Fredericks 2013). As Dodson (1994) argues, “more than enough ‘fixing’ has already occurred” (1994, 10); instead, he declares that Aboriginal people must resist “an essentialism which confines us to fixed, unchangeable and necessary characteristics, and refuses to allow for transformation or variation” (Dodson 1994, 10). It is within this resistance to rigid, essentialist notions of Indigenous lives and identities that Indigenous people often engage in humour. Anthropologist W.E.H Stanner notes that Aboriginal jokes have a “twist of its own” (1982, 42). Bidjara/Pitjara, Birri Gubba and Juru author Jackie Huggins argues that “Black humour is often so delicate that it is hard to locate, and Europeans come off with a baffled feeling without knowing quite why” (Huggins 1988 cited in Duncan 2014, 1). She goes on to explain that Aboriginal people “draw humour from situations and definitions about them which would prove painful and offensive if told by Europeans” (cited in Duncan 2014, 1). When asked questions such as, ‘are you part-Aboriginal?’, for example, Indigenous people often reply with a tongue-in-cheek response such as: ‘yes, my right leg is Indigenous’. In Australia, this is often called “taking the piss”, and we argue it can constitute a distinct, deliberate and effective decolonising strategy. As a form of resistance to colonialism, Indigenous people enjoy making fun of colonisers and some of the often ludicrous limitations they impose on what constitutes Indigenous identity. In this way, as Wilson (1979, 228) notes, “humour is the oil in the social machine, lubricating group dynamics, easing frictions that threaten group solidarity”. In 2019, for instance, the Indigemoji app was released, which provided 90 emojis that specifically represent the lives of Arrernte people of central Australia, such as a football, a cup of tea, a swag and a banged-up ‘bush car’. A cultural consultant for the project, Arrernte man Joel Liddle Perrula, said they “wanted a good mix of some fun items and things that would make people laugh a bit and really identify with Arrernte people and this part of Australia” (Quinn-Bates 2019). He explained the aim was to better enable the use of Arrernte language and symbols in everyday life: “because if we utilise them in the digital realm then it means that they’re used daily still”. It evidently struck a chord, as the app was downloaded 20,000 times on the day of release.

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7.1  The Politics of Devon Other times, Indigenous humour arises spontaneously in response to political discourse. In 2012, then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott described Ken Wyatt, the first Indigenous member of the House of Representatives, as an “urban Aboriginal” who was “not a man of culture”, and Abbott instead suggested he would instead love to see “a highly traditional Australian Aboriginal” in Parliament (Robinson et al. 2012). Abbott was reproducing what Marcia Langton describes as “the insidious ideology of tribal and de-tribalized Aborigines” (1981, 16), in which Indigenous people living in cities are understood as not ‘really’ Indigenous, compared to the ‘authentic’ Indigenous people in more remote areas. As Indigenous scholar Bronwyn Fredericks (2013, 13) observes, “There is a sense that somehow we can’t be ‘real’ Aboriginal people if we ride Melbourne trams or Brisbane ferries and buses”. Abbott’s comments sparked an immediate response online, with Indigenous people on Twitter taking the opportunity to take the piss out of Abbott’s rigid views. Wiradjuri author Anita Heiss started the tongue-in-cheek hashtag #itriedtobeauthenticbut, tweeting: “#itriedtobeauthenticbut I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to join the dots… Just paint them!” and “#itriedtobeauthenticbut I’ve thrown more parties than boomerangs!” Often, Indigenous people play with stereotypes to renew a shared sense of Indigenous identity. In the quote that opens this chapter, a post in a popular closed Aboriginal Facebook page rhetorically asks: “Are you full blood Aboriginal”, to which it responds: “Yeah my dads Ernie Dingo and my mum is a roll of Devon”. Ernie Dingo is a well-known Aboriginal TV presenter and quite possibly the only Indigenous person that most Australians would recognise on sight; and devon is a cheap, manufactured meat product popular in Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand) and it is something many Indigenous people grew up eating. Indeed, the symbol of devon as a particularly Indigenous foodstuff has become something of a meme online. In 2018, for instance, the ‘Koori Knockout’ was held in Dubbo, NSW.  In preparation, Indigenous media company NITV produced a segment titled ‘Devon Heaven’ where they interviewed a staff member at supermarket Woolworths to inquire as to whether they had enough devon in stock for the large population of Indigenous people who would attend the annual football game. On popular Indigenous Facebook group, ‘Mob feeds’ multiple posts are made that demonstrate the ways in which people enjoy eating devon, including with hot chips, on a pizza, and even to replace bacon on oysters Kilpatrick.

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Mate, didn’t have any bacon. But had plenty of Devon If this ain’t the most mob feed, I don’t know what is DEVON OYSTER KILL PATRICK BABY! SO GOOD, spread the word Mob. (posted 18 December 2020)

Humour is often used to make fun of the Confirmation of Aboriginality certificate and the problematics of producing acceptable ‘proof’. To this end, Gamillaroi and Torres Strait Islander woman Nakkiah Lui tweeted an alternative criterion for affirming Indigenous identity: Confirmation of Aboriginality selection criteria: Do you like KFC? Yes. Do you like Milo? Yes. Do you eat Devon?... (Posted on Twitter by @nakkiahlui 7 July 2014)

As Hutchings and Rodger (2018) note, Indigenous people play with their identities to survive; the bonds forged through Indigenous humour can have broader cultural implications, as they work to intensify a sense of shared belonging.

8   Closing: Equally but Variously Indigenous “Being Indigenous,” according to Alfred and Corntassel (2005, 614), “means thinking, speaking and acting with the conscious intent of regenerating one’s indigeneity”. For the people we spoke to, however, this was no simple or straightforward matter, but was entangled in much broader, more contested issues of colonialism, sovereignty and self-determination. Evidently, the question of ‘who counts’ as Indigenous remains as pertinent as it is controversial. On the one hand, claims to Indigeneity are continuously challenged online. As Paradies argues, a range of enduring fantasies of Indigeneity continue to serve to fragment the community “into those who can authentically perform Indigeneity and those who are silenced and/or rendered outside the space of Indigeneity because they cannot, or will not, perform” (2006, 361). This is particularly an issue for those Indigenous people with light skin, who are continuously denied their right to their own heritage. As one young woman explained, “It gets tiring. And it’s like, I don’t want to keep having to do this.” In this way, stale notions of ‘authentic’ Indigeneity perpetuate the logic of Indigenous elimination, once embodied more formally in policies of assimilation and A.O. Neville’s dream of “breed[ing] white natives”.

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On the other hand, social media have become politically significant spaces for claiming, performing and playing with identity. By asserting oneself as “assigned blak at birth”, or as an “Hon member of the Far Black”, one serves to strengthen and solidify a larger Indigenous collective. The explicit performance of Indigenous pride, the production of specifically Indigenous networks, even the circulation of flag emojis—these practices work against the project of Indigenous elimination, instead making it impossible to “forget that there were ever any Aborigines in Australia,” as A.O. Neville (1937) long hoped. Indeed, social media is facilitating not only the strengthening of a collective Indigenous identity, it is also aiding the proliferation of more diverse forms of Indigeneity. To bring down the walls of the ‘prison house’, Paradies (2006, 361) advocates understanding Indigeneity as an open signifier, “which avoids imprisoning Indigeneity into a fixed, frozen category of being”. He calls for recognition that while any two Indigenous people may be utterly unalike, “they are nonetheless all equally but variously Indigenous” (2006, 361). In this way, much more fluid, heterogeneous, and even playful forms of Indigeneity emerge. This can be seen clearly in the widespread Indigenous practice of ‘taking the piss’ online. Often heated and highly nuanced discussions about politics of devon, for instance, are not only fun diversions from everyday life—they become the very clay from which more liberatory expressions of Indigeneity might be formed. A well-targeted joke can become a safe solace, playfully affirming Indigenous identity through rejecting settler fantasies of Indigeneity.

Note 1. Gammon, or gammin, is a slang term used by Indigenous people which refers variously to someone or something being ‘fake’, ‘pathetic’ or ‘pretend’ (Verass 2018).

References Aboriginal Education Consultative Group. ‘Aboriginality and identity: perspectives, practices and policies.’ Produced by Bob Morgan Consultancy, 2011. http://www.nrsdc.org.au/images/newsletter/Aboriginality_and_Identity_ Report_November_2011.pdf Akama, Y., Evans, D., Keen, S., McMillan, F., McMillan, M., & West, P. (2017). Designing digital and creative scaffolds to strengthen Indigenous nations:

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being Wiradjuri by practising sovereignty. Digital Creativity, 28(1), 58–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2017.1291525 Alber, J. (2016). Towards resilience and playfulness: the negotiation of indigenous Australian identities in twentieth-century Aboriginal narratives. European Journal of English Studies, 20(3), 292–309. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13825577.2016.1230387 Alfred, T., & Corntassel, J. (2005). Being indigenous: Resurgences against contemporary colonialism (pp.  597–614). Government and opposition: Politics and identity IX. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. Ang, I. (2001) On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West. New York: Routledge. Attwood, Bain, and Andrew Markus. The 1967 Referendum, or when Aborigines didn’t get the vote. Aboriginal Studies Press, 1997. Bell, D., & Kennedy, B. (Eds.). (2000). The cybercultures reader. Routledge. Bolt, A. 2009, ‘White is the new black’, Herald, Sun April 15th 2009. Available at: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-­bolt/column%2D%2D-­white-­ is-­the-­new-­black/news-­story/2d639a94bb361ca786b9b2c171a4da04 Bond, C. 2007, ‘“When you’re black, they look at you harder” Narrating Aboriginality within public health’, Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, University of Queensland. Butler, J. (2017). ‘Who’s your mob? Aboriginal mapping: Beginning with the strong song’ The International Journal of Therapy Work, No. 3. Available at: https://dulwichcentre.com.au/wp-­content/uploads/2018/06/Whos-­your-­ mob-­by-­Justin-­Butler.pdf 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. (2016). The Politics of Identity: Who Counts as Aboriginal today?. Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra. Christensen, N.  B. (2003). Inuit in cyberspace: Embedding offline, identities online. Museum Tusculanum Press. Dodson, M. 1994, ‘The Wentworth lecture’, ‘The end in the beginning: Re(de) finding Aboriginality, Australian Aboriginal Studies, vol. 1, pp. 2–13. Drahm-Butler, T. (2015). Decolonising identity stories: Narrative practice through Aboriginal eyes. In B. Wingard, C. Johnson, & T. Drahm-Butler (Eds.), Aboriginal narrative practice: Honouring storylines of pride, stength and creativity (pp. 25–46). Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre Publications. Duncan, P. (2014). ‘The role of Aboriginal humour in cultural survival and resistance’. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, University of Queensland. Fforde, C., L. Bamblett, R. Lovett, S. Gorringe and B. Fogarty (2013). Discourse, deficit and identity: Aboriginality, the race paradigm and the language of repre-

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sentation in contemporary Australia. Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 149: 162–173. Fredericks, B. (2013). “We don’t leave our identities at the city limits”: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in urban localities. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1, 4–16. Fryer, B. & Perry, J. (2020). ‘AFL dismisses allegations of Federal offences leveled against Bruce Pascoe’, Available at: https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2020/01/24/afp-­d ismisses-­a llegations-­f ederal-­o ffences-­l evelled­against-­bruce-­pascoe Ganter, R. ‘Turning Aboriginal --- Historical Bents.’ Borderlands e- journal 7, no. 2 (2008): 1–19. Accessed May 13 2010. http://www.borderlands.net.au/ vol7no2_2008/ganter_turning.pdf Gardiner-Garden, J. (2002–2003). Defining Aboriginality in Australia, Department of Parliamentary Library, Canberra, Available at: https://www.aph.gov.au/ about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/publications_archive/cib/cib0203/03cib10 Gorringe, S., Ross, J. & Forde, C. (2011). ‘Will the real Aborigines please stand up’: Strategies for breaking the stereotypes and changing the conversation.’ Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Discussion paper 28. Han, E. (2019), ‘Everybody hates a welfare rorter’: Latham spruiks DNA testing plan for Aboriginal people. The Sydney Morning Herald. Availabkle: https:// www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/everybody-­hates-­a-­welfare-­r orter-­latham-­ spruiks-­d na-­t esting-­p lan-­f or-­a boriginal-­p eople-­2 0190311-­p 513au.html. Accessed 10/02/2021. Heiss, A. (2007). ‘Writing Aboriginality: Authors on “being Aboriginal” in Birns, N. & McNeer, R. (eds.) A companion to Australian literature since 1900, Camden House, New York. Huggins, J. (2003). ‘Always was, always will be’ in Grossman, M. (ed.) Blacklines: Contemporary critical writings by Indigenous Australians, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, pp. 60–65. Hutchings, S., & Rodger, D. (2018). Reclaiming Australia: Indigenous Hip-Hop group A.B.  Original’s use of Twitter. Media International Australia, 169(1), 84–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X18803382 Kowal, E., & Paradies, Y. (2017). Indigeneity and the refusal of whiteness. Postcolonial Studies, 20(1), 101–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/1368879 0.2017.1334287 Lamb, N. 2007, ‘Aboriginalising racism – regional experiences of racism between Aboriginal groups’, a paper presented at the International conference on racism in the new world order: Realities of colour, culture and identity conference, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, Queensland, pp. 177–183

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available at, http://www.usc.edu.au/nr/rdonlyres/b48e9bb0-­04ae-­4d95-­ b710-­512fd0973954/0/racismsconf3.pdf Langton, M. (1981). URBANIZING ABORIGINES-THE SOCIAL-­ SCIENTISTS GREAT DECEPTION. Social Alternatives, 2(2), 16–22. Latimore, J. (2020). ‘Bruce Pascoe’s identity is of no business of the Commonwealth’, NITV.  Available at: https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/artic l e / 2 0 2 0 / 0 1 / 1 2 / o p i n i o n -­b r u c e -­p a s c o e s -­i d e n t i t y -­n o -­b u s i n e s s -­ commonwealth Lemert, C. (2019). A history of identity: The riddle at the heart of the mystery of life. Routledge Handbook of Identity Studies: 2nd Edition, 18–45. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315626024-­2 Manne, R. (2004). Aboriginal Child Removal and the Question of Genocide, 1900–1940, in A.D. Moses (ed), Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier violence and stolen indigenous children in Australian history, pp. 217–243, Berghahn Books. McCormick, N. and J. Leonard. ‘Gender and Sexuality in the Cyberspace Frontier.’ Women and Therapy 19.4 (1996): 109–119. McCorquodale, J. 1986, ‘The legal classification of race in Australia’, Aboriginal History, 10 (1), pp. 7–24. McCorquodale, J. C. 1997, ‘Aboriginal identity: Legislative, judicial and administrative definitions’, Australian Aboriginal studies, 2, pp. 24–35 Nakata, M. N. (2007). Disciplining the savages, savaging the disciplines. Aboriginal Studies Press. Noble, F. 1996, ‘Who do we Think we are: People who are Learning About their Aboriginality’, Unpublished Masters Thesis, Griffith University. Overington, C. “Not so Black and White.” Weekend Australian Magazine. March 24–25, 2012. Paradies, Y. C. (2006). Beyond black and white: Essentialism, hybridity and indigeneity. Journal of Sociology, 42(4), 355–367. https://doi. org/10.1177/1440783306069993 Pascoe, B. (2014). Dark Emu black seeds: agriculture or accident?. Magabala Books. Peters-Little, F. (2004). 19. The community game: Aboriginal self definition at the local level. The Indigenous Welfare Economy and the CDEP Scheme, 20, 187. Quinn-Bates, J. (2019). Indigemoji app provides 90 emojis representing central Australia’s Indigenous Arrernte culture. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Read, P. (1998). Whose citizens? Whose country?. Citizenship and indigenous Australians: changing conceptions and possibilities, 169–179. Reay, M. (1951). Mixed-blood marriage in North-Western New South Wales: A survey of the marital conditions of 264 Aboriginal and mixed-blood women. Oceania, 22(2), 116–129.

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Reynolds, H. (Ed.). (1972). Aborigines and settlers: the Australian experience, 1788–1939. North Melbourne, VIC: Cassell Australia. Robinson, N., Kelly, J. & Karvelas, P. (2012). Aborigine backlash for Abbott. The Australian. Available: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-­affairs/ indigenous/aborigine-­backlash-­for-­tony-­abbott/news-­story/d37557604777 dbfb849dff9322bbf22e. Accessed 10/02/2021 Sardá, T., Natale, S., Sotirakopoulos, N. and Monaghan, M. (2019). Understanding online anonymity. Media, Culture & Society, 41(4), pp. 557–564. Stanner, W.  E. H. (1982). “Aboriginal Humour.” Aboriginal History 6.1. 39–48. Print. Stanner. W. E. H. (1979). Whiteman got no Dreaming: Essays 1938–73, Australian National University Press, Canberra. Topsfield, J. (2020). ‘Bruce Pascoe says Aboriginality queries are an attempt to discredit Dark Emu’, The Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www. smh.com.au/national/bruce-­pascoe-­says-­aboriginality-­queries-­an-­attempt-­to-­ discredit-­dark-­emu-­20200118-­p53smg.html Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40. https://www.latrobe.edu.au/ staff-­profiles/data/docs/fjcollins.pdf Verass, S. (2018). Words you thought were Indigenous that actually aren’t. NITV.  Accessed 9/03/2012. Available: https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2018/02/07/words-­you-­thought-­were-­indigenous-­actually-­arent-­1 Wilson, C. (1979). Jokes: Forms, Content, Use and Function. London: Academic P. Print. Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/146 23520601056240

Community

I think that social media—the idea that Aboriginal people can access it—is a great thing. We’ve been excluded from a lot of things in this country for a long time and anybody can get on Facebook. That opens the door for my people, so that’s gotta be a good thing […] It keeps people, families, and communities informed. The thing about Aboriginal people is that, well, we’ve got our own network. I never met sistergirl here, but we just shared a few names that we’ve got in common. How’s that, man? We haven’t got a computer system or something, she just told me where she comes from. And there’s the rub, I think. I know that place and the people there. I know her people. There’s a connectedness. (60-year-old male, Aboriginal, Dubbo)

1   “Get the service taken out of the community” In 2012, a series of news stories were published detailing escalating “blood feuds”, “family rivalries” and “warring clans” in remote Indigenous communities. The stories reported “violent clashes” in the streets, bashings, riots—all apparently sparked by comments posted on Facebook and Divas Chat. The mayor of one town said social media had caused “bloodshed” in almost every Indigenous community in Queensland. “I personally intervened to help police stop a family street brawl over some slander”, he said (Herald Sun 2012). “We have created an ugly monster.” The claim was that social media “give people a chance to inflame delicate situations, and in small and already tense communities one wrong word could be © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_3

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enough to ignite violence”, as one journalist wrote (Cairns Post 2012). There were reports of Indigenous leaders calling for a total ban of social media to calm these tensions. “We’re screaming out for help here”, one said (Packham 2012). “The problem is Facebook and Twitter has been abused. There’s a problem with how children and people use it. It has caused nothing but problems in relation to family feuds. I’m asking for anyone to help us and to get the service taken out of the community.” Meanwhile, another narrative about social media ‘communities’ was circulating: community Facebook pages being used by non-Indigenous people to vilify, threaten and organise violence against Indigenous people who also lived in their towns. Across remote and regional towns, Facebook pages were established to complain about crime and point the finger squarely at Indigenous residents: ‘Alice Springs Residents Have Had Enough’, ‘Name, Shame and Crimes Kalgoorlie’, ‘Only in Midland’. “The particularly disturbing [comments] for me are the calls for violence”, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda explained (Horn 2012). “‘I’m going to kill someone with a long sword’, or ‘Let’s get a vigilante group together’”, he listed as examples. These intersections between social media and community contrast starkly with the corporate branding offered by platforms such as Facebook, which promise the connections they facilitate will produce, diversify and strengthen ‘community’. One of Facebook’s core principles is to ‘Build Connection and Community’. “Our services help people connect”, their company page claims, “and when they’re at their best, they bring people closer together” (Facebook 2021). Indeed, the promise of community has been a staple of internet discourse since the technology was first popularised, coupled with the belief that the organic connections formed online would be productive of ‘purer’ kinds of community, marked by mutual interest, truly voluntary association, and communal care. But these Silicone Valley discourses of community are, usually, notably dematerialised—existing not in physical space, not integrated into the territories of material life, but only in the supposedly ‘virgin’ and incorporeal space of digital virtuality. This understanding of community is one totally decontextualised, dehistoricised and exorcised from the very real, messy and highly heterogeneous social formations that comprise actual, living communities. This lack of material and historical grounding is particularly problematic when attempting to understand specifically Indigenous communities. On the one hand, Indigenous people have culturally and politically specific

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understandings of what actually constitutes ‘community’ (Peters-Little 2000). For many Indigenous people, community is both the core unit and central value of social life; it is inseparable from the material reality of Country, and the places, people, nonhumans and relations that comprise it. On the other hand, it is clear that social media technologies intersect with Indigenous communities in differential ways. Across the 2000s, for instance, as the Australian government began rolling out national broadband infrastructure, many remote Indigenous communities received internet connections much later than their urban counterparts—an imbalance that was often described as the ‘digital divide’, and which needed to be ‘bridged’ and ‘closed’ (McCallum and Papandrea 2009; Ormond-Parker et al. 2013). Moreover, communities are not passive ‘users’ of digital technologies; instead, technologies are always appropriated in culturally specific ways, depending on how communities are already socially ordered, what cultural and social practices are embedded within the community, and what needs, desires and hopes the community holds (Srinivasan 2013). In our first research project, we were interested in how social media was interacting with, problematising and changing what is meant by ‘community’ for Indigenous people. We asked: What have the consequences of social media been for Indigenous communities? What forms of ‘community’ are emerging online? And what consequences might there be for collective Indigenous futures? The people we spoke to expressed a huge variety of views on digital Indigenous communities: that community was always, irreducibly material, and could never be established online; that it was producing the kinds of tensions described in the sensationalist news reporting above; and that it was enabling people to nurture important connections with community—with the people and places and cultural knowledges that comprise Indigenous communal life. The further the project proceeded, the more profound and complex the idea of ‘digital communities’ seemed to become: It expanded outwards to include different and even new forms of social orders, which may or may not be considered outright ‘communities’, but shared many of the same characteristics of belonging, identity, solidarity and care. This chapter looks at Indigenous forms of digital ‘community’ beyond both the narratives of social decline and the sunny corporate branding of platforms like Facebook. In the next section, we outline some of the discourses and histories of ‘community’ that circulate around both digital communities and Indigenous communities. We then unpack what we came to see as two relatively distinct forms of community that have

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emerged through social media: ‘kinship communities’, grounded in relations between peoples and places; and ‘identity communities’, which form around particular subjective experiences 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 instance, we look specifically at a subgroup within the broader Indigenous community: the articulations of digital community by gay Indigenous men.

2   The Problem of Community Social scientists have long identified the ‘community’ as one of the fundamental units of society, alongside the more intimate ‘family’ and broader, more political ‘nation’ (Staeheli 2008). Community is a distinct social structure; it is a form of life, giving ‘order’ to peoples, places and things. At the broadest level, it is often aligned with notions of solidarity between its members, shared spaces, identities, values and beliefs. Community, much like ‘motherhood’, is invariably imbued with positive connotations; it is usually idealised, posited as an antidote to modern life, with its social ills, alienation and dysfunction. In this way, as Dudgeon et al. (2002, 8) note, “it is a highly politicised notion”. However, the concept has long remained a problematic one. First, as Evans (2013, 70) writes, “the term has been used to describe a dizzying variety of social formations”. Communities are always defined by the particular connections and attachments from which they’re composed. ‘Traditional’ forms of community, for instance, are usually understood as being composed of connections between ‘a people’ and ‘a place’. There is, in this ideal model, a direct correlation between a material space and the people that occupy that area. These placed-based communities are but one form of socio-spatial arrangement, however. Communities can be formed around a great variety of social and material forms, beyond a physical territory, including shared identities, values, practices, subcultures or political visions. They can be composed of relatively durable or ephemeral ‘ties’, and marked by high or low degrees of overall ‘cohesiveness’ (Bennett and Segerberg 2012). Second, community—as this site of mutual belonging and solidarity—is always provisional, always in flux, always in transition. Staeheli (2008) characterises community as a ‘problem’.

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[C]ommunity is where contests are waged over membership and the political subjects and subjectivities that ‘belong’ in a political community. Community is contested, struggled over. Sometimes this leads to a radical openness. Sometimes community is subject to strict control and discipline. (Staeheli 2008, 7)

They describe this contested process of becoming-community as ‘agonism’. “They are difficult to negotiate”, Staeheli (2008, 7) writes, “constituted as they are by different rationalities, moral values, and imaginations of what is possible”. As Benedict Anderson (1983) famously argued, all communities are, in a sense, imagined; while they are always grounded in an arrangement of real relations between things, places, peoples and ideas, there is always an imaginative or mythological element to communities (see also chapter “Histories”). This collective imagining means that the community always remains more or less unsettled, and it can always be made anew—moving towards more open and inclusive social arrangements, or more closed and exclusive arrangements. Finally, scholars have associated modernity with the slow decay of these communal forms of attachment, particularly place-based sociality and the corresponding territorially defined community. Putnam (2000) declared the decline of civic engagement in his classic text ‘Bowling Alone’, in which he charts the erosion of communal social forms and corresponding rates of social capital, which he defines as “features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit” (2000, 2). Several major forces have been identified as instigating this ‘social decapitalisation’, including industrialisation, its migratory effects in pushing people from rural to urban societies, the movement of women into the labour force, the weakening of ‘collectivist’ politics, and the rise of individualist ideologies that dominate life under neoliberal forms of capitalism. The digital revolution was initially coupled with a distinct utopian dreaming; it was meant to bring into being purer, more egalitarian, and more democratic forms of community. Indeed, digital communal life was seen by many as the antidote to the alienation and atomisation in modern life described by Putnam. People would no longer be bowling alone, but bowling together, though digitally. The proliferation of digital connections was seen as bringing a promise of “truly global and transcultural relationships,” as Evans (2013, 82) writes.

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Cyberspace offered a new space for differently constituted communities to flourish. It was imagined as a virgin territory which could be shaped and developed according to a different set of values than those which predominated in the physical spaces of our world. If traditional communities were about sharing social spaces replete with inequalities, then these could be superseded by open, democratic, placeless cyberspaces in which inequalities of wealth, class, gender and ethnicity had no purchase. (Evans 2013, 82)

The digital revolution brought with it cheap, ubiquitous and instant forms of connection with others, no longer constrained by the geographical boundaries of old. Instead, entirely new relations could be produced through the instantaneous and free exchange of ideas and knowledge. Today, we can see these digital communities are, indeed, highly heterogeneous, but tend to differ from placed-based communities by scope (often marked by much larger networks), temporality (they can arise much more quickly and are often more ephemeral), composition of members (including more diverse audiences and overlapping publics), and their strength of ties (i.e., they’re often comprised of much looser, weaker ties). In doing so, digital life has radically reshaped social relations, allowing new, highly heterogeneous and “differently constituted communities to flourish” (Evans 2013, 82). Evidently, however, the digital revolution did not quite produce a utopian future of endless social renewal through vast networks of overlapping communities of interest, care and support. Instead, digital modes of sociality have been correlated with the continued dematerialisation of communities and, in many cases, a decline in social capital. Likewise, they have transposed many of the problems of more traditional forms of communities; communities of care, hope and belonging have been matched by communities of exclusion, inequality, hatred and violence (see chapter “Hate”). 2.1  Indigenous Communities Discussions of digital communities have tended to overlook culturally specific practices, values and understandings of community, instead assuming a normalised white subject. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of community for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. As the National Aboriginal Education Committee states, “Aboriginal society is structured around the community” (1986, 2). While there is certainly a

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general resemblance between Indigenous and mainstream understandings of community, there are significant points of divergence too, due to differences in social structures, cosmologies, cultural practice and connection to place. Indeed, Dudgeon et  al. (2002) note that there is “no definitive position on the notion of ‘community’” among Indigenous people; instead, in their qualitative research, they found a rich “diversity and pluralism amongst what is broadly termed ‘the Aboriginal community’” (2002, 2). Most centrally, however, Indigenous conceptions of community tend to be grounded in sovereign relations to place and relations of care and responsibility to family, kin and ancestors (Fredericks 2013). And notably, being member to a community affords one not only certain rights from community, but also obligations to community: “Members of these communities may have various responsibilities and obligations that confirm and reinforce their membership within these communities”, Dudgeon et al. explain (2002, 16). These obligations, far from being a social ‘burden’, are instead fundamental sources of strength and well-being for Indigenous people; they are, as Gibson, Dudgeon and Crockett (2020, 201) argue, “a protective factor for cultural well-being”. Significantly, for Indigenous peoples, there is a close relationship between notions of community and identity (Akama et al. 2017; Fredericks 2013). Indeed, this link is formally embedded within the Confirmation of Aboriginality process, which rests on the ‘three pillars’ of ancestry, identification to community and identification by community (see chapter “Identity”). It is a mutually reinforcing relation: if one is Aboriginal, then one belongs to the Aboriginal community; if one is recognised by the Aboriginal community as Aboriginal, then one is Aboriginal. Indigenous communities are not, however, utopian sites of harmony, hope and solidarity. Instead, there is a complex, contested politics of belonging, particularly for subjects who don’t necessarily fit the accepted ‘norm’, such as LGBTIQ+ folk (O’Sullivan 2019). On the one hand, Indigenous communities are simultaneously pathologised and romanticised by settlers. As the opening stories illustrate, there is an enduring settler narrative of Indigenous communities as rife with violence, marked by dysfunction and decline, and characterised as a danger to the settler social order more broadly. Dudgeon et al. (2002) explain this pejorative narrative harks back to older dichotomies between the ‘civilised’ communities of the West and the ‘primitive’ and the ‘savage’ communities of Indigenous peoples. Simultaneously, however, another enduring narrative has simplified, romanticised and idealised Indigenous communities,

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positing them as an antidote to modern life, with its social ills, alienation, dysfunction and ruthless individualism; in contrast, Indigenous communities are framed as living in ‘harmony’ with nature, as caring, generous, non-­materialist, collectivist, and poor in material life but rich in spirit (Bargallie 2020, 46; Fredericks 2013). While this latter narrative links Indigenous communities with much more positive connotations, it is no less problematic than the dysfunction narrative: Both draw on simplistic, racist discourses and are divorced from the much richer, more complex reality of actual, living Indigenous communities. On the other hand, Indigenous scholars have noted that ‘community’ is a Western, and therefore imported concept, often imposed on Indigenous people through colonisation rather than already existing in their culture. Critics point out, too, that many Indigenous communities themselves are the direct product of colonisation—the result of policies of containment, segregation, land enclosure and assimilation, which saw disparate groups of Aboriginal people forcibly lumped together on missions and reserves (Moreton-Robinson 2015). These ‘communities’ were established to control and ‘cure’ Aboriginal people of nomadism so they were useful to white employers. Later again, in the 1970s under the Whitlam government, ‘community’ became a more directly political term used to enable the government to distribute funds for welfare programs and the delivery of services to Aboriginal people. It was seen as the medium which would automatically be culturally appropriate, democratic, and at the same time politically and socially acceptable to the majority of Australians. (Peters-Little 2000, np)

This political history, however, does not take away the cultural and social significance of community for Indigenous people. Ideas and practices of community have been taken up by Indigenous groups, injected with many layers of meaning, cultural value and significance, and have become central units of social organisation and political expression. “Aboriginal people have adopted, modified and internalised the western notion of community and attributed meaning to it”, Dudgeon et  al. explain (2002, 4). Moreover, notions of Indigenous community have been mobilised in political struggles over Indigenous futures. Australian settler colonisation aimed directly towards the fragmentation and elimination of collective forms of Indigenous life. In this context, Dudgeon et al.

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highlight both the importance, then, and difficulty of building community in the face of colonisation. While Indigenous communities are a site of much disagreement, conflict and fragmentation—“a reality for any community”, Dudgeon et al. note (2002, 4, emphasis added)—they are also significant sites of cultural autonomy, political agency and Indigenous resistance (Akama et al. 2017). As the opening stories illustrate, however, social media have brought ambivalent implications for Indigenous communities. While they enable the maintenance of relationships over distance, the expression of Indigenous national sovereignty, the extension of care to loved ones, and the sharing of cultural knowledge and practice, they can also lead to the atomisation of community members, a disincentive to engage with community, and the escalation of violence (Rennie et al. 2018; McCallum and Papandrea 2009). While news reporting on the issue has generally been highly sensationalist, there are also widespread, legitimate concerns about the deleterious effects of the internet on Indigenous communities and culture, and fears that social media is undermining traditional forms of community authority and conflict resolution. Important questions have emerged, then, around how to ensure that digital technologies help build, strengthen and maintain strong, supportive communities, instead of increasing and ramifying already-existing social issues (Akama et al. 2017). For the remainder of this chapter, we unpack some of the ideas, practices and politics of Indigenous community as they’re articulated through digital platforms. We draw on interviews conducted with Indigenous social media users across the country. While the first of our three major projects focused explicitly on digital communities, the importance and ‘problem’ of community arose again and again in fieldwork for all our later projects. In the following two sections, we outline two more or less distinct forms of community that have emerged through social media, which we describe as kinship communities and identity communities. As we show, each are characterised by a relatively stable geographical formation, composed of a core set of relations between people and relations to place, and a particular political vision. These Indigenous digital communities, we argue, arise as working solutions to a set of concrete problems, grounded in Indigenous solidarity and continuity.

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3   Kinship Communities In our first research project, we asked people whether social media made them feel like they were connected to community, whether there could be ‘Indigenous communities’ on social media, and whether social media was changing what is meant by ‘the Indigenous community’. The responses these questions elicited were diverse, to say the least. For some participants, community was identical with a concrete, territorially defined social group, based on collectively sanctioned kinship ties; community was something that happened in ‘the real world’, on Country and with kin. For others, social media not only connected them to community, it was community—it was through the connections made online that they sustained a sense of belonging to a place and people. In this first section, we unpack some of these complexities and look at social media’s entanglements with what we’re describing as ‘kinship communities’. Indigenous cultures are ‘kincentric’, Dudgeon and Bray (2019, 3) explain, characterised by complex, interwoven relationalities, “encompassing complex relationships with place, with the land (earth, waterways, sky), and the more-than-human (animal, plant and spirit)”. We understand kinship communities, then, as characterised by strong ties of relationality, based on genealogy, heritage and family descent, and which occupy a shared spatial location determined by collective ties to Country. There are strong material, cultural and historical ties mediating social relations in kinship communities, and there is thus a certain significance, gravity and mutual reciprocality that do not exist in other communal relations. 3.1  A Continuation of the ‘Great Black Bond’ Basically, all participants agreed that social media allowed them to build, maintain and nurture kinship connections with community—including family, friends, places and the everyday goings-on of community. Particularly when you’ve got a big extended family, some of them you’ve never met in real life, that you can actually readily connect with and make sure those connections are perpetuated and nurtured in a way that you can’t unless you’re living next door to someone. It creates an opportunity to do that over distance. (Female, 36 Melbourne)

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I was living in remote Western Australia. I was isolated, and so, to feel a sense of community, I was on Twitter a lot. So I felt still connected to other Aboriginal people, even though I was in quite isolated places. (Male, 35, Mangarayi and Torres Strait Islander) Facebook is the only interaction I have with the community sometimes. (Female, 48, Wollongong)

Another participant described this as “just a continuation of our Great Black Bond” (Female, 50, Far North Queensland). They explained: Whereas before, you know, something had happened Cairns, Sydney, Melbourne… telephones, somebody’s ringing up, ‘Oh blah, blah, blah’. Well, Facebook’s just faster, more instant. It’s in real time.

The crucial question for us, however, was whether these online connections could, in themselves, be considered an ‘Indigenous community’ (Akama et al. 2017). This proved a provocative proposition for many people. Responses varied greatly, depending on what idea of ‘community’ participants were drawing on. One participant, acknowledging the slipperiness in the term, offered his own definition. “My idea of an Aboriginal community operates at that social level as well as at the cultural level”, he explained. “And so when you’ve got a group of Blackfellas who hang out regularly, that’s a community group.” He continued to explain that this meant, for him, there absolutely were Indigenous communities online. Yeah, so it’s one of those ones things where people go, ‘Oh, you’re going back to community?’ And I’m like, ‘My house is community’ [laughs]. Because that’s where I live. So it’s an interesting phrase that I don’t think is very well defined in any context. But I would also say, in the context of this, that I’m part of the Twitter Aboriginal community. We have a community on Twitter. (Male, 35, Sydney)

Some people explained social media was not only sustaining communities, it was changing them—both what community meant and how it was practiced. Again, one participant defined community as knowing your family and kin and being tied to the same place. “I think it is changing it,” he reflected (Male, 35, Sydney).

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I think, me growing up in Sydney and going back to Cowra and travelling down the coast and doing all that sort of stuff, you knew who your family was, you knew how you were related, and you went to the same places. I think, now what we’re seeing is we’re able to interact with communities that we have no relationship with, and come in through someone that we have known. It is still a traditional way of communication going on, but it’s giving us a new form. … So it will create a way for kids to access a lot more experience to create their identity than just with their family, per se. Which is how we were brought up. (Emphasis added)

He further explained that key community practices, which once took place in person, are now being performed online. We always laugh about the power talks that go on aren’t done at the big meetings, they’re done behind the scenes now. And if you went up to a big community meeting, a lot of the power brokers don’t say much. They walk away to a cafe down the road and that’s where everything gets sorted. I think that’s starting to more go onto that social media. (Male, 35, Sydney)

Other people we spoke to, however, were more ambivalent about whether online networks in themselves constituted communities. One person stated, for instance: “There are clearly identifiable Aboriginal sites you can know and get involved in, have discussions on and whatever” (Male, 55, Adelaide). They equivocated, however, on whether this constituted an actual ‘Aboriginal community’. So in a sense it is a community, it’s an online community, you can connect with people that aren’t necessarily family, but who can actually keep a lot of Aboriginal people connected in terms of what might be happening in a given region.

Another participant described both community and Facebook as being about sustaining connections with and extending care to others. “From my point of view, Facebook is, for the majority of people, it’s about community. It’s about connecting with other people, and that’s what community is” (Female, 25, Adelaide). They continued to explain that “A community is a place where you go and be supported and heard and feel like people care about your opinion.” Again, however, they stopped short of equating social media communities with Indigenous communities. “So I do think there are places within Facebook that if you use it correctly, it

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could be that”, they said. “But I don’t necessarily know if people use it that way” (Female, 25, Adelaide). And again, another participant explained: We can’t undervalue these sorts of virtual communities that we set up. So they’ve got meaning and, you know, they do fill a space. They break down those barriers of land and distance in order to actually link people together. So people do form networks and friendships and inspire each other through it. (Female, 36, Arrernte)

But when asked directly if online networks were Indigenous communities, they also weren’t sure. “To an extent,” they said. “But I think that we always still need that physical connection.” 3.2  Community Is outside Social Media Many others we spoke to were much more confident in this clear, concrete delineation between ‘community’ and the networks formed with other Indigenous people through social media. While closely entangled, they explained, community and social media were irreducible. When asked if there is an identifiable community online, one person admitted that it certainly provided many benefits to communities. “I think it can get the word out there, and kind of help communities in rural areas sort of connect a bit more” (Female, 22, South Coast NSW). But they disagreed they could ever be considered, in themselves, communities: I don’t know if community is the right word, because it’s not. It’s via Facebook. You could put your family up there, but they’re not your family unless you’re seeing them face-to-face. So I think like a support type network, like a network’s on Facebook, but I don’t see how it’s a community. Because community is outside social media. This is the local community, right here. (emphasis added)

The importance of this ‘real’, physical co-presence for community-­ making was emphasised again and again by participants, particularly in relation to ‘really’ knowing who you’re connected to online. I think [community] has to be in the real world, where you know who is who. [There can’t be an online Indigenous community] because you can’t really know if someone is Aboriginal, they could just be making it up. (Female, 24, Wollongong)

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The connection to a physical place—to Country—was seen as fundamental to some participants’ understanding of what constitutes community. “I don’t see social networks as a community”, one person explained. “So if you’re being recognised in your community, it’s got to be where you’re from—your land, your home, the dirt” (Female, 22, South Coast NSW). In these instances, the participants’ understanding of community aligns closely with that offered by Dudgeon et al. (2002, 3) as comprised of “a sense of belonging, based along family lines, and ‘country’ or area of origin”. 3.3   Social Media Is Undermining Community Not only did social media networks not constitute a community, for many participants, they presented a very real threat to the strength and coherence of kinship communities. One person explained that the connections formed on social media, and those formed between people who came together physically, were irreducible—the latter aligning with Indigenous lifeways, the former undermining them. Because I think that Indigenous values and beliefs are centred around story-­ telling and being around each other and like having that family orientation. But I think if the future is that—being on a social network—then that’s kind of taking away the culture. (Female, 22, South Coast NSW)

Participants described a range of social issues that social media had brought into their communities, including conflict, bullying and social alienation. Well we gotta watch that sort of stuff anyway, don’t we? But how it impacts the community, you see a lot of them there: ‘Ah, there’s the fight!’ And they’re walking past it and it’s on Facebook. That’s how they found out, and they’re on their way to go there. (Male, 30, Regional NSW)

In one small South Australian community, participants explained how the relatively recent introduction of Facebook had seemed to lead to widespread youth social disengagement. Facebook changed it. People used to play sports in the afternoon, go out and do things around the community. As soon as this Facebook thing came to [the community], it stopped everything. Young people always on

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Facebook, too much. We try to tell people to come do sports, always on Facebook. So see people going to someone’s house, always on Facebook. (Female, 24, Remote South Australia) When there was no Facebook, people do things. [It] changed everybody. Some friends don’t get to play with one another. Facebook separates friends. (Female, 22, Remote South Australia) Like some people stay in bed on Facebook instead of going to work. They’re really addicted to it. (Female, 29, Remote South Australia)

One participant offered a diagnosis of the problem of social media for community, explaining that “Facebook really amplifies, or has the potential to amplify any negativity that’s going on.” Noting the generational divide in social media use, they told us: In a lot of communities where a lot of adults aren’t on Facebook, it creates that sort of ‘Lord of the Flies’ space, where the kids can really amplify that, and there’s no one to come in and say ‘Cut that shit out.’ (Male, 35, Sydney)

For these people, then, not only did the networks sustained on social media not constitute ‘community’, they were actively undermining actual kinship communities, leading to social issues, including fighting, social disengagement and the circumvention of Elder authority. A far cry from the founding vision of social media as a place for friends, in this community, “Facebook separates friends”.

4   Identity Communities The dominant utopian vision of online communities was one in which we transcended the territorially defined, place-based communities of old— defined as they were by parochial, material, largely involuntary connections to place and people—and instead engaged in the seamless production of ‘virtual’ communities centred on identities, practices, interests and values that freely crossed geopolitical boundaries. In this vision, Evans (2013, 81) explains, “We elect instead to spend more time with people whom we have identified as sharing common interests rather than merely the accident of common spaces”. These communities were envisaged as purer, more consensual, free of the problems of spatially bound communities.

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This vision has, to some degree, come to fruition. There exist rapidly proliferating communities in manifold digital spaces—blogs, message boards, news media comment sections, social media—which centre on extraordinarily diverse and more or less specific categories of sociality: bird watchers, people who graduated from a particular school in a particular year, neo-nazis, Indigenous people from a certain clan group—any set of subjective markers can become the relevant centre of a digital community. In many of these spaces, people feel a great sense of belonging, attachment and safety. These communities become alive through a certain sense that the members identify with one another. Whereas kinship communities are composed of people with heterogeneous subjectivities (mother, son, cousin, youth, Elder, and so on), online communities are often composed of relatively homogeneous subjectivities. In other words, while the former are defined by relations of filiation, the latter are defined by those of affiliation. These communities are therefore often ‘flatter’ in structure than kinship communities, which are almost invariably hierarchical, comprising many different kinds of subjects, marked by different power relations and responsibilities. Identity communities have long been important for people with marginalised identities, such as those from racial, religious, gender and cultural groups outside the mainstream. The function of these communities is, generally, to affirm, sustain and strengthen diverse subject formations and their existential flourishing (O’Sullivan 2019). The ‘gay community’ is one such communal formation. Non-­ heterosexual and other queer identities have long been socially, culturally and legally maligned, excluded and policed through discourse, physical violence and law. Consequently, the creation of ‘safe spaces’ has been both a central function and communal achievement of gay and queer communities, which Roth (2016, 441) defines as “locations within which queer visibility becomes normative and therefore inherently less dangerous”. Historically, gay spaces of community and safety often manifested through what Roth (2016, 441) describes as “concentrated, hyper-visible queerness in particular urban areas”, such as New  York’s West Village and Sydney’s Kings Cross. These are more or less formalised spaces of communal belonging which gay and queer subjects can inhabit with less danger to their physical and existential safety. Broad-level discussions of the ‘gay community’, however, often iron over the heterogeneity of subjects and the experiences of members, and elide the many disagreements members have over what, if anything,

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constitutes the gay community (Miles 2017). Some of the participants in Holt’s (2011, 862) study, for instance, “suggested the term gay community implied a sense of unity or uniformity that did not exist”. Others believed it did exist, but they are not part of it; others believed it used to exist but has since faded away. The vision of a ‘unified’ gay community also ignores the many tensions within the communities—between different generations of gay people, people who are either HIV-positive or HIV-negative, and those who do and those who don’t participate in the gay commercial party scene, for instance. 4.1  Colonisation and Indigenous LGBTIQ+ Communities Another serious point of tension in the gay male community concerns issues of race and racism (Holt 2011). In Australia, the gay community often largely reflects a hegemonic, white, masculine body, and Asian, Indian, and Black peoples often face social exclusion and racial abuse by other gay men. In this sense, Indigenous gay men in Australia are often doubly invisibilised and marginalised. Our colleague, Andrew Farrell (2017), has explored the racist, homophobic, and transphobic abuse Indigenous LGBTIQ+ people receive on social media, including dating apps. This abuse comes from both outside and inside the Indigenous community; and both inside and outside the queer community. Many Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, Farrell shows, argue that queer identities are not part of ‘traditional’ Aboriginal culture, but are instead a colonial import (see also O’Sullivan 2019). In direct contrast, Farrell argues that it is in fact the dominant gender and sexuality norms in Australia that are a product of colonisation: “[S]ince European contact”, they write, “Indigenous Australians have been stripped of their diverse and customary sexual and gendered practices through the imposition of a new social and cultural order or ‘cultural default’” (2017, 1). In our chapter “Desire”, we discuss a similar tension, unpacking moments of anti-­ Indigenous racism on dating apps, showing how the notion of ‘sexual racism’—in which one person merely ‘prefers’ one racialised body over another—is often in fact a mask for classic biological racism. Both Farrell’s work and our discussion demonstrate clearly the need for safe spaces specifically for gay and queer Indigenous people. Farrell identifies a diverse, sprawling, already-existing network of online spaces for and by Indigenous queer folk, including “Black Rainbow, Sistergirls and Brotherboys Australia, Sisters and Brothers NT …, Anwernekenhe

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Us-Mob, Moolagoo Mob, and Black Lemons” (2017, 4). Farrell shows that Indigenous LGBTIQ+ people are reclaiming their identity in these spaces, which are established and flourish somewhat outside the policing eye of colonisation. For the remainder of this chapter, we look a little more closely at this form of identity community online: the web of relations between specifically gay Indigenous men on social media. We show that the forms of community social media offer these Indigenous men are significant spaces of life, connection and care: where they can build relations that buffer against dual forces of racism and homophobia. 4.2  Online Affirmation of Queer Indigenous Identities In our help-seeking project, we asked participants to reflect on how social media could sustain relations of care and support. For many of the people we spoke to who identified as LGBTIQ+, this function was particularly important—providing them with spaces in which their identities were affirmed. Dameyon Bonson, founder of Black Rainbow, described this as a central purpose of the organisation. It started online so that Aboriginal and Torres Strait LGBTIQ people who felt isolated could log on and see themselves positively reflected and also part of the broader community, to give them a sense of feeling connected, and that it’s okay to be them. And that’s some of the feedback that we’ve had, that it actually does that, particularly in remote settings.

Two people we spoke to, who lived in small towns where there wasn’t otherwise much support for LGBTIQ+ Indigenous folk, described this exact function. And I’m gay, so I go on there and there’s a lot of gay people I can contact. You just read their comments and, like I say, I keep in contact. You talk to people, like, about things that you couldn’t talk to your family about, know what I mean? There are other people going through the same stuff as you’re going through. (Gay female, 30, Regional NSW) I’ve had a very long history with the internet and hooking up. It’s like, you know, online chat rooms were the place where I was able to express myself as a little country boy who should not have been online at that age talking to those men. But I was interested and curious. (Gay male, 30, NSW)

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Daniel, above, went on to explain that he was also part of a ‘drag family’ online, and social media constituted a significant space of connection, care and support. Online, in the queer Indigenous context … we have separate kinds of groups on Instagram for sharing different bits and pieces of photos. Because I do a bit of drag as well, so I’m part of a drag family. So there’s also our drag group Facebook and things like that. So there’s definitely that regional kind of queer Black stuff. Myself and both my drag sisters, we tried to set up a kind of regional queer support group. (Gay male, 30, NSW)

He said the connections formed online allowed him—“a little country boy”—to participate in much larger identity communities, centred on queerness, that cut across major geopolitical boundaries. On Twitter, I’ve connected with a lot of queer First Nations mob from Turtle Island [North America]. We started out sharing one another’s stuff on Twitter, and then it moved over into the Twitter DMs [direct messages], and then has moved over to Instagram. And then just start to kind of get to know one another’s lives. I’ve never met some of these people, but we know so much about each other, and so it kind of transcends distances.

4.3  Gay Indigenous Communities of Care While social media provided these people with positive representations of gay and queer Indigeneity, some participants explained it also provided more immediately practical functions in times of difficulty, crisis and need. One man from Darwin explained he actively sought to support others through encounters with online discrimination, racism and homophobia. People in the gay community would put up stuff about them being discriminated against, you know, even on those apps like Grindr, they’re our own community that’s meant to support them, but are also so nasty as well. I get really worried about young gay people. So I try to support them when they put stuff up saying how they, you know, are never someone’s ‘type’. Or they screenshot these conversations, really horrible conversations, things that people have said to them through these online apps. Just really hurtful stuff. So I try to support people through that as well. (Gay male, 30, Darwin)

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This rallying around people in need seemed to happen particularly in times of crisis. One man in a far northern Queensland community explained he drew on his online networks when he no longer felt safe at home with his boyfriend. One instance, I had to get out of where I was actually staying, because it was just really bad that night, and I just posted something [on Facebook] like really simple like, ‘Have to get out of here. Can someone just put me up for a night?’ And my good friend, Dave, jumped on there like, ‘I can come and get you now.’ (Gay male, 40, Far North Queensland)

Daniel, who we introduced above, described a situation in which he was using Grindr while visiting Hobart, and started being repeatedly attacked by someone to whom he’d initially connected but then disengaged. This person evidently became angry, began creating profiles, impersonating and demeaning Daniel. “Every time I blocked him, they created a new profile,” he explained. “And then they start abusing me and saying all these things about they’re going to come and kill me, and all this shit”. Without even looking for help, however, he started receiving messages from other men on Grindr, who saw he was being impersonated. But the nice thing was that the Hobart gay community banded together and started helping. I got started getting messages. ‘I think this person’s impersonating you, I’m reporting the profile’. They came together, which is really lovely. They came together and we collectively reported this profile that was impersonating me and being quite aggressive in hindsight.

Recently, there has been debate on exactly how social media is interacting with the gay community (Miles 2017). One dominant argument is often described as the ‘decline theory’: the idea that social media is “making gay community attachment less necessary for gay men to socialize with each other” (Wu and Ward 2018, 6), leading to the community’s gradual demise. Offline communities, in this framing, are distinguished from and directly opposed to online communities, as if the two were in competition, and as if the latter were a threat to the former (Miles 2017). But others have demonstrated that discussion of ‘the gay community’ often irons over the many tensions, disagreements and points of divergence that characterise gay social life. In particular, it overlooks the fact that the gay community is often exclusionary to particular non-mainstream

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subjects, including Indigenous gay men. In this context, the idea of a unified gay community has always been illusory; instead, we need to think through a multiplicity of ‘agonistic’, sometimes overlapping, sometimes divergent sets of social formations. The participants above did not describe a unified ‘gay community’. But this does not erase the importance of the shared sense of experience, identity and belonging many gay Indigenous men have online. As Farrell (2017, 11) argues, queer “solidarity does not necessarily connote a unanimous voice”. The connections forged on social media between gay Indigenous men, though generally characterised by what scholars describe as ‘weaker ties’, are no less important for their apparent immateriality and ephemerality. Instead, the online gay community was understood by these men by what it could do, rather than what it was: it offered a sense of belonging, inclusion and safety; it gave them access to support in times of need; and, to paraphrase Farrell (2017), it queered Indigeneity and it Indigenised queerness.

5   Closing: It’s Giving Us a New Form Social researchers have dedicated much energy to attending to how social media is interacting with, enabling and undermining forms of community. However, there has been little attention to specifically Indigenous conceptions, practices and experiences of community, which are generally marked by strong, deep and reciprocal ties to family, kin and Country. While social media companies tout digital technologies as proliferating communities of care across the supposedly ‘virgin territory’ of cyberspace, news media have tended to focus only on the conflict and dysfunction it appears to bring some Indigenous communities. In this chapter, we sought to complicate both these narratives, instead aiming to understand the ideas, practices and experiences of community as articulated by Indigenous social media users themselves. All participants emphasised clearly the central importance of relationality in community— the enduring, socially sanctioned webs of relations to kin and Country. But they also expressed a deep ambivalence about social media’s role in sustaining and nurturing these relations. For some people, social media was extending kinship connections, reuniting people with lost family, helping them maintain a sense of belonging to place; it was, as one explained, a continuation of what they called the “Great Black Bond”. This can be understood as digital practices of Indigenous sovereignty, in which often geographically diasporic Indigenous people can meet and ‘be’

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together (Akama et al. 2017). For others, however, these networks, while important, could never replace the deeply significant connections to people and place that constituted actual Indigenous communities. As one person told us unequivocally, “community is outside social media”. Social media has clearly allowed entirely new arrangements of community to flourish. Looking specifically at articulations of Indigenous gay communities, the men we spoke to described the crucial function social media played in affirming their identity, allowing them to safely explore modes of being and relationality, and to seek care and support in times of need. While avoiding discussion of a unified ‘gay community’, they obviously took these networked connections seriously and valued them deeply. On the one hand, these connections were clearly related to a sense of well-­ being. As Dudgeon and Bray (2019, 3) explain, community connections “are not merely descriptions of relationships, but also describe ways of living well, laws for strengthening human and more-than-human life, and restoring and nurturing [well-being]”—processes that can be seen at play in participant accounts. On the other hand, these digital technological practices have broader political effects, as Farrell (2017, 8) argues, “facilitat[ing] Indigenous LGBTIQ politics to benefit the wider Indigenous community as it reconceptualises how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities know themselves, their histories and identities”. These accounts bring to light both the importance of community in understanding Indigenous collective identity and sociality, and its cultural particularity and significance. In contrast to the sunny branding of social media companies, promising continuous social renewal, endless connections and the proliferation of communities, Indigenous peoples are collectively working through if and how social media has a place in specifically Indigenous communities; they are drawing on its advantages in forging and sustaining connections, while also remaining suspicious of its promises, limitations and dangers. In each case, online communities are characterised by a more or less stable formation of relations, places and ideas; they are, we argue, working solutions to the myriad problems of belonging, identity and commonality in the context of Australian colonialism. To this end, and in diverse ways, Indigenous digital communities are sites of collective Indigenous agency, always striving towards the strength of Indigenous futures. “It is still a traditional way of communication going on,” as one person explained to us, “but it’s giving us a new form”.

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References Akama, Y., Evans, D., Keen, S., McMillan, F., McMillan, M., & West, P. (2017). Designing digital and creative scaffolds to strengthen Indigenous nations: being Wiradjuri by practising sovereignty. Digital Creativity, 28(1), 58–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2017.1291525 Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities. London: Verso Bargallie, D. (2020). Unmasking the Racial Contract: Indigenous voices on racism in the Australian Public Service. Aboriginal Studies Press. Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Information Communication and Society, 15(5), 739–768. https://doi.org/10.108 0/1369118X.2012.670661 Cairns Post. (2012). The perils of social media. 5 January 2012. Dudgeon, P., Mallard, J., Oxenham, D., & Fielder, J. (2002). Contemporary Aboriginal Perceptions of Community. In Psychological Sense of Community: Research, Applications, and Implications, A. Fisher, C. Sonn & B. Bishop (eds.), New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2002. pp. 247–267. Dudgeon, P., & Bray, A. (2019). Indigenous Relationality: Women, Kinship and the Law. Genealogy, 3(2), 23. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3020023 Evans, K. (2013). Re-Thinking Community in the Digital Age. In Digital Sociology: Critical Perspectives (pp. 79–94). Palgrave Macmillan. Facebook (2021). Our Mission. Available: https://about.fb.com/company-­ info/. Accessed 02/02/2021 Farrell, A. (2017). Archiving the Aboriginal Rainbow: Building an Aboriginal LGBTIQ Portal. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v21i0.1589 Fredericks, B. (2013). “We don’t leave our identities at the city limits”: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in urban localities. Australian Aboriginal Studies, 1, 4–16. Gibson, C., Dudgeon, P., & Crockett, J. (2020). Listen, look & learn: Exploring cultural obligations of Elders and older Aboriginal people. Journal of Occupational Science, 27(2), 193–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/1442759 1.2020.1732228 Herald Sun. (2012). Social media gibes bring feuding clans to blows. 6 January 2012. Holt, M. (2011). Gay men and ambivalence about ‘gay community’: from gay community attachment to personal communities. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 13(8), 857–871. Horn, A. (2012). Threats to kill Aborigines published on Facebook forum. ABC News. 23 April 2012.

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McCallum, K., & Papandrea, F. (2009). Community business: The internet in remote Australian Indigenous communities. New Media and Society, 11(7), 1230–1251. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809342059 Miles, S. (2017). Sex in the digital city: location-based dating apps and queer urban life. Gender, Place & Culture, 24(11), 1595–1610. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. University of Minnesota Press. National Aboriginal Education Committee. (1986). Policy statement on teacher education for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. Australian Government Publishing Service. Ormond-Parker, L., Corn, A. D. S., Obata, K., & O’Sullivan, S. (Eds.). (2013). Information technology and indigenous communities. Canberra, ACT: AIATSIS Research Publications. O’Sullivan, S. (2019). A Lived Experience of Aboriginal Knowledges and Perspectives. Practice Wisdom, 107–112. https://doi.org/10.1163/97 89004410497_010 Packham, L. (2012). Elder wants Facebook ban. Cairns Post. 5 January 2012. Peters-Little, F. (2000). The community game: Aboriginal self-definition at the local level. http://repositorio.unan.edu.ni/2986/1/5624.pdf Putnam, R.  D. (2000). Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. In Culture and politics (pp. 223–234). Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Rennie, E., Yunkaporta, T., & Holcombe-James, I. (2018). Cyber Safety in Remote Aboriginal Communities: Final Report (Issue June). Roth, Y. (2016). Zero feet away: the digital geography of gay social media. Journal of Homosexuality, 63(3), 437–442. Srinivasan, R. (2013). Re-thinking the cultural codes of new media: The question concerning ontology. New Media and Society, 15(2), 203–223. https://doi. org/10.1177/1461444812450686 Staeheli, L. A. (2008). Citizenship and the problem of community. Political geography, 27(1), 5–21. Wu, S., & Ward, J. (2018). The mediation of gay men’s lives: A review on gay dating app studies. Sociology Compass, 12(2), e12560.

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1   Introduction: The Varieties of Online Hate Twitter is a midden in which trolls run wild and free. (@clairegcoleman (2020)) [R]ace and racism persist online in ways that are both new and unique to the Internet, alongside vestiges of centuries-old forms that reverberate both offline and on. (Jessie Daniels (2013, 2))

Racism is a digital chameleon, continuously shifting its appearance to the new environments social media makes possible. In coding our archive of news media on Indigenous people’s use of social media (see chapter “Openings: The Social Life of Indigenous Social Media”), the categories ‘racism’, ‘hatred’ and ‘abuse’ were far and away the most populated: a police officer, using a Facebook profile under the pseudonym ‘Anne T Sharia’—a homophone of ‘anti-Sharia’—harasses and degrades an Indigenous political campaigner; a white business owner sends abusive messages, death and rape threats to an Indigenous politician through her official Facebook profile; a Facebook page for a community in remote central Australia becomes a hub of racism against Aboriginal residents, with non-Aboriginal residents calling for vigilante violence against them and their removal from the town; Gomeroi man Scott Trindall, as a week-­ long experiment, decides to log off Twitter every time he encounters © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_4

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racism—invariably, he logs off within ten minutes. “Every time you see racist content,” he explains later, “it affects you”. This is a far cry from the founding vision of digital social life. When the internet was in its infancy, many people believed it would call into being a new ‘disembodied’ society, in which social divisions based on race, and the expression of racism, would become a relic of a primitive, analogue past. We would all be “escaping racial identity through disembodied text,” Daniels writes (2013, 5). While early tech engineers, visionaries and journalists heralded ‘the internet age’ as ushering in this new, supposedly ‘post-race’ society, the reality has clearly been very different. Instead of this raceless utopian dreaming, now almost laughable in its naiveté, scholars have shown how race has been central to the development, structure and everyday life of the internet (Chun 2009; Daniels 2013; Nakamura and Chow-White 2012; Benjamin 2019). Technology is generally coded as politically ‘neutral’—despite it having distinct racial and geographical histories (Daniels 2013). The dominant technological narrative, particularly for internet and digital technologies, is that it is the remit of white people; the computer is imagined as the creation of a handful of white male geniuses, all wearing sneakers and hoodies while working from open-spaced offices in a highly localised area of coastal California. In contrast, as Brock Jnr (2020) argues, Brown and Black people are generally coded as a people without technology. More saliently, cultures of everyday racist hatred have flourished online (Daniels 2013; Gillespie 2018; Klein 2017). The internet has become the “natural hunting ground” (Jakubowicz et  al. 2017, 2) of people and groups seeking to express, share and spread racist hate, broadly understood as “beliefs, attitudes, institutional agreements, and acts that tend to denigrate individuals and groups because of phenotypic characteristics or ethnic group affiliations” (Clark et  al. 1999, 805). Scholars have documented how the internet—including “its structures, properties, and, most of all, its digital culture” (Klein 2017, 4)—have facilitated the resurgence of racism and hate speech (Gillespie 2018; Suzor 2019). Racist groups, including fascists, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists, were early, eager and able adopters of internet technologies (Bliuc et al. 2018). Websites, blogs, listservs, forums and email lists became key technologies in promoting, spreading and sharing racist ideology. The internet has allowed these groups to give legitimacy to their propaganda, engaging deftly with various technologies, rhetorical strategies and design features to ‘launder’ their violent views into seemingly sensible facts—what Klein describes as a process through which “false information … is washed clean by a system

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of advantageous associations” (2017, 26). The introduction and fast domination of social media technologies over the last 15 years has only intensified the internet’s capacity to propagate and launder these forms of racial hatred, a fact highlighted in the opening stories of racist abuse against Indigenous Australians. In this chapter, we seek to understand some of these intersections between social media and the racialisation of Indigenous people. Drawing on a wide range of empirical materials, we analyse four relatively distinct arrangements of racism platformed on social media, each characterised by different sets of practices, relations and geographies. Rather than understanding online racism as an unfortunate by-product of an otherwise ‘neutral’ 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.

2   Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Racialisation and ‘Possessiveness’ Racism is certainly nothing new in Australia. A settler colony founded on notions of Indigenous inferiority and White right to Indigenous land, the nation has never fully reconciled with its racist foundations. Building on the seminal work of Patrick Wolfe (2006), Tuck and Gaztambide-­ Fernández (2013) describe the settler project as one of ‘replacement’, “which aims to vanish Indigenous peoples and replace them with settlers, who see themselves as the rightful claimants to land, and indeed, as indigenous”. This is what Aboriginal scholar Moreton-Robinson (2015, xi) describes as the ‘possessive logics’ of settler colonialism, which they define as “a mode of rationalization … that produce[s] a more or less inevitable answer, that is underpinned by an excessive desire to invest in reproducing and reaffirming the nation-state’s ownership, control, and domination”. The racialisation of Indigenous people must be understood in the context of this settler desire to remove and replace Indigenous people. In settler colonies, race operates as a form of power, distinguishing between ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ peoples and, correspondingly, rightful and undeserved occupiers of the land. In this way, Moreton-Robinson (2015, xx) explains, “racialization is the process by which whiteness operates possessively to define and construct itself as the pinnacle of its own racial hierarchy”—a possessiveness that seeks to legitimise settler claim to Indigenous land. Across the various policy eras, we can see these dual settler logics of replacement and possession at work (Sherwood 2013). From the frontier

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violence, in which settlers massacred Indigenous resisters, through to policies that defined Indigenous people out of existence, contained them on reserves, sought to biologically absorb them into the general population, erase their cultural difference by assimilating them into settler society, or by claiming that the past has been reconciled—these are the concrete and devastating realisations of racist ideology, aimed towards the elimination and replacement of Indigenous peoples and possession of their land. While Indigenous elimination, segregation and assimilation are no longer official government policy, racist views of Indigeneity remain alive and well (Bodkin-Andrews 2013). The ‘old racisms’, based on notions of Indigenous biological inferiority, may no longer be quite so widely held, but a range of potent ‘new racisms’ have emerged to take their place. These new racisms reproduce instead ideas of cultural and social inferiority, in which Indigenous people are seen as anathema to the so-called Australian ‘way of life’. These racial meanings are borne out in a range of derogative, pejorative stereotypes about Indigenous people’s moral character, cultural beliefs and social practices—such as their supposed laziness, criminality or alcoholism. They also work to differentiate between supposedly ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’ Indigenous people. Aboriginal scholar Bronwyn Fredericks (2013) notes how, despite more than 70 per cent of Indigenous peoples living in urban areas, ‘urban’ Aboriginal people are often thought of as somehow ‘less Indigenous’ than those who live ‘in the bush’. Fredericks (2013, 6) observed that Indigenous people are “often locked into a cultural paradigm that is a romanticised notion of the precolonial past”. Settler imaginaries seek to homogenise and vilify Indigenous people, working to ignore the reality of multiform, co-existing Indigenous identities (Fredericks 2013). Indigenous scholars have demonstrated how these powerful racial discourses pervade all major institutions across the nation, including the educational system (Bodkin-Andrews and Carlson 2016; Moodie et al. 2019), the health system (Sherwood 2013) and public service (Bargallie 2020). The popularisation of social media has only seen these kinds of views spread (Kennedy 2020). Social media platforms, as Matamoros-Fernández (2017, 931) points out, are “fully embedded in culture”. And as Australian culture is founded on notions of racial exclusiveness, settler superiority, and Indigenous inferiority, social media cultures are embedded deeply in the settler project of Indigenous elimination. This bears out in studies on the extent of online racial violence. A recent national survey found that 39% of Australians have experienced some form of cyber-hatred, and that it has cost the Australian economy an estimated $3.7 billion (Australia

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Institute 2019). A report by the Office of the E-Safety Commissioner found that over half of Australians aged 12–17 had encountered racist and hateful views expressed about a particular group online (Giakoumelos 2017). And research by Jakubowicz et al. (2017) found over a third of Australian internet users had encountered racism online, with Indigenous Australians being identified as the most targeted group. Far from the ‘post-race’ space envisioned by tech utopians, social media is very often a violent and harmful place for Indigenous people. Through the combination of various technological and algorithmic affordances that allow for the proliferation and promotion of racism, and the governance structures that tend to favour the ‘free speech’ of racist users over the safety of minority communities, social media sustains what Matamoros-­ Fernández (2017) describes as ‘platformed racism’. And social media companies have been accused of not only facilitating online hate, but profiting from it—such as in 2017, when there were revelations that Facebook and Google were directly profiting from serving advertisements to pages promoting racial hatred (Alba 2017). Decades of research have documented the deleterious effects of this widespread racism on Indigenous peoples (Bargallie 2020; Moodie et al. 2019). Paradies et al.’s (2015) review of nearly 300 studies found a strong relationship between experiences of racism and poorer health. BodkinAndrews (2013) outlines the negative effects racism has on Indigenous targets, including lower levels of both mental and physical health; increased risk of emotional, social and behavioural problems; increased risk of stress and depression; and greater perceived barriers to goals and expectations in life, all which affect educational and employment outcomes. Considering the extent and consequences of racism in Australia, Jakubowicz et  al. (2017) argue that racism should be considered a public health crisis. In light of this, it might be expected that there would be a concerted effort to prevent the expression and spread of online racism. However, as Jakubowicz et  al. (2017, 133) go on to explain, Australia has a “rather indeterminate governance regime” concerning racism on social media. Indeed, there has been little coordinated effort to regulate, legislate or moderate online hate speech and other forms of online racism; the internet was instead founded on ideals of freedom, liberty and democracy (Suzor 2019), accompanied by a belief that the vast, complex transnational network should exceed any governmental or otherwise regulatory control. And the mostly US-based social media giants generally have little understanding of the specific histories, politics and cultures of racism in

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Australia, meaning content easily identified by Indigenous people as racially vilifying is often left untouched by moderation processes. While some forms of speech are already regulated in Australia, the government long refused to criminalise hate speech that fell short of directly inciting physical violence. It wasn’t until 1996, with the introduction of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA), that some forms of hate speech were formally regulated in Australia. However, the RDA’s capacity to deal with emerging forms of digital hate speech has been sketchy. On the one hand, new digital technologies are ever-evolving, and old regulations are often not up to the task of dealing with changes in the forms and content of hate speech. On the other hand, seeking justice in racial discrimination and hate speech cases online is a lengthy and costly endeavour, often taking many years to process through the courts and at incredible expense to the complainant. Instead, what targets of hate speech online often want is for the content to be removed—and existing state legislation, in most cases, does not grant the state this power (Mason and Czapski 2017). Rather than the development of adequate government policy, there has been an increasing reliance on more decentralised ‘governance’ over ‘government’, with tech companies devising and enforcing their own suites of regulations (Suzor 2019). Despite their deeply engrained desire to remain somehow ‘neutral’, social media companies “must serve as setters of norms, interpreters of laws, arbiters of taste, adjudicators of disputes, and enforcers of whatever rules they choose to establish”, Gillespie (2018, 5) explains. Thus, as Klein (2017, 42) has pointed out, “‘Terms of service’— at the end of the day, these three words often constitute the only real law of the land in the digital world”. 2.1  Towards an Understanding of Digital Racism This chapter investigates the production, circulation and effects of anti-­ Indigenous meanings through social media. We draw on a wide range of materials—including interviews, news media, an online survey, and our own ethnographic observations of being online—to chart the major forms of racism regularly encountered by Indigenous people on social media and seek to understand the effects they have on Indigenous users. We begin by drawing on the database of news media on Indigenous social media use (see chapter “Openings: The Social Life of Indigenous Social Media”) to outline four major forms of racism on social media. Rather than seeking to develop a definitive typology of online racism,

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through this analysis we aim to understand some of the differential actors, ideas and geographical formations at play. We then turn to the lived experiences of online racism by Indigenous social media users. The people we interviewed across the last six years regularly described encountering these major forms of racism as they scrolled through their feeds, connected with friends, family and lovers, and engaged in conversation online. We discuss the effects this has on their lives and the responses these encounters tend to elicit. Finally, building on this discussion, we draw on the work of settler colonial scholars to situate this online racism within the broader context of Australia as a colonial nation. This more expansive perspective allows us to look beyond the individual and even collective actors involved in perpetuating racism online, and seek to understand the ‘work’ that specifically anti-Indigenous racism does in digital spaces. We argue that, contra the free speech versus hate speech debate, the widespread existence of hate speech online in fact curtails the freedom and agency of Indigenous people; in this way, race itself functions as a settler technology (Chun 2009). Settler colonialism, Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández (2013) argue, seeks to erase Indigenous claims to land, which always remains an existential threat to the settler nation; and online anti-Indigenous racism is now one of the key ways in which this elimination now occurs, working to harm, silence and ultimately erase Indigenous digital presence.

3   Four Forms of Anti-Indigenous Racism Racism constitutes a diversity of ever-evolving, overlapping expressions and actions that collectively work to exclude and denigrate particular social groupings. It implicates a multiplicity of different arrangements of peoples, places, ideas and materials, and it consequently has differential effects—both on individual people and socio-political life more broadly. In this section, we outline several relatively distinct arrangements of online racism against Indigenous people, as documented in the news media archive we developed encompassing articles published between 2009 and 2020. We divide them into ‘indirect’ and ‘direct’ forms, the former including general expressions of racist views and stereotypes, the latter including more direct and overt racist attacks on Indigenous communities and individuals. While we make these provisional analytical distinctions between broadly different forms, we also seek to draw attention to its essential, unchanging character and purpose: the silencing, containment and elimination of Indigenous people in settler society.

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3.1  Racist Stereotyping While some minority groups are situated within grand narratives of racial war, global conspiracy, and financial domination (Jakubowicz et al. 2017), anti-Indigenous racism in Australia is characterised by a persistent range of denigrating stereotypes. Invariably, these are highly negative, simultaneously infantilising and criminalising Indigenous peoples, positioning them as both incapable of taking care of themselves and their families, and also a threat to the safety of others. In contrast to the supposedly ‘hardworking’ and ‘upright’ settler subject, dominant stereotypes paint Indigenous people as, variously, lazy, drunk, drug-abusing, welfare-dependent, uncouth, dirty, homeless, greedy, sexually deviant and violent—and a litany of other derogatory adjectives. These are not recent discursive developments, but have been circulating since British invasion in the late eighteenth century; when the colonisers arrived, they persistently characterised the Indigenous peoples they encountered in these ways, positioning them barely higher in the moral hierarchy than the native fauna. The constant circulation of these stereotypes has had profound and enduring social effects. They work to produce a relatively stable set of racial discourses, characterised by a rigid moral hierarchy, categorically positing one group of (White) people above another (Bla(c)k) group. More politically, the circulation of these meanings of Indigenous peoples has a legitimising function in settler societies, working to justify the presence of settler invaders and their moral claim to Indigenous land, normalising the incredible violence invariably wrought on local Indigenous populations that is used to gain these lands, and keeping Indigenous people from being recognised as the rightful custodians of the appropriated land. Racism justifies Indigenous peoples’ substandard social, educational and economic positions, while simultaneously absolving settlers of any sense of guilt or responsibility. As Connelly writes: “These depictions on the one hand blame Indigenous people and their culture for their plight and on the other do not consider their capacity for agency regarding their own future” (2019, 223). In this way, settler stereotyping of Indigenous peoples is central to the project of colonisation. Indigenous people come to be understood as unworthy of their own land, which can thus be legitimately expropriated. This racist stereotyping of Indigenous people is rife online, where it circulates between friends, family, colleagues and broader publics—sometimes being picked up and scrutinised in mainstream news media. A

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relatively regular item in the Australian news cycle consists of reports of online controversies in which public figures and other people in power have expressed racist views on their social media accounts. In 2011, for instance, a Western Australian police officer was stood down after he posted photos he’d taken of Aboriginal inmates on his Facebook page. Some of the images were captioned with racist jokes and comments, including one that read: “I wonder if anyone will notice my spray on tan?” (AAP 2011). In another incident, a Northern Territory election officer working in a remote Indigenous community was fired after posting a series of racist rants on Facebook. Election officers are responsible for setting up and collecting elections materials and are, unsurprisingly, required to maintain political neutrality. In the posts, he described Indigenous people as an “inferior species” (NT News 2016). “In the last 2000 [years] Anglo Saxons managed to invent pretty much everything from metallurgy to modern medicine,” he wrote. “We traveled the world. Anything they didn’t invent was done by the Chinese,” the post read. “What have Abo’s1 [sic] invented in 50,000  years? The stick, retribution and the excuse. [Charles] Darwin would have let them die out by now.” Online, the gross violence of this anti-Indigenous racism is often laid bare, with denigrating discourse turning into outright calls for murder. In 2018, another police officer, this one working in Western Australia, posted a comment in response to a story about Aboriginal people protesting the date of Australia Day, writing: “What a pity automatic weapons aren’t legal in this State. Oh well, there’s always single shot rifles and sharp knives. Your days are numbered.” When someone challenged him about his comment, the officer replied: “I pay taxes so dole-bludging, oxygen thieving pieces of shit like you go from the cradle to the grave with your hand out.” In 2017, a Western Australian nurse working in Broome was stood down after commenting on a Facebook group that the local Indigenous children were criminals. “Just fucking bash them within an inch of their useless worthless lives,” he wrote, “they are nothing more than rats or cockroaches”. While shocking, as any Indigenous person on social media could likely tell you, these kinds of comments are not surprising—many of the sentiments hark back to the colonial narratives of Indigenous biological inferiority discussed in chapter “Identity”. What is particularly troubling, however, is that in these cases, public servants across a wide range of positions of power—including police, healthcare workers, politicians, and those responsible for handling elections—actively reproduced hurtful, harmful and offensive stereotypes. These people used social media to

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degrade and infantilise Indigenous people, portraying them as backward, drunkards, welfare-dependent, criminals, biologically inferior, and ultimately unworthy of life—“nothing more than rats or cockroaches”. These kinds of views are, of course, a cause of concern in any context, but they are even more so when they are held by people in the most important positions of power in Australian political life—those people responsible for making laws, enforcing them with state-sanctioned violence, caring for people who are ill, and ensuring the robustness of Australia democracy. They illustrate how deep anti-Indigenous stereotypes permeate Australian society, and how social media has become another way these views can be perpetuated. 3.2  Racist Humour One of the central rhetorical strategies of online racists has been to present their views as if they were simply making ‘humorous’ observations. Scholars have unpacked the various social functions that race-based and racist humour perform, such as facilitating conversations around race, assisting interpersonal conflict management, acting as a coping strategy, consolidating group belonging, and producing social cohesiveness (Weaver 2016). Despite any potential ‘positive’ social outcomes from racist humour, however, as Weaver (2016, 11) argues, it also functions “as a palliative for serious discourse, a palliative that clears the path for the re-­ emergence of identical racism”. And while the above kind of direct expressions of pejorative racial stereotypes are, generally, quite easily identified as racism, these same views often find a more agreeable audience when presented in the guise of a ‘joke’ (Bliuc et  al. 2018; Grigg and Manderson 2015). There are at least three reasons why racist humour has been so effective on social media. First, humour often makes racist views more palatable to audiences. Hateful discourses are coated in a thin veneer of fun, good humour and insincerity, which often helps them circulate more freely. Second, the format of a joke affords a degree of deniability to people expressing racist views. People making racist jokes often explain that they’re not really racist, they’re just being ‘funny’; instead, they often flip the accusation by suggesting that those ‘snowflakes’2 who are offended need to learn to ‘take a joke’. Finally, both the state and social media platforms tend to offer fairly liberal protections for freedom of expression, particularly expressions of humour (Matamoros-Fernández 2017).

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Effectively, this means that, if they are packaged as ‘humour’, expressions of hate and racism—such as that documented in the previous section—are perfectly acceptable on social media. ‘Aboriginal jokes’, which invariably riff on the racist discourses outlined above, have long been common in Australia. It wasn’t surprising, then, that one of the first news stories published about Indigenous Australians on social media concerned a ‘humorous’ quiz on Facebook that claimed to determine ‘how Aboriginal’ participants were (Harris 2009). The 2009 quiz asked respondents questions such as if they’d asked someone for money for a train ticket, but then spent it on cigarettes or KFC, and then classed them according to a range of negative stereotypes, such as a “crazy noonga [sic]” or someone who says “you got a nice car bloke can I have it? [sic]”. An array of politicians and party members, particularly those on the conservative side of politics, have been scrutinised for making these same kinds of jokes. This includes a Liberal Party candidate who posted a photo of a rock, and asked if there were any archaeologists who could confirm that it was an Aboriginal cutting or hammering tool, and whether it could be archived in a museum; and a pair of Young Liberal members who shared a video to Facebook where they joked that Australia has “to stop celebrating a culture that couldn’t even invent the bloody wheel” (AAP 2019)—direct expressions of the narrative that Black people are antithetical to technology (Brock 2020). Another social media story regularly in the news cycle features white Australians dressing up as ‘an Aboriginal person’, usually for parties and in brown/blackface, wearing a red loincloth, or holding a jerry can of petrol. This includes a rugby player who posted his costume to Instagram with the caption: “Every now and then you just need to culturally enrich yourself and get in touch with the dreamtime”; a Queensland Liberal-Nationals Party candidate who posted an image of herself posing with a man dressed as the late Indigenous singer, Mandawuy Yunupingu; and a tradie who made a TikTok video where he used a jerry can as a dumbbell weight and pretended to sniff it every time it was raised, explaining: “Here’s a good home workout while in iso [COVID-19 isolation] for aboriginals [sic]” (Hanrahan 2020). One of the most controversial and, in retrospect, consequential cases of online racism concerned these exact kinds of anti-Indigenous ‘jokes’. In 2012, a Facebook page named ‘Aboriginal memes’ appeared online (Oboler 2012). The page, reportedly created by a Western Australian teenager, attracted several thousand ‘likes’, with its content exclusively comprised of ‘image macro’ memes: an image of an Aboriginal person

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accompanied with a short caption in bold text. Invariably, these memes drew on the kinds of stereotypes described above. “How do you kill 1000 flies at once? Slap me in the face,” one read. “Back in my day, Meth was a drink,” read another. To create these memes, the page used images of Indigenous people without their permission, and in at least two cases, these were images of deceased Elders and community activists, making them doubly offensive (see chapter “Death”). While these posts attracted thousands of likes and comments, they also drew the ire of those shocked at the crude racism. A campaign grew calling for the page to be removed, including politicians, anti-racism activists and members of the public. Several counter-pages appeared on Facebook calling for the original page’s removal. A petition was set up, and the number of signatories fast exceeded those who had liked the offending page. In response to this campaign, the moderator of the Aboriginal memes page posted: “These cunts live off the tax decent white Australians pay every week, I think we have every right to make fun, actually”. A range of Australian legislative bodies sought to investigate the page, including the police, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). There were questions about whether both the moderator of the page and Facebook itself broke Australian law, with the content being in breach of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA), which prohibits acts that “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people” on the grounds of race. But authorities were caught flatfooted. The incident instead highlighted the legal limits of the Australian government to remove the content; the reluctance of Facebook to regulate this form of hate speech; and the powerlessness of targets of hate speech to find adequate protection online. As internet scholar Andrew Jakubowicz explained at the time, “In Australia we have essentially created a free fire zone on the internet” (Crikey 2012, np). Eventually, after immense pressure, the page was briefly removed, but then soon reappeared coupled with the tagline ‘controversial humour’, which apparently absolved both the moderators and platform of peddling hate speech. These forms of hate speech dressed up as humour have been incredibly successful on social media, as if the format excused the content; and part of their success lies in the degree of deniability they afford. As the racist, rock-wielding politician retorted in response to the outrage he caused: “The media call it offensive, everyone else calls it banter. LIKE and SHARE if you think this is political correctness gone mad!” (Lohberger 2018).

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3.3  Anti-Indigenous Communities While much of the anti-Indigenous racism expressed online is largely divorced from identifiable material geographies, social media can also work as a virtual extension of physical communities. As discussed in our chapter on “Community”, Facebook in particular has facilitated and encouraged the establishment of regionally specific community groups and causes, such as buy/swap/sell pages for particular towns or pages established to support/oppose particular local development. While popular discourses of ‘community’ align it with notions of sharing, solidarity and care, in reality, communities are rife with tension. As geographers have long noted, community is a sorting mechanism through which who and what belongs to a particular territory is contested—a process that very often reproduces groupings based on reified racial categories. ‘Community’ is particularly ambivalent for Indigenous people. On the one hand, it can refer to the most intimate and culturally significant social unit: the people, places and things to which one belongs and for which one is responsible. On the other hand, however, settler-colonial communities in Australia are spaces in which exclusionary racial meanings and colonial hierarchies are maintained. As a minority group in most towns and cities across Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are very often maligned by non-Indigenous residents—cast through the negative stereotypes of backwardness, criminality and laziness outlined above. Despite being the sovereign custodians of the land, they are framed as people who do not belong. These kinds of tropes carry back all the way to the first colonial settlements in Sydney, where remnant populations of Aboriginal ‘fringe dwellers’ were rendered social outcasts on their own land, and whose lives were considered unworthy of care or consideration. These expressions of physical settler communities—those founded on racial exclusion and white superiority—have been extended in online spaces over the last decade. In Australia, Facebook community pages have facilitated the expression and maintenance of settler belonging and Indigenous exclusion. In 2009, for instance, a Facebook page was established opposing the development of a short-stay facility for Aboriginal people in remote gold-mining town Kalgoorlie, titled: ‘We say NO to the indigenous camp site at Hopkins/Vivian Streets Boulder’. In 2010, a group called ‘Alice Springs residents who have had enough’ was established to petition for government action on crime in the community. Hundreds of residents joined the page, which seemed to target only one

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certain demographic of residents—the Aboriginal community. Facebook was eventually prompted to investigate the page, while Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner described it as racially targeting Aboriginal people. It was still online in 2012, and was then criticised by Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, who said he was concerned about how it appeared to be encouraging mob violence and the establishment of anti-Indigenous vigilante groups. Later again, in 2016, two community pages, ‘Name, Shame and Crimes Kalgoorlie’ and ‘Kalgoorlie Crimes Whinge and Whine’, attracted national attention. After a spate of car and motorbike thefts, the remote gold-­ mining town had been building with tension between its non-Indigenous and Indigenous residents. The Facebook pages, each with around 17,500 followers, exploded with racial hostility after a white man chased down and killed 14-year-old Aboriginal boy Elijah Doherty, who was reportedly riding a stolen motorcycle. The man was charged with manslaughter and, in the fallout of the tragedy, 200 people marched to the town’s courthouse in protest. They called for justice, both for Elijah and the broader racial structures in the town that were implicated in his death. In the aftermath, the two community pages were flooded with comments criticising and abusing Aboriginal community members; some posts claimed Elijah deserved to be killed, and others that called for vigilante justice against Aboriginal community members more broadly. “There is going to be revenge of some sort very soon! And all the do gooders will wonder why people are getting pissed off,” one man wrote (Purtill 2016). Another wrote: “Everyone talks about hunting down these sub human mutts, but no one ever does.” And another: “How many human bodies would it take to fill the mineshafts around Kalgoorlie? A: We’re one theft closer to finding out!” The incident revealed the violence of online community groups and the limits of police powers online. Kalgoorlie’s police superintendent Daryl Gaunt stated: “we don’t have the power or the authority to shut down these sites. What we can do is ask these people to remove the comments which are inflammatory.” Racist online communities are generally discussed as if they are disembodied, dematerialised, ‘virtual’ social groupings. But these cases illuminate the often-close entanglement of online racism with place-based communities. Indeed, they illustrate a dual movement: the materialisation of online hate, and the digitisation of place-based colonial violence.

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3.4  Interpersonal Racist Abuse Finally, while social media allows users to express racist views in these more or less general or indirect ways, they also allow people to directly target specific people. A huge amount of recent scholarship has documented the myriad ways social media is used to victimise women, feminists, politicians, activists, writers—particularly those from minority backgrounds (Awan 2016; Jakubowicz et al. 2017; Jane 2017). As any Indigenous person on social media will likely attest, being abused for being Indigenous is part of digital life. To take a fairly typical example, one of the campaigners against the Aboriginal Memes page was targeted with direct threats to her safety. “If I were to meet you I would spit on you and kick you in the cunt,” one message read. Another threatened violence against Indigenous people more broadly: “I will spend my last few months touring Australia, setting traps with goon, petrol and fried chicken and kill as many of these useless fucks as I can.” In many other cases, however, the racist abuse necessitates no provocation: simply being recognised as Indigenous is enough to become a target for racist abuse. This direct abuse plays out in all sorts of settings. Research suggests that Indigenous children globally are particularly vulnerable to cyberbullying attacks. In Canada, Mobin, Feng and Neudorf’s (2017, 479) research revealed that “Aboriginal students are at a higher risk of being cyberbullied compared to non-Aboriginal students” (see also Katz et al. 2014). In their New Voices/New Laws report, Tallon et al. (2012) found that, in Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait groups experienced the highest prevalence of cyberbullying, compared with other groups. This issue was brought into national spotlight in early 2019 when reports circulated of five Aboriginal girls killing themselves in nine days. One 14-year-­ old wrote on social media in the days before her death: “Once I’m gone, the bullying and the racism will stop”. It’s also rife in public life. Indigenous people are grossly underrepresented in public life; but those who do rise to the upper echelons of power and fame in Australia are often racially targeted specifically for being Indigenous. Racism in sport, specifically, has been a constant issue in Australia, and social media has provided new ways in which sport fans can directly abuse Indigenous players, including NRL players Sam Thaiday, Andrew Fifita and Latrell Mitchell, and AFL players Adam Goodes, Eddie Betts and Tim Kelly. Mitchell, for instance, was abused on Instagram, with someone calling him a “filthy black maggot”; and a commenter called

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Kelly and his three-year-old son “monkeys”—a common pejorative epithet for Indigenous people—on an Instagram post. One of the more high-profile cases of racist abuse towards an Indigenous public figure involved Labor Party Senator Nova Peris, the Olympic gold medal winner and first Aboriginal woman elected to Australia’s parliament. Peris publicly shamed a man who had been sending her racist and misogynistic abuse, calling her “just another bleeding heart coon” and telling her to “go back to the bush and suck on witchety grubs and yams”. He also described Aboriginal people as “a Stone Age race that should have died out, but the British didn’t have the backbone to do it”. Senator Peris shared the comments with her Facebook followers, explaining that while she could have ignored the messages, she had decided to “leave it there to continue to show the ugly side of this country”. She explained “My skin is my pride”. NSW Police launched an investigation into the incident and eventually charged Woy Way man with a range of offenses, to which, after initially claiming he was “clearly hacked,” he pled guilty. While these cases all involve Indigenous people who are more or less in the public eye, and therefore perhaps more susceptible to racist attacks, they are nonetheless everyday experiences for Indigenous civilians, going about their business online.

4   The Experience of Online Racism Research has overwhelmingly focused on the expressions and actions of perpetrators rather than targets of racism online, and Indigenous voices have, by and large, been left out of the picture (Matamoros-Fernández and Farkas 2021). So far in this chapter, we have done likewise, discussing how social media is implicated in a distinct process of racialisation—how a particular set of racial meanings are formed online, which separate Indigenous people from white settler Australians, with the former being attributed a set of pejorative characteristics and the latter, by implication, a set of desirable characteristics. In this section, however, we turn to the experiences of Indigenous social media users themselves, and seek to understand how they engage with these racial meanings as they circulate online: the effects they have and the responses they elicit. We argue that while reluctance to regulate hate speech has been framed around a tension between ensuring either freedom of speech or online safety, participants regularly described censoring their own speech to maintain safety.

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4.1  Encountering Racism Online: ‘almost a silly question’ Encounters with racism were discussed in almost all interviews we conducted. When asked if they’d ever seen or experienced racism on social media, responses were invariably affirmative. Indeed, one participant politely admonished that it was “almost a silly question, sorry” (Male, 25–34, Wurundgeri/Bunerung). Another said they saw incredible amounts [of racism]. Often the comment section of a news article on Aboriginal people is the worst. Massive stereotyping of Aboriginal people. Racist memes being shared. YouTube videos taken without permission of Aboriginal people. (Female, 25–34, Penrith)

One participant explained that “while it’s [social media is] good for spreading awareness, it’s bad because it can still be used … as a tool for racism” (Male, 18–24, Wollongong). Another said they experience racism “nearly every day. If you’re Aboriginal, you expect that. As soon as anything has an Aboriginal topic you either have to stay quiet or expect to get the stupid ignorant remarks” (Male, 33, Wollongong, emphasis added). Another explained that social media provided “free reign for racists” (Male, 25–34, Wurundgeri/Bunerung). Participants often observed that racist content seemed to intensify at particular times of year. One stated they experience racism “All the time. Especially around this time of year. Like, when [it’s] Invasion Day” (Female, 25, Darwin)—a national public holiday officially known as Australia Day. Invariably, encounters with racism were described as having significant negative emotional and social effects—causing pain, anger and sadness. One participant explained that he tended to check the comment sections on Aboriginal news stories on social media: “I’ll go through anything Aboriginal-related. Then go through the comments, and I just boil over” (Female, 25, Darwin). Another explained he’d had a ‘sabbatical’ from social media, because “it was really starting to impact on my emotional state [and] I’d spend the week feeling quite grumpy or a bit sad or a bit aggro” (Male, 35, Darwin). He explained that this extended beyond bad moods. “I think sharing constant things about racism, or constant things about police brutality, that isn’t good for our mental health and emotional health”, he said. A third explained she didn’t “like watching and reading racist stuff. Because it just gets all, you know, all sorts of emotions run” (Female, 45, Far north Queensland). The continuous ‘spectacle’ of Black

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and Indigenous pain and death online can have devastating effects on Black and Indigenous peoples themselves (Noble 2014). Several people explained that, for them, the politics of being Indigenous online was often different than for other Indigenous people. As we discuss in chapter “Identity”, fairer-skinned Aboriginal people often ‘pass’ as White, thereby sometimes not attracting the same kinds of prejudice, discrimination and pejorative stereotypes directed at other Indigenous people. However, when they do actively identify as Indigenous online, these participants explained, their Indigeneity was often challenged by others who assume, as one participant explained, Indigenous people “look a certain way, they dress a certain way, they act a certain way” (Male, 24, South Coast NSW). One said that “because I have fair skin, I have had people say I am not really Aboriginal” (Female, 22, Wollongong). Another said that: “Non-Indigenous people [have challenged my Aboriginality] based on the fact that I ‘don’t look Aboriginal’ to them” (Female, 25–34, Gadigal). Another described being asked: “Is that fake tan?” (Female 18–24, Dharawal). And yet another that: “Apparently I’m not black enough for some” (Female, 45–54, Awabakal). Stereotypes of how Indigenous people look and act can work to invalidate the Indigeneity of those who do not clearly fulfil these stereotypes. Thus there is always a double bind for Indigenous people: If someone does not conform to the negative stereotypes, they are not ‘really’ Indigenous; if they do conform, they are not considered fully human, but “sub-human mutts”, “rats or cockroaches”. While in the previous section, we made an analytical distinction between ‘direct racism’ and ‘indirect racism’, as a lived reality, these distinctions were seldom clear. Instead, the people we spoke to explained that to encounter racism against the social group to which one belongs is to be racially vilified. “It is often indirect, but I experience it as personal racism”, one person explained (Female 25–35, Regional NSW). Another said: “I’d argue that to witness racism directed at Aboriginal peoples is to experience racism, so any racist or stereotypical remark is something shared by us all” (Male, 35–44, Dharawal). In the literature, this is sometimes called “vicarious discrimination” (Wofford et  al. 2019)—witnessing discrimination targeted at a group that one identifies with, or an individual from that group, which has implications for oneself.

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4.2  Responding to Racism: ‘there’s no point’ In debates around whether hate speech should be regulated online, there is a common counter-argument that posits that the solution to hate speech is more speech; sometimes formulated as: the best response to ‘bad’ ideas is ‘good’ ideas. This argument rests on a set of seemingly sensible but problematic assumptions: that, first, racist ideas can be logically refuted with facts; second, that people expressing these views are open to having their mind changed; and third, that online spaces facilitate vigorous but healthy debate. Many of the people we talked to described how, when facing racist views on social media, would try to do just this: they would ‘jump in’ and engage the person in good faith discussion, in an attempt to logically persuade them that they were wrong. One participant explained that while “people do try to turn it back onto you, I just keep trying to say, well, this is what’s right, this is what’s not right” (Female, 20, South Coast NSW). Another explained that, on Twitter, Indigenous users would often team up and ‘swarm’ particular racist expressions. “Twitter’s been an amazing tool for minority groups,” he explained. “It’s free, and it gives you a platform for what needs to be said, and gets stuff out there for mobilization as well” (Female, 25, Darwin). But, in the vast majority of cases, participants said they would instead choose to ignore, block or hide the content. “So I hide those ones too. Because, you know, we deal with that in the real world, and I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want to see that on my feed”, one explained (Female, 45, Far north Queensland). Another said that “there’s a lot of racist stuff online, but I just don’t even read it. I just scroll, keep on scrolling past” (Male, 30, Darwin). Another explained that even if they do initially engage, “it gets too hostile and too silly, so I delete the post” (Female, 48, Wollongong). While to a degree, this was because they considered it too much effort to constantly engage in these debates, many seemed to believe that it was also futile. When asked if they ever refuted racist claims, one participant responded: “No. There’s no point. Like you can have a bit of a debate, but it doesn’t really matter. You get aggro because all of a sudden you get other people coming in. And in the end, you’re just like—what the fuck?” (Male, 30, Darwin). Another explained: “I’m fuming at that point, but what’s the point in commenting, because you’re not gonna change their views over Facebook” (Female, 25, Darwin). And a third likewise told us they have “a lot of friends [who are] constantly fighting with people online

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about race and stuff. You’re not gonna change their mind about it” (Male, 30 Darwin). Avoiding futile online debate with racists is one way participants sought to care for their health. But it also necessitates letting harmful, hurtful, racist content continues to freely circulate online, without being challenged. Another perhaps more serious form of self-censorship involved participants actively repressing their Indigeneity online for fear of attack, abuse and reprisal. One participant explained: “I don’t make a big mention of being Aboriginal otherwise I can imagine you would get a lot of racist comments” (Female, 24, Wollongong). Another similarly explained: “I find that it’s sometimes safer to not identify as Aboriginal due to discrimination/prejudices” (Male, 25–34, Wurundgeri/Bunerung Nations). A third said that “If I think there is a chance of being abused I won’t identify” (Female 45–54, Regional VIC). And yet another said: “If anyone identifies as Aboriginal by standing up for anything Aboriginal they can get slammed by lots of bigots and people who hate anything Aboriginal” (Female, 21, Wollongong). And finally, another said: “I don’t want to engage with people who want to attack me, so it probably limits what I put all the time” (Female, 45–54, Ningy Ningy). For these users, the solution to racism was to simply not ‘be’ Indigenous online—a self-erasure framed as a form of self-care. In this way, it directly works to further the settler project of Indigenous erasure online.

5   Closing: Hate and the Settler Colonisation of Digital Territory “The Internet,” as digital sociologist Jesse Daniels (2013, 10) writes, “is a site of political struggle over racial meaning, knowledge and values”. Social media is now a core public sphere in which collective meaning-­ making occurs—including the threading together of semi-stable narratives of different racial groups. As we’ve demonstrated in this chapter, social media is deeply entangled in the production, circulation and maintenance of racial narratives that vilify, infantilise and pathologise Indigenous people. The forms of digital racism we discussed have real effects on those targeted by it. Participants described online racism as ubiquitous and invariably expressed the hurt, distress and anger it elicited. Moreover, the distinction between direct and indirect forms of racism is dissolute in reality, as participants explained that an attack on their social group is always felt as a deeply personal one.

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As we discuss throughout this book, social media provides opportunities to overcome the politics of the past, but it also enables the production of powerful variations on old themes: racism, bigotry and hate. While some participants understood social media platforms as making possible opportunities to refute these kinds of racist views, much more often, the negative effects of racism discouraged them from engaging in seemingly futile debate or even expressing their Indigeneity. While this has been justified as the cost of ensuring free speech, both the threat and reality of racism, in fact, undermines freedom of speech online. Rather than producing a healthy, democratic public sphere in which people engage in good faith debate, hate speech curtails the freedom of Indigenous people. Free speech online might be a worthy ideal, but it appears that it is only ever free speech for some—a freedom that often comes at the cost of others. By thinking through the broader settler politics of play, we can see how this abuse and censoring of Indigenous people on social media works to further the project of Indigenous replacement. Just as racism is never ‘indirect’, it is also never ‘just’ personal—it has profound political effects, producing powerful distinctions between groups organised along a clear moral hierarchy. It is a potent mode of social organisation, working to sort the worthy and unworthy, the oppressors and the oppressed, and, in this case, the settler and the colonised. As Patrick Wolfe (2006) points out, a people do not need to be physically eliminated for the colonial project to be successful. Instead, the erasure of their voices, ideas and identities has the same effect: it prevents the expression of Indigenous presence and sovereignty, upholding the legitimacy of the settler state. If social media is “fully embedded in culture”, as Matamoros-Fernández (2017, 931) writes, then the digital racialisation of Indigenous people is not a bug of the system, it is the system—it works to reproduce colonial relations. Race is itself a technology, as Chun (2009) argues, and racism operates as a settler technology on social media through existential attrition: The continuous assault on Indigeneity produces embodied fatigue, depression and silence—ultimately claiming these digital territories as rightfully white.

Notes 1. ‘Abo’, a contraction of the term ‘Aboriginal’, is a highly offensive slur. 2. ‘Snowflake’ is a common political insult used online to refer to someone who is too sensitive, generally used by conservatives to target progressives.

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Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). I still call Australia home: Indigenous belonging and place in a white postcolonizing society. In The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (pp. 23–40). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003087298-3 Nakamura, L., & Chow-White, P. A. (2012). Introduction: Race and Digital Technology. In Race After The Internet (pp. 1–18). Noble, S. U. (2014). Teaching trayvon. Black Scholar, 44(1), 12–29. https://doi. org/10.1080/00064246.2014.11641209 NT News (2016), Racist posts on election officer’s Facebook, 16 August 2018. https://www.ntnews.com.au/lifestyle/election-officer-sacked-after-racistposts/news-story/caae27d9a5745c5cd215cc81afa58684 Oboler, A. (2012). Aboriginal Memes & Online Hate. In Online Hate Prevention Institute (Issue October). http://ohpi.org.au/reports/IR12-­2-­Aboriginal­Memes.pdf Paradies, Y., Ben, J., Denson, N., Elias, A., Priest, N., Pieterse, A., Gupta, A., Kelaher, M., & Gee, G. (2015). Racism as a determinant of health: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS ONE, 10(9), 1–48. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138511 Purtill, J. (2016), Racist. Violent. Deleted: The Facebook posts dividing Kalgoorlie. Triple J: Hack. https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/the-facebookposts-dividing-kalgoorlie/7805346. Sherwood, J. (2013). Colonisation  – It’s bad for your health: The context of Aboriginal health. Contemporary Nurse, 46(1), 28–40. https://doi.org/ 10.5172/conu.2013.46.1.28 Suzor, N. P. (2019). Lawless: The secret rules that govern our digital lives. Cambridge University Press. Tallon, K., Choi, A., Keeley, M., Elliott, J. & Maher, D. (2012). New Voices/New Laws: School-Age Young People in New South Wales Speak out about the Criminal Laws that Apply to their Online Behaviour, National Children’s and Youth Law Centre and Legal Aid NSW, Sydney. The Australia Institute. 2019. Online Harassment and Cyberhate costs Australians $3.7b. Media Release. Available: https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/ online-­harassment-­and-­cyberhate-­costs-­australians-­3-­7b/ Tuck, E., & Gaztambide-Fernández, R. A. (2013). Curriculum, Replacement, and Settler Futurity. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 29(1), 72–89. Weaver, S. (2016). The Rhetoric of Racist humour: US, UK and Global Race Joking. Routledge. Wofford, N., Defever, A.  M., & Chopik, W.  J. (2019). The vicarious effects of discrimination: How partner experiences of discrimination affect individual health. Social psychological and personality science, 10(1), 121–130. Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623 520601056240

Desire

Indigenous women do not fit the picture of a desirable sexual being, yet our identities are constructed based upon our very sexual(useful)ness. (Corrinne Sullivan 2018, 397) And so, there was this guy that, when I was like early 20s, he’d like to take me shopping and just buy me stuff. And my friends were really uncomfortable with the idea. I’m like, ‘Get with the fucking program, like, it’s reparations’. (Gay male, 30s, NSW)

1   Introduction: Ambivalent Love In 2016, Ali Murphy-Oates, a Wailwan woman living in Sydney, received a message on Tinder from a man who had ‘super liked’ her profile—an action that is meant to express a high level of romantic or sexual interest. “Is it true abos have two sized nostrils  – one for unleaded and one for leaded?”, the message read, referencing a stereotype that Indigenous people sniff petrol (Clarke 2016). She was floored. “When you identify [as Aboriginal] in you profile, this is the shit you get,” she later wrote on Instagram, where she shared both the message and the profile of the man who’d sent it. In response, she was flooded with messages of support and solidarity, with some people sharing their own stories of racism on dating and hook-up apps, with others vowing to avenge her.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_5

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In this chapter, we explore the experiences of Indigenous people who use social media and dating apps to seek romantic love and fulfil sexual desires. Interviews we conducted with Indigenous people revealed stories of desire, romance, and hooking up, as well as long-term relationships, friendships and marriage. In originally planning this chapter, we hoped to just focus on Indigenous people’s fun and joy in dating, seeking love and hooking up online. And indeed, there were moments that were fun and comical, such as when people justified their ‘sugar daddy’ relationships through references to Indigenous ‘reparations’, or when others who lived in tight-knit communities struggled to find ‘dates’ with someone who was Indigenous yet not related. “White fallas [sic] got it easy, us blacks gotta relocate to find a man not related to us,” one young person posted to a closed Indigenous page on Facebook. But people we spoke to also revealed the harsh realities of online intimacy, and we were almost invariably brought back to issues of racism, hate and violence. Evidently, experiences like Murphy-Oates’s are far from uncommon, and the people we spoke to described the constant battles they fought in fending off racism while seeking love and sexual pleasure. In the next section, we provide a brief overview of qualitative research on online dating—which tends to complicate the promises of dating apps as offering pathways to sexual liberation, by uncovering the reproduction of social norms around gender, sexuality and race. Next, we step back and discuss the ways in which colonialism has sought to define, legislate and contain Indigenous sex and sexuality, both through policy and contradictory discourses which determine the ‘desirability’ of Indigenous bodies. The following sections address three distinct aspects of online dating covered by our participants. 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 problematise the idea of sexual ‘preference’, arguing that preference is often just racist subterfuge. Finally, we discuss Indigenous peoples’ efforts to reject colonial discourses of desire, to interrogate their own internalised sexual preferences, and to assert sovereignty over their own bodies.

2   Digital Dating Online dating apps, once the domain of people supposedly ‘desperate’ in love, have gone mainstream, becoming an absolutely normal way for people to connect, meet others and establish a range of intimate

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relationships—including friendships, love interests and sexual encounters. According to Relationships Australia (2017), for almost 60% of Australians, mobile dating applications have become the go-to avenue to love, intimacy and sexual pleasure. These apps allow users to carefully curate personal profiles, specify their romantic or sexual preferences, connect with potential partners, and organise dates, flings and hook-ups. For many users, the apps are an appealing option, as they provide a sense of control over their romantic and sexual lives: Users can learn more about potential partners before meeting, and there are different opportunities for gender and sexually diverse users to cater to their desires. Largely outside the surveilling gaze of others, the digitally mediated contact can offer some sense of safety. Tinder and Grindr are far and away the two most popular mobile dating apps on the market. Tinder is primarily used by heterosexual groups; although in 2019 Tinder offered users an option to select their “sexual orientation’, including “straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, demisexual, pansexual, queer and questioning”. Grindr is predominantly used for casual sexual ‘hook-ups’ between gay men (Blackwell et al. 2015), and its ubiquity has been described as being responsible for “killing the gay bar” (Renninger 2018, 1). Tinder, likewise, is most often used for hook-ups, but it tends to market itself as a platform for finding romantic partners and long-term love interests. Significantly, both are ‘location-­aware’, in that they enable users to identify potential partners within their geographic vicinity in real time. Tapping a person’s profile picture will reveal their details, including location and preferences, such as preferred physical attributes, personality characteristics, and so on. Users then make a judgement about whether they ‘like’ a person’s profile, and if the other user ‘likes’ their profile in return, they are then able to connect with one another through a direct messaging function. 2.1  Not Just Love: The Dangers of Digital Dating While these apps invariably market themselves as tools for sexual liberation—for seeking fun, fulfilling sexual desire and finding romantic partners—concerns have long been raised about their potential to cause great harm, particularly to women, LGBTIQ+ people, and racial minorities. Highlighting violence against women as the most prevalent human rights violation in the world, ElSherief et al. (2017, 52) acknowledge the potential for social media to provide new arenas for, and forms of gender-based

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violence. Despite violence against women being currently the subject of widespread media coverage, including debates about policy interventions and the need for better social media governance, there is “ample evidence to support the contention that gendered vitriol is proliferating in the cybersphere”, as Jane explains (2014, 588). Indeed, dating apps are rife with examples of misogyny that manifest in sexually aggressive behaviours. As Hess and Flores (2018, 1088) explain: These heterosexist performative displays often conform to dominant stereotypes about men’s sexual prowess—of being on the hunt and seeing sex as a competition […] which may encourage some men to engage in deliberate misogynistic behaviours when seeking dates with women.

‘Dick pics’, for instance, are an almost universal occurrence and are usually sent “unsolicited by heterosexual, cisgendered men to women”, Waling and Pym note (2019, 1), as an assertion of their “patriarchal dominance and aggressive heterosexuality” (2019, 8). Because they are so often received without consent, Henry and Powell (2016, 1) categorise unsolicited ‘dick pics’ as a form of technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV). Moreover, dating apps are implicated in the perpetuation of normative ideas of gender, race and sexuality. Tinder, for instance, remains a highly cisgendered, heteronormative space, where LGBTIQ+ people can be targets of abuse. The Gallop report notes that this issue is not limited to ‘low-level’ incidents, with threats of physical violence, sexual assault, and death also a common occurrence for many LGBTQI+ victims (Hubbard 2020). On specifically gay apps, such as Grindr and Jack’d, users who don’t fit the norm of the muscular, masculine, gay white man can find themselves the target of abuse, with often virulent queerphobia and femmephobia mobilised to police the space as categorically male-only (Miller 2015). There’s also a danger of LGBTIQ+ users being publicly ‘outed’ on the platforms—either intentionally by other malicious users, or accidentally through having one’s profile and preferences exposed to a friend or relative. Whiteness is also hegemonic in many of these spaces. Gay participants in a study by Jakubowicz et al. (2017), for instance, described widespread use of racially exclusionary tags, such as “no rice or spice”—referring to South and East Asian men. In a study of dating site OKCupid, it was found that white users tend to respond exclusively to messages from other white people (Senft and Noble 2013). White women, in particular, “only

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reply well to guys who look like them” (Senft and Noble 2013, 107). In his auto-ethnographic study of Grindr, Raj (2011) argues that the invisibility of whiteness manifests through the unequal expectation of racial disclosure: white users do not have to mention their race, whereas non-­ white users are expected to disclose and discuss theirs. In Raj’s case, his Indianness marks him as generally, at best, being of only ‘platonic’ interest to white men. In other encounters, however, being non-white makes him desirable by white queer men seeking, in some cases explicitly, to dominate non-white others. In this case, he is expected to be sexually submissive, fitting into a long cultural history of positioning Asian males as passive colonial subjects. Far from the sexual and romantic liberation promised by dating apps, it is clear that these spaces do not exist apart from broader power dynamics of violence, containment and control. Instead, as Raj (2011, 1) concludes, online desire is still policed through “disciplinary norms around race, masculinity, whiteness, physical aesthetics and geography”.

3   Colonial Control, Disgust and Desire Colonisation has not only inflicted violence on the Indigenous lands, cultures and identities, it has also engaged in a steady attack on Indigenous bodies (Wilson 2015). As the colonial enterprise expanded into new territories, new knowledges were developed that mapped, described, and classified every aspect of Indigenous people’s lives—including intimate relationships and sexual practices (Lugones 2014). Indigenous people’s sexuality and desirability have long been shaped through powerful discourses and enforced through deliberate colonial policy. Sexual violence has been a common practice that is deeply embedded in the colonial logic, including the objectification and dehumanisation of Indigenous women, girls, and queer people. During colonial expansion, Black and Indigenous people were invariably described by anthropologists as hypersexual, lacking morality, indecent and a threat to civil society (Meiu 2015). As Martinican psychoanalyst and anti-colonialist Franz Fanon (1951, 2008) argues in his seminal text, Black Skin, White Masks, white people associate Black people with the ‘biological’—pure sexuality, base animalism. Lugones (2014, 743), likewise characterises the coloniser’s view of Indigenous subjects as “bestial …, promiscuous, grotesquely sexual, and sinful”. Today, Meiu (2015, 3) argues:

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The historical legacies of colonial sexual politics continue to shape the lived realities of postcolonials, whether through global imaginaries of exotic bodies in sex tourism and pornography, through racialized notions of excessive sexualities in developmental and health discourses, or through arguments that legitimize the unequal distribution of rights and citizenship by referencing sexual difference.

3.1  Legislating Indigenous Sexuality In Australia, these kinds of discourses were long formalised through legislation that sought to determine sexual relations between colonial subjects. The Aborigines Protection Board, established in 1881 and which later became the Aborigines Welfare Board 1943, was designed to provide the government with the legal mechanism to regulate the movements and relations of Indigenous people, including their intimate lives. Indigenous people often did not have the luxury to decide on intimate partners or marriage, as such decision-making authority was given to the Board. Indigenous sexuality and reproductive rights were often weaponised against Indigenous people in order to fulfil the settler dream of a white nation. The Restriction Immigration Act of 1901, commonly referred to as ‘The White Australia policy’, was introduced to ensure that Australia would have a future as a white-only nation. Those deemed ‘half-caste or less’ were deemed more desirable than those who were categorised as ‘full-­ blood’. This insidious categorisation had very real ramifications for Indigenous people: those categorised as ‘full-blood’ were put onto reserves, essentially death camps, where it was hoped that they would ‘naturally’ die out, while those considered ‘mixed’ for having a proportion of ‘white’ blood were subject to a range of oppressive actions, including forced removal from families, incarceration and detainment in homes built to specifically Christianise and ‘civilise’. In these institutions, many were subject to physical, emotional and sexual violence (see the Bringing Them Home report (HREOC 1997) for a comprehensive account of these crimes). The Board’s mandate included ensuring sexual relationships produced children who were less likely to be Black (Horton 2010, 3). 3.2  Settler Disgust and Desire for Indigenous Women Fanon notes there is often a powerful neuroticism to white men’s desire for Black women in particular, in which they are treated with disgust,

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marked as ugly, yet simultaneously highly desired as sexual objects. In the paradoxical space between this disgust and desire, between this repulsion and attraction, foments a powerful hatred, which often manifests through sexual violence (Sullivan 2018). During the early period of colonial rule in Australia, Indigenous women were regularly labelled immoral and indecent, and considered a threat to the aspiration of a white Australia because of the danger they supposedly posed in relation to immorality and prostitution and miscegenation (Horton 2010, 13). Sullivan (2018, 398) argues that “by entrenching the sexualisation of Indigenous women’s identities, colonial society enforced sexist ideologies and representations of Indigenous women as prostitutes, which sometimes led to our degradation and humiliation”. As noted by Deer (2009, 150), “rape and sexual violence are deeply embedded in the colonial mindset. Rape is more than a metaphor for colonisation—it is part and parcel of colonisation”. Australia has a lengthy history of constructing Indigenous women as sexual objects—amplifying both their sexualisation and dehumanisation. For instance, in 1984 83-year-old Xavier Herbert, a Miles Franklin award winner widely revered as “an elder statesman of Australian literature”, was quoted as boasting that, back in the 1920s, he was “the biggest gin rooter around”—‘gin’ being a derogatory, sexualised word for an Aboriginal woman. He continued to explain that: We used to go up to Broome for our holidays and I knew, all through Western Australia, black velvet was the thing. It’s changed a lot in recent years but the perfect mate for the bushman was the black girl … The pearling industry was established in Broome and the pearlers used to go up into the Kimberley country and steal the young [Aboriginal] gins to work as pearl divers. Of course, they used to rape them, too, and when they got too pregnant they’d chuck them overboard. (cited in Ramsay 2008)

This lack of public and political outrage around sexual violence against Indigenous women continues today. In 2011, for instance, an Aboriginal woman named Ms. Daley bled to death on a beach after being violently and sexually assaulted by two non-Indigenous men. The common news headline theme stated: “‘Wild sex’ led to woman’s death” (Calcino 2014). The details are too horrific to mention, other than to say that the

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implication of the headline was that consent was not required. Despite loud, persistent calls from Aboriginal activists, there was no public outrage from mainstream Australia. There were no vigils. As Wiradjuri scholar Corrinne Sullivan (2018, 397) notes, “Indigenous women do not fit the picture of a desirable sexual being, yet our identities are constructed based upon our very sexual(useful)ness”. 3.3   Settler Fear of Indigenous Men’s Sexuality In contrast to Black women, colonial discourses have long characterised Black men as violent, sexual savages (Povinelli 1994). They represent, as Fanon argues, the settler ideal of “infinite virility”, though in perverted form. In his study of white coloniser attitudes towards Black people, for instance, Fanon (1951, 2008, 128) found the word “Negro [sic] brought forth biology, penis, strong, athletic, potent, boxer, […] savage, animal, devil, sin”. This broader discourse of Black sexuality has seeped into the structures of Australian colonialism, which frames specifically Indigenous men as a physical and sexual threat, or as Povinelli (1994, 126) asserts, as “sexually irregular and socially disordered”. For instance, Hunter (1793, 510–511) cited by Povinelli (1994, 127) reports Indigenous men as regularly beating women and describes this violence as a form of “foreplay of Aboriginal ‘lovemaking’”. Aboriginal men’s “sexual and emotional practices” have been “portrayed as explicitly irrational in the way they lashed out” and that they have an inability to “differentiate between friend or foe,” Povinelli explains (1994, 127). Fanon argues this ‘negro-phobia’ can manifest in what Mannoni calls the ‘Prospero complex’: the white coloniser’s neurotic fantasy that their ‘pure’ daughter has been sexually assaulted by an ‘inferior being’—that is, a Black man. These same discourses continue to play out in mainstream media, including a series of cartoons in 2006 by the late Bill Leak that were published in the Australian. In one, Leak depicts two Aboriginal men drinking alcohol at a table while an Aboriginal woman is lying on the ground after being badly beaten. One of the men comments: “Sheilas! You give ‘em an enriching cultural experience and what thanks do you get??!!”. In another, Leak illustrates two Aboriginal men reading the newspaper with one of the men commenting: “Rape is out. This could set our culture back by 200 years”. Leak’s decades-long campaign of violent and derogatory depictions of Aboriginal people and culture continues what Munanjahli and South Sea Islander scholar Chelsea Bond (2016, np) has referred to as

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“a long tradition of white men’s fantasies about the inferiority of Aboriginal people”. Bond draws on the work of Liz Conor (2013) who highlights the colonial archive which is filled with accounts written by white men about Aboriginal people’s gender, sexuality and desirability. Conor (2013, 6) cites Queensland police magistrate, Charles Henry Eden, who wrote in 1869: Certainly the Australian gin is of no beauty, or if she ever possessed any it is soon knocked out of her by the life of privation and misery which she leads, and the brutal conduct of her husband.

Bond (2016, np) asserts that, “focusing on the brutality of Aboriginal men enabled indifference to the physical and sexual abuse of Aboriginal women at the hands of white men on the frontier and beyond”. Written accounts such as the one by Charles Henry Eden serve as discursive tools of colonialism. As argued by Connor (2013, 7), “print and colonialism were interdependent, enmeshed, expansionist economies”, where a multitude of accounts reflect gender relations in Aboriginal culture by depicting Aboriginal women as being “routinely characterised […] as utterly subjugated by their ‘tyrannical’ men”. 3.4   Towards a Decolonising Digital Desire Clearly, Indigenous desire, sex and romance are not free from broader discursive forces and legislative mechanisms that shape and stabilise the settler dominance. While the colonial state long weaponised Indigenous sexuality against Indigenous people themselves—formally through policies of assimilation, and informally through the rape of Indigenous women—powerful discourses still determine the ‘desirability’ of different bodies. Mobile apps for dating and hooking-up promise users endless sexual gratification, the satisfaction of one’s most intimate fantasies, and the fulfilment of one’s quest for true love. But for many users, these promises are the ‘real’ fantasies; the social relations sustained on these apps only come to reify hegemonic bodily ideals—including gender, sexuality and race. In this chapter, we explore Indigenous people’s quest to find love, companionship and sexual satisfaction online. In the next section, we discuss the search for love—unpacking the different apps the people we spoke to use for this end, and some of the success they’ve had along the way. In

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the following section, we problematise the notion of sexual ‘preference’, instead demonstrating how ‘preference’ is often entangled in the reproduction of broader colonial power relations. Finally, we discuss how some Indigenous users are harnessing the relational power of social media to assert sovereignty over their most intimate territory: their very bodies. This ‘body sovereignty’, we argue, undermines the settler claim of free access to Indigenous bodies.

4   Digital Love and Care The people we interviewed described using a shifting array of different websites, messaging services and dating apps for seeking love. While, like the general population, they primarily used either Tinder or Grindr for seeking intimacy, relationships and hooking up, they also described having used online sites for dating long before social media platforms existed, including RSVP, OkCupid and chat forums such as ICQ. Digital technology changes very quickly and Indigenous people, as engaged and competent users of technology, have readily adapted to the shifting nature of digital intimacy. One Aboriginal woman, now in her 40s, commented that she had used the online chat forum ICQ for meeting potential partners many years ago. She referred to such platforms as “very early dating sites! Dinosaurs!”. Another participant spoke about Gaydar—an early dating site for gay and bisexual men: I don’t know if it’s still around—Gaydar—it was one that I used, like ancient old Gaydar. Oh my god, I nearly forgot about that. (Gay, 30s, NSW)

Today, propositions for sex and offers of dates are not restricted to platforms such as Tinder and Grindr, however, but can be found across all social media platforms. Several women spoke about how they received offers of sex and for dates through professional social media site LinkedIn, an issue highlighted by one person who posted: I’m this -> close to putting a disclaimer on my LinkedIn that tells random dudes that this isn’t a dating site and to stop trying to add or message me. (posted on 11 November 2020)

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4.1  Long-Term Love (with a Catch) Many people discussed their long-term relationships with people they had met on dating sites. These two participants, for instance, both Indigenous women, recall meeting their romantic partners in online chat forums: I met my partner online 21 years ago on IC before it was an official dating app. So I have to squint to remember what that meant as an Indigenous person. (Female, 40s, QLD) I met my partner online and it has been the best relationship I’ve ever had. (Heterosexual Female, 40s, ACT)

Notably, both participants were in relationships with white men, and so they also spoke about how they had had to deal with racism from the family and friends of their partners. I do have lots to tell about racism from family and friends of his that are white though. Long stories, endless. (Heterosexual Female, 40s, QLD) That doesn’t mean it’s been perfect. He has had to learn a lot as a white man and I have had to endure trauma from his family. (Heterosexual Female, 40s, ACT)

This racism came in many forms, including their not being welcomed within the family, the direct expression of pejorative stereotypes about Indigenous people, and their partner’s more subconscious racial prejudices—none of which is particularly surprising considering the widespread existence of anti-Indigenous racism in Australian society more broadly (Bodkin-Andrews and Carlson 2016; Bargallie 2020; Coates 2011). Clearly, even when one falls in love, hatred against Indigenous people can still affect the relationship. As noted by Petrychyn et al. (2020, 2), many users of dating apps utilise the technology for building communities and friendships, and many value the space for shared social activities that these apps provide. Dating apps are also social sites more broadly, and many of the people we interviewed spoke about maintaining friendships with those they had previously hooked up with or dated after meeting online. One participant, for instance, who identifies as Gay, spoke warmly about their long-term romantic relationship and, later, platonic friendship that originated from contact on Grindr:

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So, my last relationship we met on Grindr, we were together five years. I’m like, we’re still great friends and that … we kind of have a really, really good relationship and it came from Grindr. (Gay, 40s, NSW)

4.2  Queer Spaces of Care While racism is a reality for all Indigenous people online, as we discuss above, dating sites are often spaces in which norms around sex and gender—including heteropatriarchy and gender binaries—are most zealously defended. Indigenous LGBTQI+ people, as noted by Cree Queer scholar Alex Wilson (2015, 2), have always found ways to survive and flourish. [Indigenous] bodies, genders and sexualities have been regulated in a continuum of violence. Penalized and punished for our acceptance of gender and sexual variance, many of us learned that the most certain way to survive was to take these teachings underground, out of sight of the colonizers.

The incredible proliferation of social spaces online has offered queer Indigenous folk more ways to go ‘underground’ and escape the homophobia, transphobia and queerphobia that pervade so much of social life in settler society (Farrell 2017). As we discuss in chapter “Community”, the digital connections formed between LGBTIQ+ Indigenous people can produce vital networks of care, support and community. People we spoke to who identified as gender diverse or queer often described how they engaged in chatting via online dating sites about all manner of things long before meeting in person. One recalled chatting on OkCupid, explaining that this platform was “really good for dating other QPOC [queer people of colour]”. They recalled that they had met people who were now their good friends: “We started chatting about 90s RnB, Real Housewives and Afrofuturism, ended up going on a few dates, then just being mates” (Queer, 20s, NSW). Outside formally categorised ‘dating’ spaces, Indigenous LGBTQI+ people also use sites such as Facebook to connect and build relationships around gender and sexual identities using the closed group function. Closed groups can operate as a “care structure” (Scannell 2014) for Indigenous LGBTQI+ people. As noted by Cavalcante (2016, 110), for “individuals who live in a world created without them in mind, online counterpublics and care structures help them manage the trials and complexities of everyday life”. One participant discussed Sistergirls and

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Brotherboys, which are terms that have cultural significance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and which generally refer to “transgender women and men, but they can also be used to refer to people of varying genders and sexualities because of their relational nature”, as Day explains (2020, 368). While not a specific dating site, Facebook groups can function as social meeting places where friendships and other relationships are formed. This participant explained: The Sistergirls and Brotherboys Facebook group was a bit of a hotspot for a time for trans mob. Then we had Kunghah (a retreat for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander transgender people run by the Victorian Aids Council) in 2017 and mob were all in one place chasing each other round in person. It was so funny to be in a big group of trans folx [folks], many of whom openly fancied each other because a lot of trans mob get subjected to ‘DL’ [down low] culture, where cisgender people date us in secret, on the down low out of shame. So, I guess it’s not surprising that we were hitting each other up through the Facebook group, trying to connect with people like us. (Queer, 20s, NSW)

5   The Politics of Sexual ‘Preference’ While, originally, we were mostly interested in the fun, joy and excitement in looking for love and sex, discussions with participants invariably turned to the virulent hatred that often circulates in hook-up spaces. One of the main themes that emerged from the interviews was the idea of ‘preference’. The intimate realm, according to Hutson et al. (2018, 73), “represents one of the remaining domains in which individual feel entitled to express explicit preferences”. The term ‘preference’, however, is not unqualified and comes with provisos that are often explicitly racist. For example, male profiles on primarily heterosexual and gay dating apps are regularly accompanied by comments such as “no abos”, “no spice, no rice”, “only here to talk to white boys”, “Euros only”, “Aussie only”, and “GWM [gay white men] only” (Donelly 2016; Rafalow et al. 2017). In an Australia-wide online survey of gay and bisexual men on the topic of sexual preference conducted in 2016, it was revealed that many of the respondents actively discriminated among partners on the basis of race (Callander et al. 2016). The results revealed that Aboriginal men were deemed less attractive than most other categories, and that they would most likely be romantically or sexually excluded on the basis of race.

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More anecdotally, a woman we interviewed and her friend conducted a small social experiment on RSVP. They created two accounts using the same profile picture; one they identified as ‘Aboriginal’ and the other profile as ‘Australian’. They were not surprised to see that identifying as ‘Aboriginal’ resulted in significantly less interest from men. Well, I can tell you on RSVP if you put your identity as ‘Aboriginal’ rather that ‘Australian’, you get about 80 percent less responses to sending out “kisses”. … A friend and I did a ‘research’ project on that! Well an experiment of one, so not really a big enough sample size to say it was statistically significant. But it was completely obvious the lack of interest. (Female, 30s, TAS)

While this discrimination is regularly justified as being about ‘sexual preference’ (Callander et al. 2016, 4), it is clear it reflects the society in which it manifests (Bedi 2015; Carlson 2020). It is, of course, the case that people might have preferences of desire based on race, sexuality or gender; this is indisputable and, in and of itself, not an issue. However, the ‘preference’ many people feel the right to express is often not ideologically free or neutral, and it can cause great harm to Aboriginal users of these sites who are then targeted for abuse. 5.1  Sexual Desire and Racial Hatred Indeed, we found no shortage of anti-Indigenous racism on dating sites— both in interviews and our news media archive. In 2016, for instance, Dustin Mangatjay McGregor, an Aboriginal university student, shared the racist messages he receives on Grindr, aiming to demonstrate that there is a distinct hierarchy of preference in the gay community that, he suggests, places “the white attractive male … at the top of this pyramid”, and Aboriginal men “usually at … the bottom” (cited in Verass 2016, np). McGregor claimed that he is frequently sent racist messages that include derogatory comments about his Aboriginal status—usually slurs that mock Indigenous claims to land, issues of petrol sniffing, and other stereotypical jibes (Donelly 2016). In another case, a trans Indigenous woman was sent a message on Grindr asking if they wanted to be treated the way Captain Cook treated Aboriginal people, going on to ‘joke’ about genocide, rape and mass shootings of Aboriginal people (Wilson 2020). In another particularly repugnant response, one of our interviewees, an Aboriginal

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woman in her 30s from Queensland, was told by a man: “you black cunts are only good for fucking”. The person threatened to track down the woman’s location and sexually assault her, stating he would “fuck you in all your black holes”. Given the general extent of racism against Indigenous people in Australia, these experiences are perhaps not surprising. However, the dominant narrative of ‘preference’ is complicated by online encounters where a person was initially attracted to someone, only to become abusive or enraged when they later learned of the person’s Indigenous heritage. In one incident, an Aboriginal woman was chatting with a potential partner on Tinder who had made numerous comments as to how pretty the woman is and how exotic she looks. He then asked: “I don’t mean to be rude, but are you Indigenous?” When the woman confirmed that she was, he posted, “good luck with everything” and ‘unmatched’ with her (Wilson 2020). “It wasn’t my appearance he had a problem with,” she explained. “The second he found out about my heritage, he was gone.” Another Indigenous person tweeted, “matched with someone on a dating app who said, ‘oh you beaut!’ when she found out I’m Blak, and I …???” (posted on 11 December 2020). They went on to post “and this is why I don’t match with yts [white people] [crying emoji]”. These encounters were common among the people we interviewed. A young queer-identifying person was chatting about meeting up with a potential hook-up on Grindr, when the conversation turned: Other user: Sorry didn’t see the Aboriginal part. Our participant: Bruh what does that mean? Other user: No longer interested, soz. Our participant: Ah so you’re racist! You’re pathetic and you deserve to rot bye xx Other user: Nah just not interested in knowling/learning how to treat the most precious people in the world. Also y’all are not the only group in the world that has suffered. Stop being so sensitive.

In a more extreme example, a 21-year-old Aboriginal queer-identifying person from New South Wales was chatting with a possible hook-up partner on Grindr. After a racial slur about Aboriginal people, the person we interviewed explained that they took offence and identified themselves as Aboriginal. They were then sent a barrage of stream-of-consciousness texts, such as this one:

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You’ve scabbed free handouts all your life probably don’t even know how much your elders will never admit there was people here before you monkeys because you might lose your handouts every day there’s subsidised education medical and employment programs because no one would actually hire you without some kind of subsidies bet you’ll never get a proper job without some coon victims program. No doubt you cry victim every day call people racist bigots all the rest then cry to the government because everyone hates you.

It is clear there is something other than ‘sexual preference’ at play in these cases. At the initial point of encounter, there was mutual attraction and, presumably, mutual sexual or romantic desire. The moment a person’s Indigeneity is expressed however, regardless of the chatting and flirting that had already precipitated, this desire turns to gross hatred. This issue of ‘sexual preference’ and ‘racial exclusion’ is regularly referred to as ‘sexual racism’ (Bedi 2015; Callander et  al. 2016; Robinson and Frost 2018; Wilson 2020). Situating sexual racism firmly in the realm of racial discrimination, Bedi (2015, 998) claims that it is not about sexual preference but “problematic conditions that structure the very formation of romantic relationships”—a claim difficult to refute in light of the above experiences. It is not how the person ‘looks’ that matters, but the social group to which they belong. 5.2  Navigating Sexual Racism The people we spoke to deployed a range of deliberate strategies to avoid, mitigate or take control of these kinds of interactions. Some participants, for instance, said that if they were unsure whether their potential connection is racist, they would drop questions like: “what do you think of the Black Lives Matter movement?” Others would fend off potential racists by using signs and symbols to visually identify them as Indigenous without having to state the fact, such as including ‘Aboriginal’ in their profile description or by wearing clothing such as ‘Dark and Disturbing’ t-shirts— this strategy seemed particularly useful for Indigenous users who might not be immediately ‘identifiable’ to others as Indigenous. There was recognition that this purposeful ‘outing’ of themselves as Indigenous could backfire by acting as bait to people who were more aggressively racist and, indeed, many would actively brace themselves for this possibility.

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A non-binary participant described how their friend group decided to actively highlight their preferences for dating women of colour, and how they sought to subvert the requirement for selecting ‘Other’ as an option for ethnic identity. Most Indigenous people do not see their Indigenous identity as an ‘ethnicity’; and ‘light skin mob’ often face racial misrecognition, as discussed in chapter “Identity”. All the POC [people of colour] had ‘NO YT PPL’ [no white people] on their profiles and we’d complain to each other about white women and how they have bad attitudes and no lips (for kissing). You had to write ‘Other’ ethnicity on your profile, though, because there wasn’t Aboriginal as an ethnicity option. So, all the light skin mob wrote it on our profiles that we were Blak and took pictures with the flag and stuff because we didn’t want to get written off by the other WOC [women of colour]. These days you mostly get white polyamorous couples looking for a unicorn on there but back then it was really good. (Queer, 20s, NSW)

Finally, another option was to not identify as Indigenous online at all. “My description doesn’t say anything about my racial identity,” one gay male participant told us. Like, I refuse to do that because the only options as you would be aware is ‘other’ and I mean, I’m not fucking Othering myself. (Gay male, 30s, NSW)

Another male participant said that he didn’t even tell his current partner—to whom he is now engaged—that he was Aboriginal until they had met a few times. He said that in his experience of racism by other white women on Tinder, it was better to leave that information out in the first instance so as to avoid the possibility of any racist comments. As these participants show, there is a high level of labour required by Indigenous people in navigating relations of love, intimacy and desire online, and in seeking love, there is always the possibility of instead finding hate.

6   Body Sovereignty and Decolonising Desire Colonial discourses of Indigenous sexuality have had devastating impacts for Indigenous people. In one respect, they have helped justify policies of segregation, protection and assimilation; in another, they have shaped how many Indigenous people come to know and understand their own

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sexual identity. Two-Spirit scholar Qwo-Li Driskill (2004, 54) describes this as “a colonised sexuality,” which “is one in which we have internalized the sexual values of the dominant culture”. Indigenous people have not, however, entirely forfeited their sexual identities to colonial power. Driskill (2004, 53) also describes reclaiming sexuality as a process of sovereignty, a journey of reclaiming one’s “first homelands: the body”. Likewise, Wilson (2015, 4) argues that “Indigenous sovereignty over our lands is inseparable from sovereignty over our bodies, sexuality and gender expression”. Driskill (2004, 51) explains that, “when I speak of a Sovereign Erotic I’m speaking of an erotic wholeness healed and/or healing from the historical trauma that First Nations people continue to survive, rooted within the histories, traditions, and resistance struggles of our nations”. What we are witnessing across digital platforms is a growing assertion of Indigenous cultural and collective sovereignty of lands, resources and bodies—which are each intricately interrelated. Indeed, the people we spoke to described a deliberate process of reclaiming their sexuality from colonial constructs—constituting a distinct act of decolonisation, or what Driskill (2004) refers to above as a ‘Sovereign Erotic’. 6.1  Fuck White Beauty Standards “I’m not into Aboriginal girls”: says Bland boy on tinder no Aboriginal girl would be interested in ever. (@kira_djnalie)

The idea that Indigeneity is undesirable plays out in backhanded compliments to which Indigenous women are regularly subjected, such as “you’re too pretty to be Aboriginal”. Harvey (2016) argues that while white men often suggest Aboriginal women are undesirable, they simultaneously often fantasise about and exoticise women of colour, and she herself has been told she was “too pretty to be Aboriginal”. It was also suggested to her that she could pass as Brazilian, which “would be much more sexier than Aboriginal” (Harvey 2016). These types of comments are more than just being assessed against Western ideas of beauty. They carry with them a history of colonial violence, as noted by Sarago (2019, np), who argues that such comments “are not a compliment. It’s a racist, abusive symptom of colonialism”. Colonial desire describes the obsession with Indigenous bodies as it plays out through the fascination with miscegenation and inter-racial

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transgression. In 2018, for instance, comedian Trevor Noah was called out on Twitter for a 2013 ‘comedy’ clip in which he sexually denigrated Aboriginal women. He stated: All women of every race can be beautiful. And I know some of you are sitting there now going, ‘Oh Trevor, I’ve never seen a beautiful Aborigine’. But you know what you say? You say, ‘Yet’. Because you haven’t seen all of them, right? Plus it’s not always about looks, maybe Aborigine women do special things, maybe they’ll just, like, jump on top of you. (cited in McGowan 2018, np)

He then pretended to play the didgeridoo implying that the ‘special things’ could be oral sex. Indigenous women are yet again represented as, somehow, simultaneously sexually undesirable and desirable to non-­ Indigenous men. Indigenous people responded to the clip by tweeting their outrage and righteous anger at Noah and the broader discourse of Indigenous women’s sexuality. Kurnai/Gunai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta freelance writer, Nayuka Gorrie tweeted: Fuck white beauty standards and the black men that hold them up. Fuck misogynoir. Fuck @trevohnoah. The country we come from treats us like we are ugly, tells us we are ugly and unworthy. Personally I don’t care if Trevor Noah finds Aboriginal women hot or beautiful. I do care that we are the punchline. (@NayukaGorrie, posted July 22nd, 2018)

Gamillaroi and Torres Strait Islander playwright and actor, Nakkiah Lui tweeted: Yo @Tevornoah, Im Beautiful BECAUSE Im Aboriginal. Im strong BECAUSE Im Aboriginal. Im Loved BECAUSE Im Aboriginal. Im Smart BECAUSE Im Aboriginal. Im surrounded by Beautiful Aboriginal women who aren’t punchlines, they’re Warrior Goddesses #BeautifulBECAUSEImAboriginal. (@Nakkiahlui, posted July 23rd, 2018)

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6.2   Decolonising Sexual Preferences and Desire The response to Noah was an outright rejection of settler discourse that works to shape the (un)desirability of Indigenous women. For several people we spoke to, however, their foray into online dating caused them to question their own internalised ideals of sexual desire. As part of this growing attention to a ‘Sovereign Erotic’, participants in our research spoke about how they had begun questioning their own desires and the attributes they found attractive in potential partners. Several commented that they had never really seen anyone in the media who was both Aboriginal and framed as desirable, for instance, and noted that this had shaped their own sexual preferences. One participant commented: “I think … I developed what is or isn’t attractive from what I see around me. I never saw Black people or blackfullas in desirable ways in any media” (Gay, 40s, NSW). Some participants spoke about realising that, despite being a staunchly proud Indigenous person, they had internalised a specific kind of colonised preference in which they viewed white partners as being most desirable. It was my own reflections about, like, decolonising sexual preferences and desire … the majority of the men that I’ve slept with in my lengthy sexual career have been majority white. There’s been other mob [Indigenous] but um, you know, mostly white men. And like, why is that? (Gay male, 30s, NSW)

This participant gradually became acutely aware that, for the most part, the Indigenous men they knew only dated white men—or, in some cases, non-white but still non-Indigenous men: I know there are some Aboriginal gay couples, but most of us have either dated only white men or other men of color. Certainly living regionally … I was like, well, statistically, for me … like I probably admittedly had to unpack my own stuff around dating other blackfellas.

One issue mentioned previously is that the pool of potential partners who are Indigenous is small, more so in regional locations, and more so again within the Indigenous LBGTQI+ population. While these are certainly real factors, the participant was more interested in their own internalised lack of sexual interest in other Indigenous people as potential partners. Making this same realisation, another participant described making a conscious decision to begin only dating women of colour.

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I took a break a few years ago from dating white women when I came out of a relationship with a white lesbian who gave me hell. It was one of the best choices I made because it really made me think through who I was attracted to and why. When I looked back I had often dated skinny cisgender white femmes. I started branching out meeting a lot of WOC [women of colour] and the funny thing was dating was so much better! (Queer, 20s, NSW)

6.3  I’m Not Gonna Let them Colonise my Body Taking this embodied colonial critique even further, one woman we spoke to described asserting sovereignty over her body as an act of resistance to the power generally enjoyed by white men on Tinder and Grindr. She explained that she had explicitly listed on her profile that she doesn’t date white men and said she had received a lot of negative and abusive replies— often targeted at her physical appearance, even though they were originally attracted to her: I don’t date white men. And when white men find out that I don’t date them, they can become quite abusive. Saying, you know, ‘Oh, you are fat’. (Heterosexual female, 40s, QLD)

She recalled explaining to a potential match on Tinder that, though she thought he seemed nice, she could only imagine a friendship with him, as she doesn’t date white men. The man was annoyed and demanded an explanation. I’m like, well, because white people have colonised my land and I’m not gonna let them colonise my body. It’s that last part of sovereignty of my body that I want to maintain. You know, it might sound stupid or whatever, but that’s just how I see it. You know, our bodies have been used in ways by white people that even today that I don’t want to let a white man touch my body. And if that’s racist, well, call me racist. I really don’t care. (Heterosexual female, 40s NSW)

The man was not satisfied with her response and became abusive. Yeah, they tend to get a bit sensitive, you know, it’s kind of like this thing about white men that …] it’s like they are on top of the food chain and you

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should aspire to date a white man. And if you don’t, that just topples them. (Heterosexual female, 40s, QLD)

It is evident that the man was unable to accept that he did not have the power to decide what the outcome of the interaction would be; indeed, he seemed to have difficulty comprehending that an Aboriginal woman did not find him attractive or feel grateful for his attention. Given the history of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations in this country, it was perhaps inconceivable to him that, as a white man—the pinnacle of biological evolution and human civilisation—Aboriginal bodies were not accessible and that Aboriginal women had the authority to say no. By asserting her sovereignty over her own body, this participant was directly challenging the colonial power relations that still determine which bodies are desirable and who has the right to lay claim to another’s body.

7   Closing: Towards a Sovereign Erotic When you match with a Blackfulla on a dating app and they ask ‘what are you looking for?’ Me: I’m looking for my land back bra, aren’t you? (@ CarlyJWallace)

As the people we spoke to make clear, there is no level playing field when it comes to seeking love for marginalised groups, particularly Indigenous women and Indigenous LGBTQI+ people. Instead, the colonial structures of heteropatriarchy and sexualised violence that bolster settler regimes extend well in the realm of digital intimacy. In the colonial imagination, Indigenous bodies are categorised as the epitome of ‘primitivism’—as savage, animalistic, both violent and deserving of violence. This is not by some sort of natural process; it is a well-designed colonial system where particular bodies are assigned a position of desirability. White bodies are given a privileged position and deemed the ‘most desirable’, while Indigenous bodies are deemed undesirable, despite also playing role in the violent fantasies of many non-Indigenous others. These power dynamics continue to play out in the new digital spaces created by dating apps. In seeking love, companionship and sexual pleasure, Indigenous people find themselves constantly swept along by the violent forces of settler desire. They are racially denigrated, dehumanised and threatened with sexual violence—all in the name of the supposedly inalienable right to ‘preference’.

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But despite this, Indigenous people have not ceded sovereignty over their bodies. Instead, the people we spoke to described their journeys towards reclaiming their sexualities—rejecting settler standards of desirability, decolonising their own desires, and asserting sovereignty over that most intimate territory, the body. Decolonising desire means critically questioning how we come to desire the bodies that we desire; it means imagining other ways of desiring; and it means actively taking control over one’s own body and the role it plays in the desires of others.

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Day, M. (2020). Indigenist Origins: Institutionalizing Indigenous Queer and Trans Studies in Australia. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 7(3), 367–373. Deer, S. (2009). Decolonizing rape law: A native feminist synthesis of safety and sovereignty. Wicazo Sa Review, 24(2), 149–167. Donelly, B. (2016) ‘Gay Minorities Speak Out against Racism on Grindr’, Sydney Morning Herald 18 April. URL (consulted 12 May 2018): https://www.smh. com.au/national/gay-­a boriginal-­m an-­p ublishes-­r acist-­s lurs-­o n-­d ating-­ app-­20160418-­go8zov.html Driskill, Q. L. (2004). Stolen from our bodies: First Nations two-spirits/queers and the journey to a sovereign erotic. Studies in American Indian Literatures, 16(2), 50–64. ElSherief, M., E.  Belding and D.  Nguyen (2017) ‘#NotOkay: Understanding Gender-based Violence in Social Media’, paper presented at AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), moth, place. Fanon, F. (1951, 2008). Black Skin, White Masks. Pluto Press. Farrell, A. (2017) ‘Archiving the Aboriginal Rainbow: Building an Aboriginal LBGTIQ Portal’, Australasian Journal of Information Systems 21: 1–14. Harvey, J. L. (2016). ‘#2PTBA Too pretty to be Aboriginal’. Ascension. Available at: https://ascensionmag.com/too-­pretty-­to-­be-­aboriginal-­2/ Henry, N., & Powell, A. (2016). Sexual violence in the digital age: The scope and limits of criminal law. Social & legal studies, 25(4), 397–418. Hess, A. and C. Flores (2018) ‘Simply More than Swiping Left: A Critical Analysis of Toxic Masculine Performances on Tinder Nightmares’, New Media & Society 20(3): 1085–102. Horton, J., (2010). The case of Elsie Barrett: Aboriginal women, sexuality and the Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines. Journal of Australian Studies, 34(1), 1–18. Hubbard, L. (2020). “Online Hate Crime Report: Challenging online homophobia, biphobia and transphobia”. London: Galop, the LGBT+ anti-violence charity. Available at: http://www.galop.org.uk/wp-­content/uploads/Online-­ Crime-­2020_0.pdf Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1997). Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, Sydney: Commonwealth of Australia, pp. 667–670. Hutson, J.  A., Taft, J.  G., Barocas, S., & Levy, K. (2018). Debiasing desire: Addressing bias & discrimination on intimate platforms. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2(CSCW), 1–18. Jakubowicz, A., Dunn, K., Mason, G., Paradies, Y., Bliuc, A. M., Bahfen, N., … & Connelly, K. (2017). Cyber racism and community resilience. Cham: Springer International Publishing., 10, 978–3.

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Jane, E. (2014) ‘“Back to the Kitchen, Cunt”: Speaking the Unspeakable about Online Misogyny’, Continuum 28(4): 558–70. Lugones, M. (2014). Toward a Decolonial feminism. Revista Estudos Feministas, 22(3), 935–952. https://doi.org/10.1590/s0104-­026x2014000300013 McGowan, M. (2018). ‘Trevor Noah responds to boycott calls over racist jokes about Aboriginal women’ The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/jul/23/trevor-­n oah-­r esponds-­t o-­b oycott-­c alls­over-­racist-­joke-­about-­aboriginal-­women Meiu, G. P. (2015). Colonialism and sexuality. The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality, 197–290. Miller, B. (2015). “They’re the modern-day gay bar”: Exploring the uses and gratifications of social networks for men who have sex with men. Computers in Human Behavior, 51, 476–482. Petrychyn, J., Parry, D. C., & Johnson, C. W. (2020). Building community, one swipe at a time: hook-up apps and the production of intimate publics between women. Health Sociology Review, 29(3), 249–263. Povinelli, E.  A. (1994). Sexual savages/sexual sovereignty: Australian colonial texts and the postcolonial politics of nationalism. diacritics, 24(2/3), 122–150. Rafalow, M., C.  Feliciano and B.  Robnett (2017) ‘Racialised Femininity and Masculinity in the Preferences of Online Same-sex Daters’, Social Currents 4(4): 306–21. Raj, S. (2011). Grindring bodies: Racial and affective economies of online queer desire. Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, 7(2), 1–12. Ramsay, A. (2008). ‘Weasel words won’t hide monstrous shame’ The Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/national/weasel-­ words-­wont-­hide-­monstrous-­shame-­20080202-­gdrzda.html Relationships Australia (2017). Online dating survey. Available: https://www. relationships.org.au/what-­w e-­d o/research/online-­s ur vey/november-­ 2017-­online-­dating Renninger, B. (2018) ‘Grindr Killed the Gay Bar, and Other Attempts to Blame Social Technologies for Urban Development: A Democratic Approach to Population Technologies and Queer Sociality’, Journal of Homosexuality. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2018.1514205 Robinson, R. and D. Frost (2018) ‘LGBT Equality and Sexual Racism’, Fordham Law Review 86(6): 2739–54 Sarago, S. (2019). ‘Don’t tell me I’m ‘too pretty to be Aboriginal’. It’s not a compliment’. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-­and-­ radio/2019/jan/15/dont-­tell-­me-­im-­too-­pretty-­to-­be-­aboriginal-­its-­not-­a-­ compliment-­its-­racism Scannell, P. (2014). Television and the meaning of ‘live’: an enquiry into the human situation. John Wiley & Sons.

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Fun

“Give colonisers an inch, they’ll take a continent”  – Dreamtime saying. (@IndigenousX host Scott Trindall, March 2nd 2021) Trust me to have the runs tonight. I blame colonisation. (@NayukaGorrie, January 26th 2021)

1   Introduction: The Social Media Playground So far, this book has been focused on the ‘serious side’ of social media: the highly contested politics of Indigenous identity, the formation of ‘community’ within the context of colonialism, the racist hatred regularly encountered online, and the ugly sexual violence of settler desire. In the context of broader knowledge-making about Indigenous people, our focus on negativity, harm, and spectacular violence is not unusual. As we’ve discussed throughout this book, Indigenous people are routinely defined by that which they supposedly lack, and research overwhelmingly emphasises the ‘deficits’, ‘gaps’ and traumas that apparently define Indigenous people. While these are undeniably salient aspects of Indigenous life, being Indigenous online is not all doom, gloom and settler colonial violence. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are clearly platforms for hate, violence and a myriad forms of Indigenous elimination, but they are also spaces where Indigenous people share their love,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_6

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creatively express themselves through memes, reaction GIFs and jokes, where they make fun of each other and, most importantly, make fun of the colony. ‘Fun’ is a subjective and intimately embodied experience. It is a playful, productive and affective force—bringing people together, breaking down boundaries, reifying others, and circulating pleasurable feelings across and between bodies. Bayat (2013, 130) highlights the creative and even transgressive aspects of fun, arguing that: Fun is a metaphor for the expression of individuality, spontaneity, and lightness, in which joy is the central element. While joy is neither an equivalent nor a definition of fun, it remains a key component of it …. [F]un often points to usually improvised, spontaneous, free-form, changeable, and thus unpredictable expressions and practices.

While the experience of fun is often intimately personal, its collective expression can have profound social effects. In this sense, Fincham argues (2016, 5), “[i]t is a multi-dimensional, multifunctional social phenomenon”: [Fun] defines experiences, characterises people, embellishes memories; it feeds moments with positivity, establishes the conditions for good relationships; it draws distinctions between good and bad times and it enhances life. It is curiously ambiguous—we know when we are having it, but struggle to define it.

The long history of oppressive policies targeting Indigenous people globally has meant that Indigenous ‘fun’, ‘joy’ and ‘humour’ are invariably political. For Indigenous people, fun often plays important social and political roles in sustaining one’s sense of a distinctly Indigenous identity. As noted by Fincham (2016, 3), “the role of fun for making situations at worst tolerable and at best enjoyable is clear”. In trying to define Indigenous humour, Copage (2019, 187) suggests its “like a fart in the wind, you know it’s there, but where did it come from?”. Citing Ojibway playwright and humorist Hayden Taylor, Copage (2019, 188) more explicitly links Indigenous humour with anti-colonial or decolonising politics: Humour is a radical and compelling illustration of Indigenous revolution by means of resistance and re-education. By reclaiming white-washed stereo-

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types and histories for ourselves, we are re-writing history. Well, nobody is really re-writing history, we are just finally adding perspectives other than the colonizers: creating a more robust and truthful understanding of history. A more accurate description would be filling in the perspectival gaps within history.

This ‘politics of fun’ is evident in Indigenous expressions of fun, humour and play in Australia. Redmond (2008), for instance, describes Indigenous performers from the Kimberley region in Western Australia retelling stories of Captain James Cook and General MacArthur in a performance titled, ‘Captain Cook Jurnba’, composed by Alec Wirrijangu. The ‘jurnba’ consists of publicly performed songs and dances, and includes the story of the first violent contact between Europeans and the people of the north-west Kimberley area in the 1800s. The Aboriginal performers made fun of the characters Cook and MacArthur, reportedly causing the audience to laugh so hard that they experienced a “radical loss of bodily composure” (Redmond 2008, 257). Watkin Tench’s widely read account of life in the colony from 1788 to 1833 noted that Indigenous people were often observed “laughing to excess” at the settlers when they “tripped or stumbled” testifying that their “principal source of merriment was … derived from our misfortunes, in tumbling amidst nettles, and sliding down precipices, which they mimicked with inimitable drollery” (cited in Flannery 2009, 192). Jones and McGloin (2016, 528) note the acute skills Indigenous people displayed in “mimicking and caricaturing European gestures and mannerisms, undermining and frustrating the self-­ assigned sense of superiority of the colonial regime”. This ‘making fun’ of colonisers often works to produce and sustain a sense of group identity and belonging. Stanner (1982, 40) notes that “the underlying philosophy of Aboriginal humour is likely to baffle a European mind” because it is often an ‘insiders’ joke where Indigenous people are deriving pleasure from poking fun at settlers. Nakata (2007, 12) observed that Indigenous humour “reveals the ignorance of outsiders of how we operate in and understand our world and many a merry laugh we have all had at whitefellas’ expense”. In the same vein, Copage (2019, 188) argues: Through humour, the narrative of who is laughing at who is changing. For a long time, Indigenous peoples have been the butt of the white man’s jokes. But now, we are changing that narrative to laughing at and with ourselves, and one another.

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While in the mainstream settler imagination, Indigenous people are often framed as humourless, whinging, perennial complainers, Kable (1990, 38) argues that “an Aboriginal lifestyle is full of humour,” which Duncan (2014, 82) suggests is “the only way we get through the hard times”. Through participating in collective forms of Indigenous fun, people can temporarily break free from “the disciplined constraints of daily life, normative obligations, and organised power”, Bayat (2013, 130) explains. 1.1  Making Fun in the Colony In chapter “Identity”, we spoke briefly about the way in which Indigenous people often ‘take the piss’ and make fun of settlers, particularly the stereotypical, pejorative and essentialist ideas some non-Indigenous people hold around what constitutes Indigeneity. ‘Taking the piss’ is a form of fun; it is about making fun of the things that are absurd, risible, offensive and hurtful. In this chapter, we expand on this initial discussion, and touch on a range of digital practices of Indigenous fun, including meme-making, joke sharing, performing, satirising, and good-natured taunting. Rather than trying to define and neatly contain ‘fun’, we want to see what fun does in online Indigenous sociality. To this end, we don’t seek to overly theorise, conceptualise or analyse these online practices—as the saying goes, there’s no better way to kill a joke than by explaining it. We do, however, want to draw attention to some of the ‘work’ that Indigenous fun performs, particularly in forming group solidarity, fostering a sense of belonging, and sustaining oneself in the difficult, often absurd context of Australian settler colonialism. In this sense, fun, we will argue, is a form of expressive creativity that sustains one’s capacity to ‘go on’. The collective expression of fun and humour online are political tools Indigenous people deploy to ensure survival in what Chelsea Watego refers to as #AnotherDayInTheColony. To understand fun as a social practice, we draw on boyd’s (2010, 39) influential notion of ‘networked publics’, which they define as: publics that are restructured by networked technologies. As such they are simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked technologies and (2) the imagined collective that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology and practice.

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boyd’s (2010) reference to an ‘imagined collective’ follows from Benedict Anderson’s (2006) notion of a public as an ‘imagined community’, which describes the idea of national identity and the sense that people have of being part of a national community, even though they may not engage in face-to-face communication with all of its members. Building on this, Papacharissi (2016) emphasise the role of ‘affect’—which we also discuss in chapters “Death” and “Activism”—in the formation of networked publics. Papacharissi (2016, 310) argues that the expressions of sentiment that social media facilitate “serve to discursively call in to being public formations, that I refer to as affective publics”. These affective publics are comprised of “soft, networked structures of feeling” and “are activated and sustained by feelings of belonging and solidarity, however evanescent those feelings may be” (Papacharissi 2016, 310–1). By attending to how the felt movement of affect becomes ‘networked’ online, we can see how digital practices of fun, humour and joy are not only ‘personal’ experiences, but social formations that often have political implications. We follow three different forms of Indigenous fun across three different platforms. First, we discuss the creation of closed Facebook groups, in which Indigenous people carve out a distinctly Indigenous space for the expression of Indigenous joy. Second, we look at #BlackfullaTwitter—the distinctly Indigenous network of Twitter users—and, in particular, the semi-organised, semi-spontaneous #Koorioke event that took place in 2020, in which Indigenous people shared candid videos of themselves singing popular songs. Finally, we discuss the more recently emerging ‘BlakTok’ space on video-sharing app TikTok, where Indigenous social media users creatively play with their identities. In each case, we argue, these networked, affective publics of Indigenous fun work to intensify group solidarity, increase affective joys, and challenge settler politics.

2   Indigenous Humour Behind Digital Doors Facebook long sustained well-populated Indigenous-only groups. It is in these sites, closed off to settlers, that Indigenous people can be silly, have some fun, and enjoy life together where mainstream colonialism isn’t the centre of concern, even if these spaces are profoundly delimited and the moments are short-lived. It is where Indigenous people can relax and be themselves; where they share anecdotes, observations and ‘in-jokes’ that are understood by the majority of other members. These groups are closed

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to non-Indigenous people and administrators generally vet people requesting membership to ensure that they are indeed Indigenous. ‘Mob Feeds’, ‘MOB and their PETS’, ‘Music for the Mob’—these sites focus on connecting Indigenous people through sharing and celebrating every day, ordinary, but characteristically ‘Indigenous things’, like Indigenous food, pet preferences and musical tastes. Mob Feeds, for example, which currently has over 70,000 members, uses humour to set out the protocols for being a member on the page. Its ‘community guidelines’ explains: This group is for First Nations community and our families to connect through food. Food’s a happy place for many of us and we’re all cooking up much more at home now. Hope this group can be a fun way of sharing our cooking, recipes and whatever else. Feel free to invite people and post up or live! No feeds too flash or humble:) WE LOVE: bush food, culture, community, difference, tinmeet [tinned meat], devon, vegetables, meat, seafood, rice, vegans, carnivores, pescatarians, recipes, process videos, lives, city, country, island, remote, rainbow mob and the rest XO We will not tolerate offensive, racist, homophobic, divisive, negative, or nasty content. Warning: there will be occasional graphic images of bush food, kills, tofu and chickpeas.

The general sentiment of posts of these pages is one of joy in the ordinary: the celebration of distinctly Indigenous food practices, playing with and challenging norms around food, and sharing in moments of nostalgia around childhood food experiences. Members frequently reminisce about food they remember growing up, often humble, thrifty meals; share modern takes on Indigenous staples, including devon, Keen’s Curry Powder and bush tucker; and post photos of their experiments—often disastrous— in ‘Indigenous fusion’ cooking. The Yarning Circle is another particularly popular site, currently connecting over 24,000 exclusively Indigenous members. The page is described as a safe space for Indigenous people to “speak about mental health, relationships, make friends, enjoy banter, have a laugh and speak about important Indigenous issues close to our hearts”. Here Indigenous people have formed a community where they can post about anything, including ‘taking the piss’ and having a laugh. As Nakata (2007, 12) reminds us:

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Indigenous humour … emerges from this locale where we form a community around some shared inter subjective understanding of our experience, where we can understand the jokes … [non-Indigenous audiences] are the outsiders in this world of experience and they must fathom our accounts of it and feel what it is like not to be a ‘knower’ of this world.

In this way, posts tend to centre a specifically Indigenous world view. In one recent post, a member commented, “IDGAF [I don’t give a fuck] where u work, if your job has a staff meeting, black people r gonna hold a meeting right afterwards to discuss the BS [bull shit] we just listened to”—which was met with an outbreak of reactions and comments of people laughing and agreeing. Many Indigenous people work in places where they are a minority and where Indigenous lifeworlds are poorly understood or considered; many also work in institutions where racism is rife (Bargallie 2020). In another post a member asked, “If a black person say ‘I’m around the corner’ how far away are they?”. In the same vein as the previous post, there was a flood of laughing emojis and humorous comments such as “depends on if it’s your pay day or theirs” and “still in bed”. This particular post is in relation to the stereotype that Indigenous people operate on what is colloquially known as ‘Koori Time’, which stems from early colonial characterisations of Indigenous people as “unreliable, nomadic and lazy” (see, Gibson 2007). One of the ways that Indigenous people use social media to resist, refashion and mock settler stereotypes is through making and sharing memes (Carson and Berglund 2021; Frazer and Carlson 2017). By using familiar images and meme formats, but giving them an Indigenous spin, Indigenous peoples can intervene in mainstream discourse, rally together, and reach other Indigenous social media users with a positive message, using both humor and contemporary, current language. Through memes, fun and politics often mixed playfully in what Tay (2012) refers to as ‘LOLitics’—that is, ‘laugh out loud politics’. Food again features prominently in Indigenous meme-making practices. After the controversial ‘tell-all’ Prince Harry and Megan Markle interview with Oprah (see, Fachingbouer Cooper 2021), for instance, the Yarning Circle was flooded with memes. One depicted Megan looking very concerned with the comment “AND THEN THEY Said devon, chips & tomato sauce Is not a burger [sic]”; the below image was Oprah holding up her hands in shocked disbelief. In another, riffing on the same scene, Oprah asks the Royals “and when you dined with them, what did

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they serve?”, to which Harry replies: “devon and chips. But no sauce”— again Oprah, incredulous, throws her hands up. In yet another, two young people are messaging one another. In the first image, a young woman texts: “I’ve never cooked bully beef”, which like devon, is a food that many Indigenous people grew up eating; the second image is of a young man hurriedly pressing the ‘block’ button. Indigenous memes often contain this kind of nostalgia for a distinctly Indigenous childhood—including the sarcastic humour they were often subjected to by their parents. One meme features a child asking their mum: Me: what’s for dinner? Mum: shit on toast Me: [blank] accompanied by a picture of a child looking less than amused, and another of Leonardo DiCaprio as ‘Gatsby’, smirking with a glass of champagne, who represents the ‘Mum’.

The post elicited roars of knowing laughter from other members, including comments from people saying that they thought it only happened in their childhood homes, and others commenting how they now tell this to their own children. In all these examples, a distinctly Indigenous way of life was being centred, shared and celebrated. Through playing with popular meme formats, sharing Indigenous food practices, and reminiscing about the humorous aspects of Indigenous childhood, these closed spaces work to circulate joyful affects of fun, humour and playfulness, ultimately sustaining a sense of shared experience and identity.

3   Koorioke: Singing, Silliness and Indigenous Joy As we discuss in chapters “Death” and “Activism”, 2020 saw an incredible rise in online activity around the Black Lives Matter protests, which highlighted racial violence and the ongoing reports of Indigenous deaths in custody. Repeated exposure to violence against Black and Indigenous people, including police brutality and Indigenous deaths in custody, can be difficult and re-traumatising for Indigenous people online. The year 2020 also saw protracted lockdowns of communities as a public health measure to combat the dangerous spread of COVID-19. In Australia, this was particularly the case for people living in Naarm (Melbourne), who were kept in hard lockdown for 15  weeks. This created a potentially

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dangerous combination, as Indigenous people were increasingly exposed to images and expressions of Black and Indigenous pain online, while simultaneously being physically separated from much of their support networks, and thus were more reliant on digital technologies to stay in touch with loved ones. In an effort to provide a sense of relief to this often-gruelling daily reality, Bundjalung man Steve Jones and Yamatji Badimia woman Banok Rind started a ‘#Koorioke’ event on Twitter. ‘Koorioke’ is a portmanteau of ‘karaoke’ and ‘Koori’, a colloquial term used to describe Aboriginal people from parts of New South Wales and Victoria. The idea was to get Indigenous people sharing candid videos of themselves singing. In an interview with Patricia Karvelas on the ABC radio program RN Drive about the Koorioke posts on Twitter, Jones stated that “It has been a real crappy year for everyone—Blackfullas in particular” and therefore “we just wanted to have a bit of fun” (Karvelas 2020). It began with one tweet and was quickly taken up by hundreds of Indigenous people posting videos of themselves singing all manner of songs and engaging in the playful banter. Indigenous news agency NITV tweeted a video of a series of the twitter Koorioke posts, stating that it was a ‘#blackfullatwitter takeover: There’s no shame here just deadly mob #Koorioke #KooriokeSuperstar’ (@NITV, September 17 2020). Many posted videos singing with their children and other members of their families. As the #KooriokeSuperstar event gained traction, one person posted a video of their grandmother singing Loretta Lynn’s song ‘Paper Roses’, stating “Here’s my very own #KooriokeSuperstar … my Gunii. You can tell she means business cause she took her falsies [false teeth] out bless. But holy moly I’m grown and STILL her voice puts me to sleep howwww”. Contrary to popular belief that country music is a ‘white thing’, many Indigenous people are consumers and producers of country music (Carlson 2016, 500). Some country music artists are so widely popular, in fact, that they have been given honorary ‘Indigenous’ status, such as Charlie Pride. On the news of his passing, not long after the #Koorioke event, many Indigenous people openly mourned his loss on social media. Gomeroi man Scott Trindall tweeted, “the biggest temptation to log back on during my cute twitter sabbatical was to do ceremony with #Blackfullatwitter when uncle Charlie Pride died” (posted 19th December 2020). Country music songs were thus well featured in the #Koorioke event, with Natalie Cromb tweeting, “Anybody done Charlie Pride or Patsy Cline yet? #KooriokeSuperstar”, and another replying “I have been listening to Patsy

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and Charlie all afternoon can’t wait to hear some on #koorioke”; and another stating “I’m gonna do Conway Twitty baawaa”. Aboriginal actor and one of the stars of the film The Sapphires, Miranda Tapsell, posted a video of herself singing “kooris, kooris, kooris, kooriiiis, please don’t stop singing for me yet” to the tune of Dolly Parton’s song ‘Jolene’. Many others belted out country music songs, including Dolly Parton’s ‘9 to 5’: “Yawuru aunty girl here stepping up for #koorioke. Picked my favourite by Aunty @DollyParton. Here y’are #KooriokeSuperstar #BlackfullaTwitter”. Ali Murphy-Oates posted a video singing Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy’ into a plastic water bottle microphone, and commented: “Watch that Big Aunty Energy take over as the song goes on [laughing emojis]”. There is often an element of nostalgia and homesickness in Indigenous peoples’ love for country. Anita Heiss, for instance, posted a video singing Charlie Pride’s version of ‘Me and Bobby McGee’, explaining that she was “doing a duet with #CharliePride in honour of my mother’s undying love for him & in memory my childhood cleaning to his voice #tonedeaf #koorioke”. Country music is a popular everyday pleasure for many Indigenous people and, as Heiss explained, listening brings back good memories. Elsewhere I referred to this love of country as a “lyrical, rhythmic and melodic reference to our memories” (Carlson 2016, 499). Not all Indigenous people are as enthusiastic about country music, however. Celeste Liddle, for instance, posted a video singing Charlie Pride’s ‘Blue eyes crying in the rain’, adorned in an Akubra hat and using a bottle of vitamin D tablets as sort of maracas, apologetically stating: “I’m the Arrernte who HATES country music. I’m sorry. So this one isn’t for me, it’s for my dad Alpal and for Uncle Charlie. Enjoy you country mob”. The Koorioke event increasingly became a challenge, where singers would nominate others to participate—often knowing those they nominated would be reluctant to participate. Karlie Noon, for instance, posted a video commenting “Aight fam, it’s Saturday night & I thought I would give #Koorioke a go … Thanks for encouraging me.” She posted a list of names challenging others to also post a video. This public shaming became part of the fun. Shahni Wellington obliged with a post and commented, “Absolute SHAME job here but couldn’t let” others “hold it over me!”. Chelsea Watego likewise posted a video singing Roger Knox’s ‘Streets of Tamworth’, commenting: “Only submitting this to #KooriSuperstar bc I’m sick of all the lateral violence from #BlackfullaTwitter”—‘lateral violence’ being a term used to refer to violence coming from within the social

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group to whom one belongs, which Watego here deployed playfully. Another jokingly referred to the challenges as ‘humbugging’: a term generally used to refer to family who make unreasonable or excessive demands. At some point, the event became a competition. Indigenous media organisation IndigenousX, along with other Indigenous organisations offered prizes consisting of sweatshirts, t-shirts and stickers for good efforts—and particularly those that made people laugh. While many were indeed exceptional singers, ‘talent’ wasn’t necessarily what the event was promoting; instead, it was about good-natured playfulness, silliness and fun, which often involved elements of the absurd. In one post, for instance, a person used a curried sausage—another Indigenous staple—as a microphone and posted: “I always love the #BlackfullaTwitter mob but this has been extra special. Now here’s my gammin self singing into a curried sausage”. In the midst of proliferating reports and images of Black and Indigenous trauma at the hands of law enforcement, the COVID-19 pandemic inflicting incredible suffering the world over, and lockdown measures that kept people apart from many of their loved ones, the #Koorioke event was a spot of radiant sunshine for Indigenous Twitter users. The space that was collectively created was full of fun, silliness, playful performance and joyful connection.

4   Freewheeling Fun on #BlakTok The year 2020 also saw the explosive popularity of video-sharing platform, TikTok. While we haven’t extensively covered TikTok in this book, having conducted the majority of our fieldwork before 2020, it has fast become an important platform for Indigenous youth. As one participant in our study explained: “it’s entertaining, fast paced, so it’s easy to filter through— perfect for a short attention span” (Gay, 20s, NSW). TikTok is a video-­ sharing social media platform and was the world’s second-most downloaded app in 2019. The platform allows users to make videos of themselves, usually 15 seconds to a minute long, dancing, lip-syncing, ranting, parodying or showcasing other talents. As the above participant went on to explain, “people just act a fool and it’s easier to connect with others who aren’t famous. It’s kinda like reality TV sometimes too. I watch people do stupid or funny things to switch off” (Gay, 20s, NSW). One key attraction of TikTok is that it greatly lowers barriers to video production: the app is simple to use and offers a range of music, filters,

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formats and other features to enhance users’ video productions. TikTok, according to Wang (2020, 2) “positions itself to focus on quirky videos, most of which were not too professionally or aesthetically produced”. Instead of aiming for high production quality, Shen (2020) describes TikTok as “the social media of freewheeling fun”. A specifically ‘Indigenous TikTok’ rapidly emerged throughout 2020, with many Indigenous people turning to the app to maintain connections with others, particularly through cultural practices and humour. Across the world, Indigenous youth began using TikTok and humour to challenge the ways they are represented online and in the media. Native American youth, for example, began using TikTok to deliberately target and inform non-Indigenous audiences. Loyer (2020, np) argues that these users “perform Indigenous cultures for voyeurs”, where they educate the general public about issues of importance to them—including language reclamation, land claims and racist stereotyping. In this way, argues Loyer (2020, np), “Indigenous TikToks created for outsiders defiantly confront the way mainstream spaces see Indigenous people: disappearing, or already disappeared”. Indigenous TikTokers also create content specifically for other Indigenous users. Saddlelake Cree woman Fawn Wood described using the platform to share Indigenous humour, and explained that she “started using it when the pandemic first hit. … I started posting videos because I was stuck at home like everybody else and it was a form of uplifting myself” (Rabbit 2021). The link between humour and healing is regularly reiterated by Indigenous TikTok users. Sherry McKay, for instance, an Ojibway Anishinabe woman with over 360,000 TikTok follows, explains: “Comedy has a way to help us heal. Us Indigenous people will joke about some of the darkest, most traumatic things and laugh about it. It’s how we move past some of our struggles” (Malik 2021). Like the fun practices we discuss above, such content is often only really understood and enjoyed by other Indigenous people because it is ‘in-­ humour’—as Loyer (2020) notes, there is a distinct tonal shift when Indigenous people create content for members of their own cultural group. Loyer (2020, np) explains that, in these spaces, there is often a profound sense of “relief of not having to explain history or backstory” and therefore having “the ability to make intricate, self-referential jokes in a shared language”.

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Many of these practices work to challenge and ‘heterogenise’ notions of Indigenous identity. Loyer quotes a tweet by Nêhiyaw poet Erica Violet Lee, who observes: I notice media and popular narratives that posit the resistance of Indigenous women, girls, Transgender, Queer, and Two-Spirit folks as being somehow passive - that is, we are always “resisting” and “defending” what is being done to us and our communities. (@ericavioletlee, posted 8th February 2020)

Bouncing off this, Loyer (2020) asks “why does Indigenous presence always have to be about ‘resisting’ and ‘defending’?” Indigenous TikTokers who know they don’t have to perform the stoic, proud, resilient Indian to be heard are allowing themselves to be soft, funny and sweet; they are an affirmation of Indigenous life, in all its realness and silliness and intergenerational joy. (Loyer 2020, np)

In Australia, Indigenous people have begun using TikTok in similar ways. Celebrating NAIDOC 2020, Barkindji, Wakawaka and Birrigubba TikTok content producer Emily @howdoidelete1 put together a selection of Indigenous TikTok pages to highlight the way in which Indigenous youth are engaged with the platform, which was published by Junkee. She writes that: NAIDOC week may have wrapped up, but #BlakTok is out here thriving and full of deadly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander TikTokers you should start following all day every day to decolonise your feeds.

One young teen with over 79,000 followers, Eshia (@eshiaanderson1), for example, uses comedy to satirise the racism that she has dealt with in her life as an Aboriginal person (Price 2019, np). In one of her videos, for instance, she addresses the issue of standing for the national anthem; many Indigenous people have refused to stand for the Australia national anthem, and Indigenous students in schools have faced penalties for not doing so—including Eshia, who recounts her experience of being sent to the principal’s office for refusing to stand or sing. Other Indigenous content producers have raised similar issues, including Sari-Ella Thaiday, who has produced videos about ‘growing up as an Indigenous Australian’ and asks viewers to raise their hand if they have ever been “accused of stealing,

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followed around in a store, assumed to be on Centrelink or don’t have a job, and being told to ‘get over’ your people’s murder, massacre, genocide, stolen land and stolen wages” (Thaiday cited in Vrajlal 2020, np). Indigenous LBGTQI+ youth are particularly prominent creators on TikTok. As reported by The Washington Post, “TikTok has become the soul of the LGBTQ Internet” (Ohlheiser 2020). While the app has been criticised for racial algorithmic bias (Gassam Asare 2020) and faced accusations of inequitable treatment of Black and other non-white content producers in regard to its community guidelines (Rosenblatt 2021), compared to many other mainstream apps, TikTok has fostered a general culture of inclusivity for many people often marginalised. And as one of our participants claims: “straight white TikTok is boring. Blak queer TikTok is where it is at” (Gay, 19, QLD). As one young queer Indigenous Dharug and Kamilaroi person explained to us: “it’s like a fun outlet of expression, I guess. And it’s just nice to have that thrill of people viewing my content and laughing at it. Coz it’s all humorous as well; it’s not anything serious on my page”. Several young queer Indigenous Australians have built up considerable followings for their online performances. Meissa Mason, for example, is described as the “official Aussie TikTok queen of rainbow mullets and rainbow serpent makeup” (Vrajlal 2020, np). Mason was one of the 2021 TikTok makeup artist ambassadors for Mardi Gras. Mason comments: I feel so honoured to have been chosen to be involved and to represent TikTok at Mardi Gras. TikTok is actually the platform I came out on, it’s the place I felt most comfortable expressing my sexuality and for that, I am ever grateful. I’ve had so many amazing experiences and met so many amazing friends since coming out and being involved with TikTok!! (Mason cited in Vrajlal 2020, np)

Like other social platforms, hashtags can be used on TikTok to customise one’s feed. The hashtags #IndigenousTikTok and #BlakTok are used by many Indigenous content creators to signal to other Indigenous users that the videos have been made by an Indigenous person and that they will ‘get’ or understand the content. Participants described using the algorithm to create intersectional niches that catered to different aspects of their identity—particularly their Indigeneity and sexuality. One of our participants explains:

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[T]he ‘for you’ page is formulated for what you like so I get lots of funny queer and feminist content but it won’t receive them unless you get formatted to gay TikTok and same for Indigenous content I format it to Indigenous TikTok or BlakTok. (Gay, 20s, NSW)

We asked another one of our participants about the kinds of things Indigenous LGBTQI+ youth post, and they responded with a story about Hollywood star Zac Efron. Remember when queer mob lost it over Zac Efron on TikTok. There he is all painted up - red headband and everything. Queer mob were imposing their faces over the photo saying ‘tru god he’s that lovely’ like they might snag him at the knockout. (Queer, 20s, NSW)

This participant is referring to an Instagram post that Zac Efron shared in relation to the announcement that Efron would be filming season two of his Netflix show, ‘Down to Earth’, here in Australia. Efron shared a picture of himself painted in ochre, wearing a red headband, and participating in a formal Welcome to Country ceremony. In one TikTok video, Evander Edward Connelly @evanderedwardcomm included the post Efron made while commenting “I have 3 words and only 3 words. Big Budoo energy”—‘budoo’ meaning penis. Comments included, “the way he look painted up. Perfection” and “ON GOOOOOOODD 100% #BBE”. However, some of the videos featuring Efron were taken down by TikTok because they breached its community standards. Evanb Tj @2joocee, who is self-described as “the real not so slim but shady FABoriginal” was one such creator on TikTok who vowed to repost it in protest. Dozens of followers agreed, with one suggesting, “we need to do it again brother. We need to let “Zachariah” know he’s gonna get the deadliest welcome to country when he comes back” and another stating “HMMMMMM … MAKE YA SLACK … THERE WAS LIKE 12K+ LIKES!!!!”.

5   Closing: Indigenous Life in All Its Realness and Silliness The examples above represent an infinitesimal smattering of the ways Indigenous people have fun online. While hate, abuse and other forms of violence are deeply embedded in social media cultures, they far from

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entirely define them. Instead, Indigenous people are very often joyfully connected to one another online—they reminisce about good times, play on characteristically ‘Indigenous’ experiences and preferences, and make fun of both one another and the ideas settlers have of them. In this sense, fun, play and humour often help Indigenous people deal with the onslaught of violence characteristic of what Watego calls #AnotherDayInTheColony. Far from being just a reaction to a colonial reality, however, fun is also a potent form of Indigenous freedom—it is expansive, sustaining and affirming; it is a celebration of identity, connection, experience and group-being. Across the three examples we discuss in this chapter, Indigenous people are sustaining networked structures of joyful affect—what Papacharissi calls affective publics—produced through play, fun, humour and performance. The various affordances of the different platforms foster different arrangements of fun. The use of the hashtags #BlackfullaTwitter, #Koorioke and #BlakTok, for instance, operates in a way to bring Indigenous sociality “to the surface of mainstream visibility” (Brock Jr 2020, 81)—but this is not the main objective of the way Indigenous people use it. Instead, the hashtags enable Indigenous users to “intentionally signal their cultural affiliations to a like-minded audience” (Brock Jr 2020, 81), enabling a collective of Indigenous voices to gather at what Brock Jr. (2020, 81) refers to as the “cook out”—where only Indigenous people are invited. Indeed, the various levels of ‘publicness’ are a significant factor in fun. The closed Indigenous groups sustained on Facebook allow Indigenous users to interact largely outside the settler gaze; where they might share memes mocking the colonisers (such as, literally, the Royal Family), share joy in Indigenous food culture, and complain about settlers in the workplace. On the other hand, the only provisionally enclosed, very leaky publics that both Twitter’s and TikTok’s hashtag functions and algorithms sustain mean that Indigenous publics of fun often spill over into mainstream audiences, who might look on in support or, as one young queer Dharug person told us, “bully you, make fun of you, all that sort of stuff, because your [queer Indigenous] TikTok somehow ended up on straight TikTok”. Fun is, as Fincham (2016) argues, curiously ambiguous, encompassing a huge variety of social practices: meme-making about Royals complaining about the lack of tomato sauce on their devon sandwich, Indigenous people sharing videos of themselves singing nostalgic Dolly Parton songs littered with Indigenous references, or sweating with desire over handsome

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Hollywood actors engaged in traditional ceremony. Fun for Indigenous people is what Bayat (2007, 27) refers to as “a silent, patient, protracted and pervasive advancement of ordinary people on the propertied and powerful in order to survive hardships and better their lives”. It is a form of free play within more or less set boundaries—platform affordances, community guidelines and cultural mores—which are often productive of joyful affective publics. It is, as Loyer (2020) argues, “an affirmation of Indigenous life, in all its realness and silliness and intergenerational joy”. It is through fun that this joyful affect circulates between bodies, sustains group identities and strengthens bonds of solidarity.

References Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London, UK: Verso. Bargallie, D. (2020). Unmasking the racial contract: Indigenous voices on racism in the Australian Public Service. Aboriginal Studies Press. Bayat, A. (2007). Islamism and the politics of fun. Public Culture, 19, 433–459. Bayat, A. (2013). Life as politics: How ordinary people change the Middle East. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bhandari, Aparajita & Bimo, Sara. (2020). TikTok and the ‘algorithmized self’: a new model of online interaction. Paper presented at AoIR 2020: The 21st Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers. Virtual: AoIR. https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/11172/ 9856 boyd, d. (2010). Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In Z. Pappacharissi (Ed.), Networked self: Identity, community, and culture on social network sites, (pp. 39–58). New York: Routledge. Brock Jr, A. (2020). Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures. NYU Press. Carlson, B. (2016). Striking the right chord: Indigenous people and the love of country. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 12(5), 498–512. Carlson, B. and Berglund, J. (Eds). (2021). Indigenous People Rise Up: The Global Ascendancy of Social Media Activism, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey. Copage, K. (2019). The Transformative Spirit of Indigenous Humour: Redskins, Tricksters and Puppy Stew. Antistasis, 9(1), 186–204. Duncan, P. (2014). The Role of Aboriginal Humour in Cultural Survival and Resistance. Unpublished PhD Thesis. The University of Queensland.

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Fachingbouer Cooper, G. (2021). Missed the Meghan and Harry’s Oprah interview? How to rewatch the whole thing. CNET. https://www.cnet.com/how­t o/missed-­m eghan-­m arkle-­a nd-­p rince-­h arr y-­o prah-­i nter view-­h ow-­t o­rewatch-­the-­whole-­thing/ Fincham, B. (2016). The Sociology of Fun. London: Palgrave Macmillan Flannery, T. (2009) Watkin Tench’s 1788 (ed). Melbourne: Text Publishing. Frazer, R., & Carlson, B. (2017). Indigenous memes and the invention of a people. Social Media+ Society, 3(4), 1–12. French, L. (2014). David Gulpilil, Aboriginal Humour and Australian Cinema. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 8(1), 34–43. Gassam Asare, J. (2020). Does TikTok have a race problem? Forbes. https:// www.nbcnews.com/pop-­c ulture/pop-­c ulture-­n ews/months-­a fter-­t iktok-­ apologized-­black-­creators-­many-­say-­little-­has-­n1256726 Gibson, J. (2007). Koori time is catching on fast. The Sydney Morning Herald. h t t p s : / / w w w. s m h . c o m . a u / n a t i o n a l / k o o r i -­t i m e -­i s -­c a t c h i n g -­o n -­ fast-­20071208-­gdrrv3.html Jones, G. and McGloin, C. (2016). Pedagogy, pleasure and the art of poking fun: Anti-colonial humour in Australian Indigenous Studies. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples. 12(5), 527–540. Kable, J. (Ed.). (1990). Made in Australia: An Anthology of Writing. Oxford University Press. Karvelas, P. (2020). Forget about karaoke, how about #Koorioke! RN Radio National. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/drive/karaoke-­ to-­koorioke-­indigenous-­australians-­singing/12675622 Latimore, J., Nolan, D., Simons, M., & Khan, E. (2017). Reassembling the Indigenous public sphere. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21. Loyers, J. (2020). Indigenous TikTok is transforming Indigenous knowledge. Canadianart. https://canadianart.ca/essays/indigenous-­tiktok-­is-­transforming­cultural-­knowledge/ Lumby, B. L. (2010). Cyber-indigeneity: urban indigenous identity on Facebook. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 39, supplement, 68–75. Makar, F. (2011). ‘Let them have some fun’: political and artistic forms of expression in the Egyptian revolution. Mediterranean Politics, 16(2), 307–312. Malik, A. (2021). Indigenous TikTok creators are using the app to spread laughter and connect with others. MobileSyrup. Available: https://mobilesyrup. com/2021/03/03/indigenous-­t iktok-­c reators-­s pread-­l aughter-­c onnect­with-­others/ Mohsin, M. (2021). 10 TikTok statistics that you need to know in 2021 [infographic]. Oberlo. https://au.oberlo.com/blog/tiktok-­statistics Nakata, M. (2007). Savaging the Disciplines: Disciplining the Savages. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press NITV Facebook post. (September 2020) https://www.facebook.com/ NITVAustralia/videos/317563902673840

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Ohlheiser, A. (2020). TikTok has become the soul of the LBGTQ Internet. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/ 28/tiktok-­has-­become-­soul-­lgbtq-­internet/ Papacharissi, Z. (2016). Affective publics and structures of storytelling: sentiment, events and mediality. Information Communication and Society, 19(3), 307–324. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1109697 Price, H. (2019, November 6). TikTok activism: ‘We’re changing the world in 15 seconds’: Why some teens are using short, shareable social media videos to deal with big issues affecting them. BBC news. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/ article/fa349327-­bdee-­489b-­ae44-­da4f808d82b8 Rabbit, C. (2021) TikTok connects Indigenous women during pandemic. Red Deer Advocate. Available: https://www.reddeeradvocate.com/news/ tiktok-­connects-­indigenous-­women-­during-­pandemic/ Redmond, A. (2008, November). Captain Cook meets General Macarthur in the northern Kimberley: Humour and ritual in an Indigenous Australian life-world. In Anthropological Forum (Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 255–270). Routledge. Rizzo-Smith, J. (2021). Meissa Mason is the first First Nations TikToker informing your beauty and activist minds. Girlfriend. https://www.girlfriend.com. au/meissa-­mason-­tiktok-­mardi-­gras Rosenblatt, K. (2021). Months after TikTok apologises to Black creators, many say little has changed. NBCNews. https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-­culture/ pop-­culture-­news/months-­after-­tiktok-­apologized-­black-­creators-­many-­say­little-­has-­n1256726 Salem, M. (2020). Some deadly Aboriginal TikTok creators to decolonise your feed. Junkee. https://junkee.com/deadly-­aboriginal-­tiktok/278264 Shen, L. (2020). The Dilemma of Prisoners on TikTok: An Analysis of the Implications of Dark Subcultures Online. http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/ blog/2020/10/20/the-­dilemma-­of-­prisoners-­on-­tiktok-­an-­analysis-­of-­the­implications-­of-­dark-­subcultures-­online/ Simpson, E., & Semaan, B. (2021). For You, or For” You”? Everyday LGBTQ+ Encounters with TikTok. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 4(CSCW3), 1–34. Stanner, W. 1982. “Aboriginal Humour.” Aboriginal History 6 (1): 39–48 Tay, G. (2012). Embracing LOLitics: Popular culture, online political humor, and play. Unpublished Masters Thesis. University of Canterbury. Vrajlal, A. (2020). These Tiktok videos explain racism against First Nations people in Australia. HuffPost. https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/australia-­ first-­nations-­racism-­tik-­tok_au_5eeadf08c5b6946d6a698a3f Wang, Y. (2020). Humor and camera view on mobile short-form video apps influence user experience and technology-adoption intent, an example of TikTok (DouYin). Computers in Human Behavior, 110, 106373.

Death

It is an act of love, defiance and resistance to remember and grieve the people we have lost that the colony would rather we forget and I am thankful to the people in our communities who do the labour so that we are able to do this together. (Nayuka Gorrie 2021)

1   Introduction: The Digital Afterlife A Facebook page attracts criticism for using images of deceased Aboriginal Elders in memes that perpetuate pejorative stereotypes about Aboriginal people. A young white man posts on a community Facebook page, mocking the recent drowning of a young Aboriginal girl, inflaming racial tensions in the rural town. Two Aboriginal families learn of the accidental deaths of their teenage sons through a post on Facebook, after the police notified only a single relative. The death of an Aboriginal mother in police custody is captured on CCTV, the footage is shared widely across social media, catalysing protests across the country. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, an annual ceremony commemorating the 1816 Appin Massacre, in which at least 14 Aboriginal men, women and children were murdered by settler pastoralists, is live-streamed through the local council social media. An Instagram-friendly sign for tourists declaring “I took the leap!” is installed on a cliff named for the death of an Aboriginal mother, who leapt to her death while evading police. The death of celebrated Yolŋu musician, Dr. G Yunupingu, is announced online, releasing a wave of grief and mourning across social media. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_7

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Social scholars have long distinguished between our ‘physical’ and our ‘social’ lives, and correspondingly between our physical and social deaths. While the two are closely linked, they are far from synonymous: we generally die physically before we die socially, thus, when our material bodies pass away, our social lives often continue—in the shared memories of our loved ones, in the photos they keep and stories they share, in their practices of grief, mourning and commemoration. While initially understood as spaces for recreation and leisure, the expression of joy, and frivolous interactions with friends and strangers, social media has also brought death into everyday life. We unexpectedly learn of a friend’s death while scrolling past ‘dank memes’ and photos of cats; we unwittingly see an auto-play video of an unarmed Black woman being killed by a police officer; we encounter our friends grieving the anniversary of their parent’s death. Digital media affects life—but it also affects death, particularly in how we are commemorated and remembered after we’re deceased. The spectre of digital life after death is increasingly raising difficult social, cultural and legal issues (Kohn et al. 2018). On the one hand, there are complex questions around what should happen to our ‘digital remains’—those digital traces of our identities, actions and social connections after our death. Indeed, one day soon the dead will certainly outnumber the living online, and the living will navigate their way through vast networks of virtual cemeteries. Just as with the physical remains of the dead, there are now important questions around who ‘owns’ these digital traces of past lives—the photos and videos, the comments and conversations, the networks of family, friends, colleagues and strangers—and how they should be handled (Lingel 2013). On the other hand, social media has produced entirely new ways in which the living can mourn the loss of loved ones, commemorate their lives and maintain relationships after death (Brubaker et al. 2013). While the social ‘rules’ for dealing with death are relatively impervious to change, these are being challenged by the new relations and forms of expression social media makes possible. What, then, are ‘appropriate’ ways to mourn loss and remember the dead in these new digital spaces? In this chapter, we unpack some of these issues in relation to Indigenous peoples’ use of social media. Practices of death, mourning and commemoration—what are collectively referred to as Sorry Business by many Indigenous groups—are hugely significant realms of social life for Indigenous peoples. Like death practices the world over, Sorry Business is

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culturally specific, highly ritualised, and imbued with immense social responsibilities for the living. Through the interviews we’ve been conducting with Indigenous social media users over the last seven years, it is clear the fast spread of digital media is having massive consequences for how Indigenous people deal with death. It has extended, challenged and transformed long-held forms of mourning and commemoration; and in the process, it has presented a range of both opportunities and tensions that are still very much being worked out. In the next section, we outline in more detail some of the issues around online mourning, our digital afterlives, and the difficulties that arise in producing ‘new’ social norms around death online. We then discuss practices of Sorry Business among Indigenous peoples in Australia. We outline two main ways that death is different for Indigenous peoples: first, death is a much more prominent aspect of Indigenous people’s social lives—it occurs with greater frequency and to more people to whom one is related; and second, the social norms around death differ significantly from non-­ Indigenous peoples. Turning to the conversations we’ve had with Indigenous people about social media, we then unpack three ways that social media is maintaining, extending and changing practices of Sorry Business, attending particularly to the role of ‘affect’—the felt, relational forces that circulate between bodies, technologies and other assemblages, and which shape what one can feel and do (Ahmed 2004; Knudsen and Stage 2012). 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 anniversaries. 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.

2   Physical Death, Digital Life There are few social events shrouded with as much significance, gravity and ritual as the passing of a life. From the way bodies are handled, dressed and disposed; to how loved ones express grief and process loss; to how the dead are remembered—long after we physically die, we continue to have a social life. While differing significantly across peoples, places and time, mortuary practices “are a true cultural universal,” as Robben suggests

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(2004, 9). These funerary, mortuary, mourning and memorial practices are subject to some the most rigid and closely policed norms in social life. Norms, as Wagner (2018, 3) notes, are the ‘grammar’ of social interactions, encompassing “implicit or explicit rules guiding behaviours, attitudes, and beliefs”; and there are few social wrongs more serious than breaking rules concerning the dead and bereaved. The transgression of norms around death is not only frowned upon, but often considered immoral, sacrilegious and blasphemous. While death practices in ‘Western’ societies have remained surprisingly stable since the Victorian era, the rapid proliferation of digital media has had incredible ramifications for almost every aspect of death. From the earliest days of the internet, death has had a rich digital life: early internet users created websites on which loved ones were remembered, where friends, relatives and strangers could visit, pay their respects and continue living connections with the dead; and more recently, the funeral industry has increasingly sought to integrate digital media into their product offerings, from the live-streaming of funeral services to the integration of boomboxes with personalised playlists on tombstones. It is through social media, however, that digital technology has had the most immediate and widespread impacts on the norms of death. Online death practices embody powerfully the intersection of personal emotion, social tradition and technological innovation; an intersection that leads to many often-uneasy consequences. For Western societies, in particular, where death is generally regarded as a rare ‘aberration’ on regular social life, social media has brought death into the everyday. Death is encountered frequently and often unexpectedly on social media (Brubaker et al. 2013): it is online that we might learn of a friend’s sudden death, we encounter the grief of others, and where we interact with the still ‘live’ profiles of dead people—an issue highlighted starkly in 2009, when Facebook’s newly updated algorithm accidentally prompted users to ‘reconnect’ with dead friends (Kohn et al. 2018). On one level, the extension of death into social media has led to the development of new practices of commemorating the dead. Death is, as Brubaker et al. (2013, 12) explain, “an attack on human attachments”, and people often seek ways to maintain human connection after life. Bell, Bailey and Kennedy (2015) develop the idea of ‘continuing bonds’— which they describe as the always-evolving nature of relationships between the bereaved and deceased—to understand this ongoing relationship. In many ways, social media makes it easier to maintain these bonds with the

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deceased, as digital media sustains the dead as an active presence in the lives of the living. While more ‘traditional’ practices of connecting with the dead might include visiting a gravesite or keeping old photos, social media provides new forms of connection: through commenting on the profiles of dead loved ones; sharing images, thoughts and memories of their lives; creating memorial pages and other digital commemorative artefacts; and commemorating birthdays and anniversaries. These digital practices are often about ‘keeping the dead alive’. But this is far from a smooth social process. While many of the practices of mourning and commemoration are grounded in much older practices of death, their adoption in new digital spaces is often the subject of discomfort and disagreement. The most popular social media sites are popularly considered to be spaces of fun, friendship, joking, flirting and boasting; negative emotions, on the other hand, including pain and grief, are often considered too real, too intimate (Wagner 2018). There are, it seems, complex layers of unwritten ‘feeling rules’ on social media platforms, which shape the kinds, durations and intensities of ‘acceptable’ emotions; and the expression of grief and loss still occupy a troubled place on these platforms (Brubaker et al. 2013). Analysing a range of Facebook memorial pages, for instance, Marwick and Ellison (2012, 385) found that, in expressing their grief, “mourners grapple with both benefits and challenges of public and privateness”. These memorial pages were often sites of emotional expressions of loss; but they were also sites of debate over the ‘proper’ practice of commemoration. In one case, users debated over the importance of the number of ‘likes’ a memorial page had. While some saw the number as an expression of how ‘loved’ the person was; others saw this crude quantification of value as morally distasteful and disrespectful. The online identities of the dead—what Brubaker et al. (2013) describe as our ‘postmortem identities’—are complex, dynamic and contested social objects. The identities of the dead evolve continuously after death— through collective practices of remembering, forgetting and fabricating (Bell et  al. 2015). This has been made both easier and more complex today, as when we die, our online identities remain—and friends, family and social media platforms then need to work out how to manage these remains and integrate them into the lives of the living. In the above-­ mentioned analysis of Facebook memorial sites, for instance, Marwick and Ellison (2012) found that without the presence of the deceased subject, audiences engage in collective, negotiated ‘impression management’ of

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the deceased. This can create tensions and disagreements, as loved ones often have different ideas of what is the ‘right’ way to keep the memory of the dead alive; a different idea of what constitutes ‘appropriate’ remembering; and a different idea of what the identity of the dead actually was. In surveying these changes, Bell, Bailey and Kennedy (2015) identify a broader trend in which social media mourning practices are embedded: the proliferation of ‘vernacular’ memorial-making in Western culture. Arnold et al. (2018, 5) describe this shift as part and parcel of this move away from the institutionally mandated and sometimes rigid protocols that have governed the funeral ceremony, the conduct of mourners and the final disposition of the body, towards what is often referred to as a ‘more personalised’ ceremony and form of body disposal.

Where previously death practices were rigidly determined through highly policed cultural norms, social media appears to be encouraging much more diverse expressions of grief, mourning and commemoration. But Brubaker et  al. (2013) suggest that rather than creating entirely ‘new’ forms of death practices, it is more useful to think of social media as leading to a series of ‘expansions’ of already-existing death cultures, including temporal, spatial and social expansions. Temporal expansions, they argue, include “an increase in both breadth and immediacy” (2013, 160) of death. This includes how quickly people find out about a death and how long people engage in death practices. Spatial expansions, on the other hand, centre on the erasure of geographical boundaries; interacting with death at a distance; and creating new spaces of encounter with death, such as user profiles and newsfeeds. And, finally, social extensions include “the dissemination of information across previously separate social groups” (2013, 161). Thinking through ‘expansions’ rather than ‘transformations’ helps us see both what social media is changing and retaining in cultural practices of death.

3   Sorry Business Death practices have incredible social and cultural diversity, with different religions, cultures, and communities engaging in mortuary, mourning and commemoration in wildly different ways. In Australia, Indigenous peoples sustain a huge array of death practices, which are widely described as Sorry Business—a term used by Indigenous people to encompass practices

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related to dying, death, mourning and funerals. The treatment of bodies, the form and content of mortuary and funerary practices, the social afterlife of the dead—each of these aspects of Sorry Business differs across Indigenous communities in Australia. What is considered ‘right and proper’ in one community, for instance, might be understood as immoral, disrespectful and profane in another (Burbank et al. 2008). Name avoidance, for instance—in which particular given names of the dead are no longer used—is a common but also highly diverse practice; likewise, protocols around the use of images of the dead are common across many communities, but are far from uniform. While for many non-Indigenous peoples in Australia, death is generally considered an aberration—a break from the social norm—for many Indigenous peoples, death is a constant presence in social life. This can be explained by at least two major political and cultural differences between these social groups. First, Indigenous people in Australia experience significantly higher rates of morbidity and mortality than other social groups. In many Indigenous communities, and in contrast to their non-­Indigenous counterparts, Tonkinson (2008, 38) explains, “deaths occur with bewildering frequency”. Burbank et  al. (2008, 5) note the “extreme social, political and material inequality in which Indigenous people fall ill and die in unprecedented numbers”. There is no scarcity of research documenting this inequality. It is estimated, for instance, that the overall burden of disease is 2.5 times greater for Indigenous peoples (Sherwood, 2013); Indigenous youth suicide is five times the rate of non-Indigenous youth; and Indigenous people experience an 8-year gap in overall life expectancy overall (DPM&C 2019). The reasons for these unequal outcomes are complex, but can generally be traced back to the ongoing effects of settler colonialism, which has continuously worked to eliminate, contain and assimilate Indigenous peoples for 250 years. As Gorrie (2021) states in the passage introducing this chapter, for Indigenous people, remembering the ones who have died is “an act of love, defiance and resistance” to the violence of settler colonialism, which seeks to both eliminate Indigenous people and forget the violence ever took place. Second, there are profound differences between Indigenous and non-­ Indigenous cultures, meaning that Indigenous death carries different meanings and, often, more social responsibility for the bereaved. Most notably, Indigenous societies across Australia are, by and large, ‘kin-­ centric’ (Dudgeon and Bray 2019), meaning “the social universe is largely populated with people who are considered to be relatives” (Burbank et al.

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2008, 4). This relational system means one is intimately connected to much greater numbers of others—both human and more-than-human— extending one’s duty to the dead across much larger networks. The kinship system intersects with particular cultural and moral values around Sorry Business. Death is a central social event in Indigenous life, bringing great responsibility. Sorry Business for Indigenous people, as Poirier notes, constitutes “a major responsibility towards their sociocosmic order” (2005, 251). It often overrides all other social duties—Glaskin et al. (2008, 5) explain, for instance, that being physically distant from the deceased “does not constitute a sufficient impediment to attending a kinsperson’s funeral”; and Patel (2014, 79) writes that the failure to fulfil one’s cultural responsibilities in Sorry Business “can bring shame to the extended family and other members within the kinship system”. The convergence of extensive kinship systems and the moral values of Sorry Business mean Indigenous people generally have more responsibility around death. This bears out clearly in studies of Indigenous engagement in death rituals. In research by Anderson et al. (2012), for instance, it was found that Indigenous people were eight times more likely than non-Indigenous people to have attended a funeral in the last two years; around half of the people surveyed had attended seven or more funerals in the previous two years; and around a third had attended between 12 and 30. In a particularly extreme case, the Warlpiri people at Yuendumu in the Northern Territory were spending one in three days engaged in rituals related to Sorry Business (Musharbash 2008). The personal and social effects of Sorry Business are immense. On the one hand, mourning and mortuary practices are powerful expressions of Indigenous culture and agency. As Gorrie (2021) argues, “the rituals following death are often the final care we offer to our loved ones”. They reaffirm Indigenous cultural identity, sustain ontological systems and cosmological orders, and are significant expressions of social autonomy. Moreover, they are important practices of group belonging, in which collective social identities are nurtured and strengthened. On the other hand, the dominant presence of Sorry Business in the lives of many Indigenous people can be overwhelming. MacDonald (2008) documents communities who are all ‘funeralled out’; and McCoy (2008, 60) likewise notes the demands of funeral practices are, for people in the Kutjungka region of Western Australia, “physically, financially and emotionally stressful and even exhausting”. The constant presence of death, and the continuous

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social and cultural demands those deaths place on Indigenous peoples, can be heavy burdens to carry. 3.1  The Digital Life of Indigenous Death As we discussed above, however, social media is quickly challenging and destabilising long-established norms around death. “The transition to online social protocols has upset some of the previous patterns for processing grief,” explains Lingel (2013, 191). These changes, transformations and expansions are not uniform across digital social spaces, however. Instead, Gibbs et al. (2015, 256) develop the idea of ‘platform vernaculars’ to “understand how communication practices emerge within particular [social media platforms] to congeal as genres”. They note that different platforms sustain different norms of death; that each social media platform, they explain, “comes to have its own unique combination of styles, grammars, and logics” (Gibbs et al. 2015, 257). In this chapter, we aim to unpack some of the ramifications of social media specifically for Indigenous practices of Sorry Business. Social media practices around death constitute the stark intersection of tradition and innovation; the embodied and the virtual; and the sacred and the profane. While there has been increasing scholarly interest in the social and cultural consequences of social media for practices around death—including how death is communicated, mourned and commemorated—there has been little focus on Indigenous digital death practices. This is perhaps a product of persisting assumptions about Indigenous peoples. Dominant settler understandings of Indigenous cultures tend to frame them as both archaic and static. Indigenous peoples have long been framed as ‘ancient peoples’ stuck in a ‘prehistoric’ past. This colonial discourse plays out in two major and contradictory ways. On the one hand, as discussed in Chap. 2, Indigenous culture is understood as ‘under threat’, as ‘dying out’, as doomed to the unstoppable march of modernity. People still practicing culture are, then, ‘a dying race’, “doomed to extinction by the progress of that type of humanity with which it was impossible to assimilate him [sic]” (Turner 1904 quoted in Attwood and Markus 1997, 1). On the other hand, people practicing culture in new ways are often framed as ‘inauthentic’. This discourse posits that Indigenous culture cannot change; therefore, any extension, re-expression or augmentation of culture in fact belies its own death. This discourse is felicitous for the settler project, which seeks the physical, social and political elimination of

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Indigenous peoples; the ‘end’ of Indigenous culture, in this sense, is a mark of success for settler colonialism. But culture is, everywhere and always, a living, vital, social practice. Despite attempts to pin it down, hold it still, capture it in academic texts and cultural institutions, every re-articulation of cultural practice creates culture anew. And as we seek to demonstrate in this chapter, this is not least the case for Indigenous peoples’ use of social media for Sorry Business, which has presented opportunities to continue practices of mourning and enact responsibilities around death, and also laid down real challenges to older forms of (dis)remembering the dead. Over the last five years, we conducted in-depth interviews with many dozens of Indigenous social media users. When prompted to reflect on the challenges social media has presented Indigenous social life, its entanglement in practices of Sorry Business was perhaps the most frequently flagged issue. The increasing use of Facebook to notify others of a death, the online expression of grief, engagement with sorry rituals through digital media, the remembering of a life—these have become popular but often contested practices. In this chapter, we unpack some of these issues by providing a snapshot of Indigenous cultures of death as they become increasingly mediated through social media. We highlight several distinct ways social media is both facilitating and changing the circulation of different affects around death—including the individual expression of pain, grief and sadness, the extension of care and support to bereaved family, and in maintaining felt connections with the deceased. We argue that far from flagging the ‘dying out’ of culture, digital death practices are in fact powerful expressions of Indigenous culture as a living practice. In making sense of loss, the digital connections made possible through social media technologies are entangled in the achievement of complex, embodied forms of Indigenous relationality. The digital circulation of the powerful affects of grief, sadness and care work to bring bodies together in always vital, though sometimes contentious expressions of Sorry Business.

4   Death Notices Many of the people we spoke to voiced real concerns around how social media was being used to communicate the news of a death. We heard story after story of communities, families and friends learning about the passing of a loved one through posts on social media, rather than directly from more intimate family and community connections. “It’s a bit harsh

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when, in an Aboriginal community, when they lose someone, and the family sort of doesn’t know yet, and people put something on about people that have already passed on without the family knowing”, a woman from small regional community told us (Female, 40s, Aboriginal, Regional NSW). In many cultures—not just Indigenous cultures—it is customary for news of a death to filter outwards through concentric circles of intimacy (Lingel 2013): first the immediate family is notified, then family just outside the immediate circle, then more peripheral family, friends and other community members. This is often a highly normalised and moralised practice—it is right that those closest know first; it signifies and respects the significance of their relation and attachment. But social media, on the whole, tends to ‘flatten’ relations between social connections, meaning these cascading, hierarchical relations of intimacy are ignored (Lingel 2013). Marwick and boyd’s (2011) notion of ‘context collapse’, in which commonly distinct audiences are brought together online, captures this flattening of relations. Ignoring different relations in the context of death notices, many people told us, is disrespectful to the human connections developed over a lifetime. One person described how distressing this experience could be: One day I went on Facebook and I saw these messages that one of my cousins had died. But no one had actually rang me yet. I woke up in the morning and went on Facebook and I saw it and was like, ‘Who died?’ And it was one of my cousins. I got really upset, because it shouldn’t happen like that. I shouldn’t wake to Facebook and find out about somebody dying. (Male, 30s, Aboriginal, Remote WA)

While this flattening of relations is against dominant norms in many non-Indigenous societies, too, the people we spoke to explained there were particular cultural norms at play for Indigenous people. One person explained: We have a way of doing things and that’s usually where we come together as a collective and sit down, and the news is gently broken to the families. There’s a way of doing that. You know, to announce the death of a loved one, it’s never direct in your face like Facebook can be. (Female, 30s, Torres Strait Islander, Far North QLD)

Likewise another said:

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I think that the younger generation, they use it other than what it is meant to be for, you know. You hear someone’s passed away and you know them young ones are posting about someone dying before their family has had a chance to sit down and break the news together. Stuff like that. It’s just taking a lot away from our culture. (Female, 50s, Torres Strait Islander, Far North QLD)

As this person indicates, it seems that like many cultural changes being driven by social media, shifting norms around death were being pushed primarily by younger community members. “I find myself doing this policing thing,” another person explained. Especially for them young ones that just don’t know certain things. There are ways to behave in our community. And, like social media might have their code of conduct or, you know, their standards of behaviour and stuff. But there’s also our stuff. You know, funeral practices for instance. Like, you can’t announce that someone’s passed. (Female, 30s, Torres Strait Islander, Far North QLD)

As Kohn et al. (2018, 227) explain, admittedly stretching a great generalisation, “those most experienced with technology … are least experienced with death, and those most experienced with death … are least experienced with technology”. They note the cultural tensions this generational-­technological divide can give rise to, such as the ‘selfies at funerals’ controversy in 2013. Kral (2014, 185) likewise notes these generational effects in Indigenous communities. “[T]he gerontocratic norms of the past are undergoing a profound disturbance”, she writes, “where the patterned habitual practice of elders exercising authority and exerting social control is under challenge”. And in this case, it seems young Indigenous people on social media are at the cutting edge of challenging established norms around how death notices are handled. Responses to these online death notices were far from uniform across the people we spoke to, however. “It’s both ways,” one person explained (Female, 30s, Regional WA). “It’s good and bad.” “I don’t take it to heart when I find out a family has died on Facebook,” another told us (Female, 30s, Aboriginal, Northern NT). And yet another explained they had “found that it’s really good for learning who’s passed away. They put up their sad notice up on the [Facebook] board with a big picture and a

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beautiful design for the background”, they said (Female, 50s, Aboriginal, Regional NSW). On the other hand, the meeting of differing views on the ‘right’ way to handle death notices on social media can lead to conflicts between people, families and communities. One person explained that “if bits of the family have not yet found out and they log on and see it from there, that’s when it blows up” (Female, 30, Regional WA). One participant explained an incident where contrasting views led to ongoing tensions within a family. My auntie’s cousin passed away, and the in-laws put a notice that he’d passed away on Facebook. And my mum and her mum’s generation—they wouldn’t have known what Facebook was, it wasn’t around back then. And that’s rude and disrespectful for them doing that. Whereas I think she was being respectful in her head, saying ‘I’m sorry’. (Female, 30s, Aboriginal, Perth)

The woman in question was non-Indigenous, and had married into an Indigenous family. She likely believed she was showing respect, whereas it was received as disrespect. The participant explained the fallout: “and in the family, no one spoke for ages. They were all walking around on eggshells at his funeral.”

5   Fulfilling Responsibilities The death of family, friends and community members invariably comes with important social responsibilities. The diverse rituals and norms that comprise Sorry Business are the expression of duties to the dead—through particular ways of handling their physical, social and spiritual remains. Failure to adequately fulfil one’s responsibility to deceased kin can have significant social consequences; in many communities, it can even constitute the breaking of the community’s law (Anderson et al. 2012). This can present great difficulties for communities whose members are spread across large distances, where travel is difficult or expensive or both, and when there are extenuating circumstances; and the frequency of Sorry Business among many Indigenous communities, as discussed above, can lead to unsustainable financial costs, emotional burnout and overburden. However, for the people we spoke to, social media also extends practices of Sorry Business, allowing people to fulfil their social responsibility to the dead, and to participate in the expression of respect to both the dead and their living relatives. O’Carroll (2013) discusses Māori people’s

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use of social media to participate in a range of cultural activities, including using video-conferencing to be ‘present’ at funerals when physical attendance is not possible. Among the people we talked to, social media allowed them to ‘say sorry’ to bereaved family. A lot of the time, because family live so far from each other, they’ll send a message, ‘Send my condolences,’ you know? Like then I post, ‘I’m thinking of so and so’s family.’ (Male, 30s, Aboriginal, Remote WA) People put up a status of sympathy to the family. If they can’t make the funeral, they will say sorry on Facebook. (Female, 40s, Aboriginal, Remote SA) Sometimes, if that person’s family passed, I will send condolences to that family. Write things, ‘Thinking of you’. (Female, 20s, Aboriginal, Remote SA) And people will offer their condolences. And somebody might write a status, and somebody will comment underneath. But people also write their own status, like, ‘Just want to say sorry to such and such family,’ you know? (Female, 30s, Aboriginal, Perth)

In fulfilling one’s duty to the dead, one must continue to care for the living. Consoling the bereaved was understood as a significant social responsibility—one that was important, even if one couldn’t do so in-­ person. Unlike the communication of death notices, this online practice was, invariably, considered culturally appropriate, as it was about caring for one’s family, one’s kin and oneself. They’re just showing how much that they care for that person, and everyone can put their comments on about how loved they are, if they’re too far away. I think it’s a way of expressing yourself, of getting those emotions out as well. (Female, 20s, Aboriginal, Regional WA) And then you’ll find all these just love hearts, or just like, ‘We’re thinking of you.’ There’ll be no bad comments in there at all. It’ll just be all of us just supporting those people, and feeding off each other’s support. (Female, 20s, Aboriginal, Perth)

The practice of caring-at-a-distance can sometimes blend into the more spiritual aspects of Sorry Business, in which the spirit and identity of the deceased is maintained. As one person explained: So what we—with my cousin who passed away—we upload photos of them on their pages. If we can’t be there, we’ll write on their pages. Because that’s

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a way that we keep them alive through that. That’s a good thing. (Male, 30s, Aboriginal, Remote WA)

In their work with the Martu people of central Australia, Tonkinson (2008, 37) notes how “the salience of relationships, both distant and close, is sharply demonstrated among Martu in their responses to death”. The death of a relation is a significant life event, and also a significant cultural event, mobilising a range of social responsibilities to others in the community. While many Indigenous communities have members spread over large distances, social media is providing new ways to fulfil responsibilities and care for bereaved loved ones. This has only become more so since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which radically restricted travel and the numbers of people that were allowed to attend funerals. Indigenous peoples, from both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, extend Sorry Business through new digital media: sending condolences to the bereaved, supporting loved ones through loss, attending funerals through live-streaming, and paying respect to the dead (Gorrie 2021).

6   Commemorating Life As the participant above explained, sharing images and stories on social media was not just about fulfilling responsibilities in death; instead, it helped “keep them alive”. Social media has become an important tool for both mourning death—“public and socially sanctioned displays of grief” (Giaxoglou 2014, 12)—and commemorating life, which is constituted by “a set of practices that in different ways maintain social and material relations between the living and the dead” (Arnold et al. 2018, 4). The digital identities of the dead continue to have social life in the absence of physical presence; and social media has created new spaces for sustaining the identities of the dead and maintaining bonds with them. As Kohn et al. (2018, 233) argue, “relations with the deceased can be buoyed and nurtured on a social media platform”. Through images, memories, stories and reflections, users engage in the collective production of the identities of the dead on social media.

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6.1  Handling Photos The two major ways the people we spoke to commemorated the dead were through posting pictures and maintaining anniversaries. These practices were about remembering the dead, celebrating their life, and maintaining a living connection with them. These three young Aboriginal people living in Perth, Western Australia described a range of practices: Man 1: I’m actually signed into a page at the moment where it’s a tribute page. Interviewer: And what sorts of things do people usually do on a tribute page? Woman 1: Post memories of the person that’s passed away. Photos, those kinds of things. Man 2: I mean, I post up pictures of family members who’ve passed away and when it’s their birthday. So I use that as a way of acknowledging that person, that I’m still thinking about them.

The memory and identity of the dead are often subject to a range of ‘policing’ practices. Marwick and Ellison (2012, 385) found “mourners grapple with both benefits and challenges of public and privateness” in displaying grief, where personal practices of mourning and commemoration can come into conflict with socially sanctioned mores. Tensions around how the dead should be remembered are particularly difficult in relation to posting names and images of deceased Indigenous people. Name and image avoidance are still widely practiced among Indigenous communities across Australia; sharing photos of the dead can constitute a serious social offence, and it is common to see warnings across Australian media warning that an article or video contains images of dead Indigenous people. These practices appear to be in flux, however, as social media brings with them their own sets of norms—what Gibbs et al. (2015) call ‘platform vernaculars’. Social media encourages, by design, individual user expression, through words, images, video and other media. Online mourning brings these two often contrasting sets of norms together, as several of the people we spoke to explained. “There are all sorts of rules around using Aboriginal images, but social media are a different forum,” one person said (Male, 30s, Aboriginal, Regional NSW). “Things are not so clear-­ cut, as people can put up what they want.” Likewise another participant explained:

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Then you’ve got the risk of breaking protocol. There are sites, there are individuals, there are words, there are concepts that are sacred, and are not to be shared. And so the same thing, man, you can’t print out a photo of that person and hand it out in person, just as the same you can’t put it up on Twitter. So those risks are, again, they’re easier to do on Twitter, because people are so used to posting photos and sharing things. (Male, 30s, Aboriginal, Sydney)

Another person described the offline space of kinship and online space of social media as separate ‘communities’, characterised by different norms around remembering the dead. I think that if you don’t have permission [to post photos], you shouldn’t. Only because you kind of got to still respect culture and history, and if people don’t feel comfortable having someone that’s passed, an image up of someone who has passed away, I think the community outside of social media still needs to be talked to. Make sure that what they’re posting is still okay, and it’s not going to offend anyone outside of the social network. Because I think that a lot of people would forget that people outside of social networking can be offended as well. (Female, 20s, Aboriginal, South Coast NSW)

Participants described the social consequences of posting images without permission, which, like online death notices, was most frequently done by younger people. One person from a small South Australian community explained: Sometimes [young people] put photos of the person who passed away, some people like it, some people don’t. Send message to older people. They get grumpy. Cause they don’t like seeing photos or people talking about this family. Like some people, like no phones, they see things people write, they pass a message, ‘this person is posting photos’. Some people have got different feelings, some families like people putting photos on Facebook, but some people don’t like it. (Female, 20s, Aboriginal, Remote SA)

It seems, however, the practice of image avoidance has, even more recently, relaxed somewhat even among older Indigenous people in some communities. One participant explained: Those kinds of taboos around sharing images are starting to be dissolved a bit. So people certainly put a lot of photos and stuff up on Facebook. Some

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of the older people who I know online, they’re not acting strictly to a lot of cultural protocols of sharing images of people who have passed away and stuff like that. So I think a lot of that is changing. (Male, 30s, Aboriginal, Sydney)

6.2  Maintaining Anniversaries Another major way that people participated in the commemoration of the dead was through maintaining anniversaries, particularly birthdays and anniversaries of death—the two moments that bookend a life. These dates are important for both expressing and processing grief; commemorating the life and death of loved ones is a therapeutic process, through which one seeks to integrate the memories of the dead into the lives of the living. We asked people if they had ever seen people using Facebook for grieving: Yes, I do. Big time. There’s a lot of that. Maintaining anniversaries. Yeah you see that all the time. Every time there is one, each time there is an anniversary, you see that. We all write on those pages, back up those individuals. (Female, 20s, Aboriginal, Perth)

One participant described how the Facebook page of their brother had become a kind of shrine, which they and other family members would regularly visit to maintain a relationship with him. Every year on his birthday we look at his page, because you see an influx of new messages, and people will share a story or his anniversary. It’s like going to a cemetery and lighting a candle, but you don’t go and physically do light a candle. My niece, who looked up to him, gets depressed every now and then. It’s like she uses that page on Facebook as a means of … she’ll write on the page, ‘Oh I love you,’ or ‘I miss you, I wish you were here,’ and this and that. Share her problems that way. (Female, 30s, Aboriginal, Remote WA)

While for many people we spoke to, posting photos, sharing stories, and visiting the profiles of deceased loved ones were important practices of mourning and commemoration, for others there existed a difficult tension between the ‘privateness’ of personal grief and the publicness of social media. One person explained the difficulty vividly, which we will quote at length:

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I’ve had three brothers that have passed away. When their birthdays or the anniversary of their passing would come around I would put up a post about that. But I’ve stopped doing that in the last couple of years because, initially, I knew why I was doing it—it was because I felt sad and wanted to express that. But then I felt like there was also an expectation that I had to do it, and I didn’t like that feeling. That I had to share that, I felt like I had to share that. I’ve stopped that now, in the last couple of years. But when I did that, it was because I felt like I didn’t want people to forget who they were as well. But it was very much an emotional thing for me to share that, to show that part of me. I’m not sure how people feel about that and no one ever had a conversation with me about it. I mean people would say ‘Oh, I’m so sorry’ if I saw someone after the post—a friend or something, they would, you know, say how sorry they were. But there would never really be any conversations around it. And people would obviously love it, and ‘like’ it and whatever, all of that—the actual post itself. But then I felt guilty because I felt like it was attention-seeking. And I didn’t know if it was the right platform for it or not. And I know a lot of people on my Facebook, they do it as well—and I have no judgment towards them. I feel like people, they can make their own decisions. But I just … I don’t know, I just stopped doing it because I felt like it would be better just to pick up the phone and call mum or my sister instead. (Male, 30s, Aboriginal, Darwin)

Public mourning is often important to the bereaved. Through it, one can find emotional support and maintain living connections of attachment with the dead; it is about processing grief and integrating the death of a loved one into one’s life. However, as Bell, Bailey and Kennedy (2015) note, commemorative practices also often create tensions and disagreements between people who have different ideas of what is the ‘right’ way to keep the memory of the dead alive, a different idea of what’s appropriate, and a different idea of what the identity of the dead was. These issues are further complicated both by the Sorry Business cultures of Indigenous peoples and the fast-moving ‘vernaculars’ of social media. The people above explain both how social media has offered new forms and spaces of mourning and commemoration, and also new tensions around the ‘right’ way to engage with death. The more collective forms of meaning-making around death—including particular ways of remembering the dead, the handling of their names and images—come into conflict with the more individualised ‘vernacular meaning-making’ (Bell et  al. 2015) that social media encourages. And as the participant

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above describes vividly, this can lead to mixed feelings around how to best respect, pay tribute to and maintain connections with lost loved ones.

7   Closing: A Living Culture of Death “The protocols and norms related to online mourning are still being developed,” explains Lingel (2013, 194), “and the consequences for either following or violating these patterns are still in the process of solidifying”. While online norms around death are often adopted from more ‘traditional’ practices, they are often reconfigured, expanded and even broken in the process. Moreover, Gibbs et al. (2015, 257) argue that each social media platform “comes to have its own unique combination of styles, grammars, and logics” around death—what they describe as platform vernaculars. In this chapter, we’ve shown how different groups sustain different norms, grammars and protocols even on the same platform. As one participant explained, “social media might have their code of conduct or, you know, their standards of behaviour and stuff. But there’s also our stuff”—specifically Indigenous ‘stuff’ around communicating death, responding to death, and commemorating life. While social media encourages more personalised expressions of grief, many of the existing Indigenous norms of Sorry Business are concerned with more collective structures of dealing with death—including how names, images and memories are handled. On the one hand, social media has ‘expanded’ traditional norms around death in various dimensions. It allows people to fulfil their social responsibilities to bereaved families, such as expressing condolences and offering emotional support, particularly when they can’t do so in person. Moreover, social media offers powerful ways of commemorating the dead. The ‘digital remains’ of the dead—including their profiles and online photos—can become significant spaces of mourning, in which the bereaved can remember the dead and maintain relationships with them. As one person explained, visiting the profile of deceased kin “is like going to a cemetery and lighting a candle, but you don’t go and physically do light a candle”. In these ways, social media facilitates the circulation of particular affects of death: both individual expressions of pain, grief and sadness, and the collective support of the bereaved, carried through comments, messages and emojis. “It’ll just be all of us just supporting those people, and feeding off each other’s support,” as one person explained.

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These changes are causing some affective tensions—as changing norms always do. Engaging with Sorry Business online is clearly a contentious issue for many Indigenous people, with users often having diverging understandings of the ‘right and proper’ forms of online mourning. The issuance of death notices through social media, for instance, allows for easy, instant communication of a death to whole communities whose members might be spread across the country; but it also ‘flattens’ relations between connections, and news of a death is delivered at the same time and in the same way to intimate kin and unknown strangers alike, which as one participant said can be “a bit harsh” to the bereaved family. Likewise, while there was still much caution around which, when and how images of the death should be posted online, it seems these norms are undergoing significant change. Social researchers have noted that digital media is implicated in undermining the gerontocratic norms of Indigenous communities, with younger, more tech-savvy users engaging in heterogeneous forms of online practice. But this is not uniformly the case, as older Indigenous people are also engaging in diverse practices of digital image sharing. “A lot of that structure has broken down now”, one person told us (Male, 30s, Aboriginal, Sydney). “I know with my nan and that, my aunties are sharing photos of her [on Facebook]”. Far from being the homogeneous, static, technologically adverse culture-­in-decline so often depicted in mainstream discourse, it’s clear that Indigenous peoples are creatively engaging with social media as spaces of cultural production, expansion and experimentation. Changing cultural practice marks not a culture in decline, but one full of life—a living culture, still being shaped through active, creative practice. Understood in this way, the sometimes-contentious engagement of Sorry Business through social media is a powerful expression of Indigenous agency, of cultural autonomy, and of ongoing human connections between the living and dead.

References Ahmed, S. (2004). Affective economies. Social text, 22(2), 117–139. Anderson, M., Bilney, J., Bycroft, N., Cockatoo-Collins, D., Creighton, G., Else, J., … Moller, J. (2012). Closing the gap: Support for Indigenous loss. Australian Nursing Journal, 19(10), 24–27. Arnold, M., Gibbs, M., Kohn, T., Meese, J., & Nansen, B. (2018). Introduction. In Death and Digital Media. Routledge.

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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. Bell, J., Bailey, L., & Kennedy, D. (2015). ‘We do it to keep him alive’: bereaved individuals’ experiences of online suicide memorials and continuing bonds. Mortality, 20(4), 375–389. https://doi.org/10.1080/1357627 5.2015.1083693 Brubaker, J. R., Hayes, G. R., & Dourish, P. (2013). Beyond the Grave: Facebook as a Site for the Expansion of Death and Mourning. Information Society, 29(3), 152–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2013.777300 Burbank, V., Glaskin, K., Musharbash, Y., & Tonkinson, M. (2008). Introduction: Indigenous Ways of Death in Australia. In Mortality, Mourning and Mortuary Practices in Indigenous Australia (pp. 1–20). Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Closing the gap report. Canberra, Australia: Commonwealth of Australia; 2019. Dudgeon, P., & Bray, A. (2019). Indigenous Relationality: Women, Kinship and the Law. Genealogy, 3(2), 23. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3020023 Giaxoglou, K. (2014). “R.I.P. man … u are missed and loved by many.” Entextualising moments of mourning on a Facebook Rest in Peace group site. Thanatos, 3(1), 10–28. Gibbs, M., Meese, J., Arnold, M., Nansen, B., & Carter, M. (2015). #Funeral and Instagram: death, social media, and platform vernacular. Information Communication and Society, 18(3), 255–268. https://doi.org/10.108 0/1369118X.2014.987152 Glaskin, K., Tonkinson, M., Musharbash, Y., & Burbank, V. (2008). Mortality, mourning and mortuary practices in Indigenous Australia. Surrey, England: Ashgate. Gorrie, N. (2021). The labour of death and the radical tradition of burying our own. IndigenousX.  Accessed 16.03.2021. Available: https://indigenousx. com.au/the-­labour-­of-­death-­and-­the-­radical-­tradition-­of-­burying-­our-­own/ Knudsen, B. T., & Stage, C. (2012). Contagious bodies. An investigation of affective and discursive strategies in contemporary online activism. Emotion, Space and Society, 5(3), 148–155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2011.08.004 Kohn, T., Arnold, M., Gibbs, M., Meese, J., & Nansen, B. (2018). The Social Life of the Dead and the Leisured Life of the Living Online. In Leisure and Death: An Anthropological Tour of Risk, Death, and Dying (pp. 227–245). Kral, I. (2014). Shifting perceptions, shifting identities: Communication technologies and the altered social, cultural and linguistic ecology in a remote indigenous context. Australian Journal of Anthropology (The), 25(2), 171–189. https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12087 Lingel, J. (2013). The Digital Remains: Social Media and Practices of Online Grief. Information Society, 29(3), 190–195. https://doi.org/10.108 0/01972243.2013.777311

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Activism

The only thing that has got us anything is Black resistance. (Chelsea Watego (25 Jan, 2021))

1   Introduction: ‘In this together’ Each year, Australia holds National Reconciliation Week—a week set apart to heal relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, and celebrate Australia’s “national journey towards a fully reconciled country” (Reconciliation Australia 2020). It always falls on the same dates: starting on the day of the successful 1967 referendum to remove parts of Australia’s constitution that discriminated against Indigenous peoples, and ending seven days later on the date that Mer Island man Eddie Mabo won the 1992 High Court Case that led to the establishment of Native Title in Australia. The week is intended as explicit recognition of the wrongs of Australia’s past—the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families, the denial of equal rights to Indigenous people, the unlawful declaration of terra nullius over Indigenous land—while pointing towards a better future, in which settlers and Indigenous people have achieved ‘right’ relations. Reconciliation Week has long drawn criticisms from Indigenous people. As many Indigenous people have pointed out, never has there been a point of ‘friendly relations’ between Indigenous people and the settler

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_8

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state—and there are thus no good relations to be restored. Even the desirability of working towards reconciliation is questionable. Reconciliation without treaty, land rights, and recognition of Indigenous sovereignty is, as Chelsea Bond (2019) writes, “just a more pleasant articulation of colonisation”. This is what Aboriginal unionist and writer Celeste Liddle (2020) describes as the ‘con’ in ‘reconciliation’: reconciliation as the performance of change, rather than the realisation of change. Instead of bringing about any kind of proper transformation in the nation’s relationship to the original peoples of the land on which it has been established, Reconciliation Week is pantomime of a unified Australia. The lacklustre success of twenty years of ‘reconciliation’ was highlighted by two events that took place during 2020s Reconciliation Week. First, on 26 May, reports were published detailing the destruction of a significant Aboriginal rock shelter in Western Australia’s Pilbara region by mining giant Rio Tinto (Hopkins and Kemp 2020). The site had been used continuously by Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people for at least 46,000 years. The company had approval for a range of iron ore mining projects, which including using explosives to explore a site in the Hammersley Ranges. One of the blasts caused the entrance to the Juukan Gorge rock shelter to collapse, destroying it irreparably. The company had long championed its Indigenous credentials and, tellingly, vocally supported Reconciliation Week. It was later discovered Rio Tinto long knew about the shelter, knew that the blasting would destroy the site, and decided to do it anyway. Moreover, it was found that, under existing legislation, the mining company could legally destroy the ancient site without penalty. Across social media, Indigenous people expressed their shock and anger at such blatant disregard of their life, history and culture. They mourned the loss of such a significant and sacred site, and they demanded accountability. The outrage eventually could not be ignored, Rio Tinto board members were fired and a parliamentary inquiry was established into the incident. Second, on 25 May, a video was uploaded to social media which captured the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Like many videos of black people dying at the hands of US police, the footage was viscerally shocking. It captured the slow death of a man in immense pain, pleading for his life, and the total insensibility of the police officer to these pleas. Again and again, Floyd called out ‘I can’t breathe’. The video went viral, anger circulating

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through the connections social media facilitates, fast snowballing into protests that exploded on city streets around the US and, soon after, the world; protesters chanting Floyd’s last words—We Can’t Breathe—and what has become one of the most potent rallying cries of the last decade: Black Lives Matter. Evidently, Floyd’s death, and the broader politics that surrounded it, resonated with many Indigenous people in Australia, and protests were organised in every major city—both in solidarity to the Black Lives Matter movement, and in support of the parallel Aboriginal Lives Matter movement against Black deaths in police custody. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, soon after moving to prevent the Sydney protests, tweeted support for the 2020 Reconciliation Week theme: “In this together”. The hypocrisy was not lost on Indigenous people. “It speaks volumes that people are persisting with that bullshit [i.e. Reconciliation Week] in the midst of all that has happened in the past week”, one person tweeted. Political movements are invariably emotional movements, animated by an often-chaotic swirl of different emotional forces—anger against injustice, the grief of loss, the love of one’s people and country, hope for a better future. In this chapter, we discuss the intersection of emotion, activism and social media. We ask: What does the expression and circulation of emotion on social media ‘do’ in Indigenous activism? And how does emotion work to intensify particular subject positions, mobilise particular publics, and move towards particular political ends? We understand emotions, following the work of Sara Ahmed, not as private feelings, but as collective bodily affects, which move across, through and between bodies—moving some bodies to act, while causing others to remain still. Emotions are what push together and pull apart bodies; they are the animating force of collectives; they constitute the dynamic movement of social movements. Looking at two ‘movement moments’ in Indigenous activism—the Aboriginal Lives Matter and #IndigenousDads campaigns—we attend to the political affordances of different emotions, seeking to understand what the emotions of pain, anger and love do in the context of Indigenous social media activism.

2   Indigenous Politics, Protest, Activism Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have always had to fight for their lives in Australia. From the moment of invasion, colonisation and settlement, Indigenous peoples were unequivocally understood as a

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problem that needed to be ‘fixed’. They stood in the way of the quest for the heroic, white nation; a ‘new’ nation without history but with a future (Veracini 2007). The persisting presence of Indigenous people was an inconvenient reminder that this land was not new, but was stolen from others—through colonial decree, gunfire, massacres, and a suite of policies that invariably sought to contain, manage and eliminate Indigenous people. Their continued presence physically hindered establishment of the new political regime and morally invalidated settler claims to settler sovereignty. Nothing has been given freely to Indigenous people. Early frontier contact was marked by great conflict, in which Indigenous people fought to protect their land from invasion and their people from violence and exploitation. Later, they had to collectively organise to claim fair wages, or wages at all, for their labour; for the right to own land that was, by all rights, already their own; for the right to vote within a nation that worked to control every aspect of their lives; for the right to enter stores, clubs, swimming pools, and any other space that white people could already freely access; for the formal admission that terra nullius—the legal doctrine and foundational lie of the nation—was and always had been a lie. To achieve all this, in the face of overwhelming opposition and scarcity of moral and material support, Indigenous people had to be politically agile, innovative and, resourceful. The 1938 Nation Day of Mourning— held on January 26, 150 years to the day since the arrival of the British colonisers—marked the first time Aboriginal activist groups from all states worked together. The Australian Aborigines’ League and Aboriginal Progressives Association sought to intervene in national celebrations by highlighting what had been stolen, lost and forgotten in the establishment of the nation. They came together to mourn the loss of freedom, Country and kin; they demanded full citizen rights, equality and the end of discrimination. The moment became widely considered the beginning of the modern Aboriginal political movement. The decades that followed were marked by great political activity, organising and protests: The 1965 Freedom Rides, inspired by the Black civil rights protests in the US, drew national attention to the appalling living conditions and pervasive, everyday racism Indigenous people faced across Australia; the 1966 Wave Hill walk-off, in which 200 Gurindji stockmen and domestic workers demanded wages for their labour and, ultimately, their ancestral lands returned, spread consciousness of the slave-like conditions Indigenous people continued to work in; and the

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establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972 on the lawns of Parliament House in the nation’s capital, became a physical assertion of Aboriginal sovereignty and a concrete demand for land rights. 2.1  The ‘Connective’ Politics of Social Media The widespread adoption of internet technologies has radically transformed organised politics, protest and activism (Castells 2013). Early writing on digital technology was, by and large, overwhelmingly optimistic about its democratic potential, and there were widespread dreams of cascading democratic revolutions, led by the people directly connected through digital media. The so-called Arab Spring of 2011—in which anti-­ government movements, rebellions and uprisings spread across much of the Arab world, toppling dictators and autocrats, bringing down corrupt governments, and calling for new forms of democracy—seemed to confirm this profound democratic vision (Khondker 2011). Citizens from Tunisia to Yemen used the new ‘connective’ (Bennett and Segerberg 2012) power of social media, which largely worked outside of state and mainstream media power, to spread information, organise action and challenge dominant narratives. These dramatic events caused many public pundits to declare a ‘new age’ of social media politics, characterised by a people’s democracy, working outside the traditional centres of power— the state, media and private industry. While there are crucial questions around whether social media’s capacity for ‘giving voice’ to marginalised peoples actually brings about substantive change to policy (Dreher et  al. 2016; Fransen-Taylor and Narayan 2018), or whether online activism is really just ‘slactivism’ (Morozov 2009)—half-hearted, meaningless and ineffective activism—it’s difficult to overestimate how important social media has become for Indigenous movements. Indigenous people globally have less access to political power, in the forms of voter power, capital, proximity to politicians, and representation in politics. Instead, political power, for Indigenous peoples, comes from their relational connections to one another, their irrefutable moral claim to sovereignty, and their immense creativity in political strategy. While ‘technological progress’ is often described as antithetical to Indigenous cultures and life ways (Belton 2010), it’s clear that digital communication technologies have strengthened what Castells (2013) calls the ‘counter-power’ of Indigenous politics. Importantly, social media offers opportunities to distribute news and information outside

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mainstream news media, which, being founded and run as settler institutions, work to sustain settler power and tend to be dominated by the voices of the state. Mainstream media largely reproduces negative, stereotypical images of Indigenous people: dysfunctional communities, neglectful parents, violent drunks and so on. It also works to discredit and fragment Indigenous resistance to settler policy, framing Indigenous political activity as ‘trouble-making’ rather than concrete demands for justice (Chen 2019). Social media has been powerful in this respect—decentralising power over representations of Indigenous peoples and their political claims, often working to “invert the stereotypes generated about Indigenous peoples imposed by the neoliberal Settler State” (Hutchings and Rodger 2018, 90). Indeed, Petray (2013) has argued that, since being Indigenous is already considered to be a political subject, Indigenous people simply expressing themselves online can be considered a potent political act. Social media accounts such as IndigenousX, which directly seek to enable Indigenous people to account for themselves, articulate their own believes, desires and dreams, can be understood, then, as advancing a distinct decolonial agenda. Considering this, Salazar (2003) argues that digital media has been readily embraced by Indigenous activists as “a field of symbolic and political struggle” (2003, 19)—or what Latimore et  al. (2017) describe as a new Indigenous public sphere, in which Indigenous people are ‘given voice’ in arenas otherwise largely outside their reach (Fransen-Taylor and Narayan 2018). Beyond this realm of representation and expression, social media has been powerful in generating anti-colonial solidarities and organising concrete political actions. Indeed, arguably the first use of digital communication technologies for political organisation was by an Indigenous group, the Zapatista ‘netwar’ against Mexican colonial policy. The Zapatistas, in the early 1990s, saw clearly the transformative and radical potential of internet technology in connecting people outside the power of the state, spreading anti-colonial propaganda, and organising effective protest action through listservs and online newsletters. The decolonising potential of social media activism has been realised again and again since these early, formative actions, embodied in grassroots movements such as the #NoDAPL movement at Standing Rock in the Dakotas, which brought together the largest gathering of Indigenous peoples in history to stop the development of an oil pipeline through the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux (Estes 2019); and the #SOSBlakAustralia

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campaign against a plan to forcibly close up to 150 remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia (Carlson and Frazer 2016). In Canada, the #IdleNoMore campaign, a movement opposing state policy that violated Indigenous sovereignty, was not only a significant and powerful Canadian First Nations movement, but eventually became a global ‘pan-­ Indigenous’ movement against colonial policy (Dahlberg-Grundberg and Lindgren 2014). The hashtag acted as a globally connected interface, through which the heterogeneous and decentralised movement was able to establish and sustain bonds across geographically dispersed political networks. For these reasons, Pascua Yaqui/Chicanx scholar Marisa Duarte (2017, 10) argues that “Indigenous uses of social media are … inherently destabilising for dominant government processes”. 2.2  Contagious Political Feeling and Moving The highly dynamic, fluid and more or less ephemeral connections facilitated through social media have challenged more traditional models of activism. While older forms of political action are generally structured hierarchically around clear charismatic personalities, ideologies and political agendas, social media activism is generally much messier, ‘fuzzier’ and ‘atmospheric’, and its source/force of power is often much more obscure. This has meant social researchers have been forced to formulate new concepts and approaches capable of attuning to the ‘connective’ power of social media, as opposed to the ‘collective’ power of traditional political formations. One approach has been to attend to the emotions of online politics. “At the individual level, social movements are emotional movements,” Castells writes (2013, 13). He continues: “the big bang of a social movement starts with the transformation of emotion into action” (2013, 13). Emotion, coming from the French émotion, refers to “a (social) moving, stirring, agitation”. Emotions are not just private feelings and sensations, they are social stirrings—they ripple and circulate through bodies. And as we discuss in chapters “Fun” and “Death”, it’s clear that emotions often circulate easily through the connections social media makes possible. In a massive and highly controversial study, for instance, the feeds of almost 700,000 people’s Facebook accounts were algorithmically altered to reflect more ‘positive’ or more ‘negative’ emotional content. The results were unequivocal: “emotional states can be transferred to others via

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emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness”, the researchers concluded (Kramer et al. 2014). Thinking politics through emotion, then, encourages us to attune to the movement of politics; to what particular feelings and movements do, rather than what they are. Indigenous activism is saturated with emotional expression—of unjust suffering, righteous anger, hope for change, love of one’s people and connection to Country (Felt 2016). These emotions work to align subjects with one another, to galvanise groups against others, and animate bodies into action. In this sense, Indigenous social media activism can be understood as pushing and pulling bodies to act against settler power (Cappelli 2018). In their analysis of the protest materials, signs and chants of Standing Rock activists, for instance, Cappelli (2018, 1) argues that artistic expression works to “politically align indigenous and non-indigenous protestors together in affective solidarity and artful resistance”. Felt (2016, 6), looking at the #MMIW movement, found that “the combination of outrage and hope resulted in the effective mobilization of activists”. It was through the combination of outrage against wrongdoing and hope for change that a largely spontaneous and decentralised movement emerged and continues to be sustained. The movement of emotions, such as anger and hope, works to stir, generate and stabilise collective identities and build anti-colonial solidarities. In this sense, Indigenous social media activism works to produce what Callison and Hermida (2015, 695) describe as a new “middle ground”— which “offers a space where collective identity emerges,” through what they call ‘resonance’. This can include the establishment of ‘pan-­ Indigenous’ movements against colonial policy, such as the #IdleNoMore campaign, which brought together Indigenous people across world through anger against injustice; or through fostering forms of ‘decolonising solidarity’—a radical expression of settler involvement in Indigenous movements (Kluttz et al. 2020), a process through which ‘right’ relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples might be achieved (see chapter “Allies”). Indigenous people use the internet to build strong bonds of alliance: “to transcend geographical boundaries and connect groups and traditions together,” as Belton writes (2010, 199). The elicitation and circulation of feeling, then, is intimately involved in the production and expansion of the ‘virtual we’ of Indigenous solidarity (Petray 2011).

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2.3  The Emotional Politics of Indigenous Activism For the rest of this chapter, we follow two events that catalysed relatively distinct emotional and political moments in Indigenous social media activism. Following Barker (2015, 44), we describe these two cases as ‘movement moments’, “characterized by innovative uses of online and direct action tactics designed to disrupt settler colonial space”. They are movement moments because they are entangled in a longer history of Indigenous resistance, self-determination and resurgence, and the broader project of decolonisation. To approach the ‘emotional politics’ and ‘political emotions’ of these cases, we again draw on the work of Sara Ahmed (2004, 128, emphasis added), who explores how emotions work to “generate the surfaces of collective bodies.” Rather than understanding emotions as essentially private feelings, Ahmed “offer[s] an analysis of affective economies, where feelings do not reside in subjects or objects, but are produced as effects of circulation” (2014, 8, emphasis added). Ahmed argues that emotion is what makes the ‘skin’ of the individual and collective self felt, known and sensible. First, we look at how footage of George Floyd’s death in 2020 resonated in Australia, sparking on-the-streets protests across the country. We discuss how, on the one hand, Floyd’s suffering, as it circulated on social media, ‘surfaced’ Indigenous pain, suffering and trauma. There was, we argue, a ‘shared recognition’ of pain across Bla(c)k people from different social groups; Indigenous people in Australia could, in a sense, recognise Floyd’s suffering as a suffering of their own—embodied in ongoing violence against Indigenous people, particularly at the hands of law enforcement. On the other hand, we explore how this pain was converted into anger at injustice, which manifested through incredible protest actions taking place across the country, even as it was being ‘locked down’ due to the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic. Second, we follow the controversy around the Northern Territory’s Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, which became the subject of a media investigation into how it was mistreating its almost entirely Indigenous inmates. The airing of the 4 Corners report, which featured footage of Indigenous boys being abused, restrained, and teargassed, sent shockwaves around the country, and instigated heated debate about who was ultimately responsible for their suffering. The subsequent publication of a cartoon, which appeared to blame Indigenous fathers for the mistreatment of their children in detention, momentarily derailed attention, and

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the cartoon became the focus of immense debate on Facebook and Twitter. In this case, we look at how the intensification of pain and anger was converted into expressions of love—radical Indigenous love, a love that challenged colonial narratives of Indigenous parental neglect. Drawing on Ahmed’s framework, we show how both events highlighted the differential treatment of Bla(c)k and Brown bodies by the carceral state, and ultimately ‘surfaced’ collective feelings of pain and trauma. However, they also bring to attention to the differential ways in which collective pain can be converted into radically different ‘political feelings’: anger, on the one hand, and love, on the other hand. The movement of Indigenous feeling, we argue, always poses a problem for the settler state, however, and in both cases the circulating of Indigenous love and anger was positioned as a problem.

3   Aboriginal Lives Matter: Circulations of Pain and Anger While many people who die at the hands of police are never known to the public, the killing of George Floyd had an immediate and profound political impact. Footage of his death was captured by a bystander, using their phone to record Floyd’s interaction with police. For racial and ethnic minorities, mobile phones have become absolutely central tools in the fight against racism, discrimination and police brutality (Stern 2020). Equipped with high-quality cameras and internet connections, they can be a literal life-saver; they can be used to hold authorities to account, record violations of their rights, and seek justice when it would otherwise be denied. The bystander footage of Floyd’s death was immediately uploaded to social media, where it circulated through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms with incredible velocity. His shocking death moved through networks already primed to this content, already witness to countless other deaths of Black people at the hands of law enforcement, also caught on a bystander’s phone or police bodycam. Watching the footage, many people evidently felt pain, too—the pain they themselves, their family or ancestors had suffered (Campbell and Valera 2020). “Watching Black Death online over and over again is a special kind of trauma for black people”, read one viral tweet. Floyd’s pain, his cry for air, in this sense, while wholly his own, was also social—moving through social media, it gathered energy, rolling into a social force that rippled across space and

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time, connecting bodies, histories, events, structures marred by racism and the violence of law enforcement. This pain had to go somewhere. And so it exploded into the streets of Minneapolis, where bodies congregated, marched, chanted, screamed and cried. It circulated to dozens of other US cities. People needed to be together in their pain, online and on the streets, to express it through cries of anguish and anger. The energy of this pain and anger pulsed through collectives, turning the streets into vigils, wakes and sometimes warzones. Private feeling had transformed into a movement with incredible collective force. Emotion was coalescing and taking shape, it was moving somewhere; it was doing something. The collective cry was: Enough. No more. I Can’t Breathe. Black Lives Matter. 3.1  Black Pain, Indigenous Pain: Shared Recognition These events unfolded live in Australia through social media feeds and broadcast media. It was almost impossible to be online and not see images of Floyd’s death, the energetic protests sweeping across the US, or the police handling of protests, which were marred by widespread overuse and misuse of force (BBC 2020). The pain and trauma that catalysed the movement circulated differentially across populations in Australia. While evidently many white Australians were affected deeply by the movement, the pain of Black Americans was most immediately and intimately recognised by Indigenous peoples. Across social media, Indigenous people expressed their empathic identification with the suffering of Black Americans—both groups being caught in parallel, unjust systems that disproportionately violate the rights and bodies of Black and Indigenous people. “We feel your pain. From the Indigenous Lands of so-called Australia”, tweeted one Aboriginal man. “Their pain is our pain”, wrote another, finishing with the Black Lives Matter hashtag and emoji, featuring three black raised fists. Aboriginal activist group, Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR), published a statement on social media, declaring that they “stand with the uprising in Minneapolis”. In reflecting on the Black Lives Matter movement back in 2016, we described this mutual sense of pain and injustice between Black Americans and Indigenous Australians as a ‘shared recognition’—an understanding that both groups are engaged in “variations in the same struggle” (Carlson et al. 2017, 9), a recognition that can be productive of a “pan ethnic identity” against injustice (2017, 8).

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3.2  A Movement Moment: Stop Black Deaths in Custody The collective feeling of pain circulated across a social body, seeking somewhere to go, demanding resolution. The repeated exposure to the “special kind of trauma” of both being Black and seeing Black people brutalised by police can, for some, deplete their energy, cause exhaustion and hinder their ability to go on. “I am tired because I am an Aboriginal woman, and my people are hurting”, Samantha Cooper (2020) wrote in opinion piece about the unfolding BLM movement. Other times, however, pain goes elsewhere—it converts into action. In response to a tweet from Nyamal psychologist Tracy Westerman, who asked: “Any other BLM indigenous & non-indigenous brothers and sisters feeling particularly drained atm?” someone replied: “Absolutely I feel emotional but that energy is turned into activism, I’m fired up sis! #BlackLivesMatter”. Like the US, Australia has a long history of violence against and deadly neglect of Indigenous people while in custody. In response to increasing public pressure and outrage by Indigenous activists, in 1987 Prime Minister Bob Hawke established a Royal Commission to investigate the extent and causes of deaths of Aboriginal people held in prisons. The report, released in 1991, detailed the deaths of 99 Aboriginal people, uncovering a range of systemic causes and failings for the overrepresentation of deaths, and ultimately made 339 recommendations. While Indigenous people could easily see the continuous links between the death of George Floyd and the deaths of Indigenous people in custody, clearly many non-Indigenous people failed to do so. There was an incredible swell of support from non-Indigenous Australians for the Black Lives Matter movement, but this was often without any understanding of racial injustice in their own country. “Our First Nations people here in Australia are being traumatised the same way as those families in the USA, except there’s no recognition of it”, wrote Gomeroi woman Madeline Hayman-Reber (2020). “People are obviously not recognising the injustice that’s taking place here” (Hayman-Reber 2020). Gomeroi writer Alison Whittaker (2020) notes that the normalisation of Indigenous deaths leaves “our public discourse full of blak bodies but curiously empty of people who put them there”. She continues: “The settler Australian public simply does not see Indigenous deaths in custody as an act of violence, but as a co-morbidity”. This naïveté and hypocrisy was demonstrated vividly by an Australian news reporter who, interviewing a Black protester on the ground in

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Minneapolis, finished the interview by stating: “I really appreciate you giving your perspective, mate, because people in Australia don’t have the understanding of the history of police killings and things here”. While widely mocked, the sentiment was also widely shared. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who, seeking to quell potential for any unrest here, stated: “Australia is not the United States.” This is even though, that very same ‘Reconciliation Week’, there were two ongoing court cases where police had shot dead young Aboriginal people under questionable circumstances. Despite this settler denial of racial wrongdoing in Australia, the shared pain catalysed by Floyd’s death became a swell of anger, a demand for recognition and change. Since the 1991 Royal Commission, there had been case after case of Indigenous people dying in police custody. Thirty years later, the government had failed to instate more than a third of the report’s recommendations, and the other two-thirds had largely been poorly implemented. Incarceration rates had doubled between 2008 and 2018, with Indigenous people now comprising 30 per cent of the prison population but only 3 per cent of the population. The government had failed even to keep a simple list of subsequent deaths in custody—a task left for activists and news organisations, such as The Guardian, which counted a total of 432 Indigenous deaths in custody since 1991. CCTV footage of some of these deaths had been released to the public, such as those of David Dungay Jnr, Aunty Tanya Day and Ms. Dhu, who each died in custody. Dungay’s last words, repeated 12 times in succession—after he was forcibly dragged from his cell for eating biscuits, forcibly sedated, and while he was held face down by five prison guards—I can’t breathe. An officer replied: “If you can talk, you can breathe”. Despite an incredible amount of political work by Indigenous activists since the 1991 Royal Commission, public interest in these deaths had been marginal. Darumbal and South Sea journalist Amy McQuire (2020) lamented that these deaths “failed to reach the same level of Australian outrage as is generated when it comes to cases far from our own home”. The swell of emotion and action around the Black Lives Matter protests, which were being organised across Australia, presented an opportunity to link together experiences of Black injustice and Indigenous injustice. As Jasper and Owens (2014) argues, ‘moral shocks’ often lead to potent emotional openings, in which new subjects are elicited and drawn into political movements. During Reconciliation Week, social media became awash with Indigenous articulations of injustice at the hands of

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law enforcement. “When I saw the video of George Floyd being murdered, I had to stop the footage”, wrote Paul Francis, David Dungay Jnr’s nephew. “It took me straight back to when I first saw the video of my uncle’s death”. “My mother’s dad was murdered in a cell”, tweeted one person. “I’ve witnessed my mother dragged and brutalised by police. I’m worried at night for her, even if she is 1 hour late back home, horrible scenarios rush through my head”—signing off with an Indigenous variation on the BLM hashtag: #blaklivesmatter. This growing attention to police treatment of Indigenous Australians was intensified again during the week of Black Lives Matter protests, with the sharing of a video of a 16-year-old Aboriginal boy being slammed head-first to the ground by a police officer in Redfern, seemingly in response for talking in a way the officer thought was disrespectful. The boy groans deeply, body limp, as the officer continues to push him into the pavement. The NSW Police Chief explained the officer had “had a bad day”. With mainstream media generally keeping the focus on racial tensions in the US, social media was, again, the central node for Indigenous political action. Over the week, the Black Lives Matter movement became deeply entangled with the parallel Aboriginal Lives Matter movement, calling for justice for deaths in custody—432 deaths, zero convictions. Governments and police scrambled to prevent the protests, seeking court orders to ban the events. “WELCOME TO NSW THE #1COLONY! Where we are “in this together” for #ReconciliationWeek but the same Government prohibits protesting for #BlackLivesMatter”, tweeted @teelareid. Rather than reconciliation, she suggested, it’s time for a reckoning. But the swell of pain and anger meant the wave of protests were impossible to hold back. The pain had to be heard, the anger had to be expressed. In these protests, the bodies, lives and fates of Black and Indigenous people globally became linked through shared pain and anger in injustice. On social media, footage circulated of a group of Māori men performing a haka during a Black Lives Matter protest rally in Perth. Photos were shared of a Brisbane protest in Musgrave Park where 433 candles were lit, spelling out the words: I Can’t Breathe—the candles represented every Black death in custody since 1991, and included one more for George Floyd. 3.3  Indigenous Anger as a ‘Yes’ to Something Else Anger circulates quickly between bodies, it has immense affective force. But there are distinct political patterns to anger. While some people’s

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anger is framed as ‘righteous’, Indigenous anger is often framed as a ‘problem’. “Oppressed groups are almost inevitably discouraged from expressing anger”, Jasper and Owens writes (2014, 541). As Bond (2018, np) explains, “The angry black woman is a trope which insists that our emotional responses are irrational and unregulated, which then makes the oppression we experience seem like a rational outcome of our behaviour”. And as Ahmed (2008, 1) similarly argues: “certain bodies are seen as the origin of bad feeling, as getting in the way of public happiness”. The person who calls out a problem, who refuses to just ‘go along’ with things— even their own oppression—this person becomes a problem, sabotaging the happiness of innocent others, blocking the flow of happiness throughout the social body of the settler state. Indigenous anger, then, is seen as a hindrance to forgiveness, reconciliation and settler joy. But Indigenous anger is not just a negation. “For Indigenous peoples’ struggles, the unified ‘no’ is also a resounding ‘yes’ to something different, yes to a reality ‘to-come’”, writes Rachel Flowers (2015, 39). She continues: “Refusal is simultaneously a negation of access to information and resources, as well as an affirmation of sovereignties” (Flowers 2015, 33). Indigenous people’s anger, their refusal to go on, their refusal to ‘reconcile’, can be understood as a hope for a different future—a future without Indigenous deaths in custody, a future in which Indigenous lives matter.

4   Australia’s Shame, Indigenous Love In July 2016, an investigation by investigative journalism program 4 Corners was aired on prime-time TV. Titled ‘Australia’s Shame’, it documented in vivid detail the mistreatment of inmates in the Northern Territory’s youth detention centre, Don Dale. Footage smuggled out of the facility captured the often cruel and violent practices of guards: incidents where detainees were pushed and punched seemingly without reason, where teargas was sprayed on detainees while locked in their cells, where water was poured over the heads of inmates while they were prone and handcuffed, where inmates were locked in isolation cells for days without access to running water. One scene was so shocking it appeared the next day on the front page of every major newspaper in the country. It showed someone tied to a chair, shirtless, with a ‘spit hood’ over his head, secured by a belt around his neck. The inmates were children and teenagers, 12–17 years old.

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Response from the public and politicians was immense. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a Royal Commission into the facility the very next day, a move without precedent in its swiftness. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned footage, stating that the abuse was likely in violation of both the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. On social media, there were public outpourings of grief, pain, trauma and anger. The fact that almost all the inmates were Indigenous did not feature prominently in the public discussion that followed. Rather, it was largely framed as an issue of poor regulation, poor practices by people in authority, poor oversight in detention institutions. 4.1  What’s His Name Then? A fortnight later and public discussion was still mostly focused on the abuses taking place in youth detention. In Australia’s only national newspaper, resident cartoonist Bill Leak published a single-frame cartoon commenting on the issue. It featured a white policeman holding a baton in one hand and, in the other, a young Aboriginal boy by the scruff of his shirt, telling an Aboriginal man that he’ll “have to sit down and talk to [his] son about personal responsibility”. Beer in hand, the father responds: “Yeah righto, what’s his name then?” While not explicitly linked to the public discussion about Don Dale, the message was crystal clear. Rather than being an issue of poor regulation, badly behaved guards, or, more broadly but accurately, carceral-settler logics that work to disproportionately police and imprison Indigenous youth, the problem with Don Dale began with the Aboriginal parents who weren’t taking ‘proper’ care of their children. The teargassed children, the spit-hooded teenagers, the waterboarded youth: Aboriginal parents were to blame. The image caused an immediate storm and almost entirely derailed public discussion of the 4 Corners report. The centre of debate became: Is this cartoon—which plainly depicts Aboriginal men as drunks and bad parents, which produces the same logic that justified a whole generation of Aboriginal children being taken from their parents—racist? The debate played out along largely predictable lines. Those who recognised the cartoon for what it was—racist, colonial stereotyping that simply washed away centuries of deleterious settler policy on Indigenous cultural and

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family life—decried its publication. The Australian Press Council received over 700 complaints about the cartoon. The backlash, reported Melissa Davey (2016), “left advertisers reconsidering their relationship with the broadsheet”. Indigenous affairs minister, Nigel Scullion, slammed the cartoon as ‘tasteless’. On the other side, the loyal defenders of racist stereotyping, Indigenous victimisation and ‘free speech’ trotted out their boilerplate defences. Leak described his angry critics as “sanctimonious Tweety Birds having a tantrum” (Kerin 2016), meanwhile arguing that he was happy that he’d been able to “provoke discussions of really important issues”. The cartoon was described by the paper’s editor as a ‘contribution’ to the ‘national conversation’ around Indigenous issues. Conservative writer Chis Kenny (2016) agreed, describing the cartoon as approaching “an unpalatable truth”: “that where indigenous juveniles fail, they often lack the parental care and community support most kids require and all kids deserve,” he wrote. The defences followed the continuous line of settler logic, where Indigenous issues are always only an issue because of Indigenous people—a move Tuck and Yang (2012) describe as settler ‘moves to innocence’. 4.2  The Love of #IndigenousDads The debate, as it rolled out on script, seemed terminal. How to respond to such vile, hurtful, racist depictions of Indigenous family life in a way that actually intervenes in otherwise predictable discourse? How to disrupt an ongoing settler dynamic that thrives off Indigenous anger? How to respond to violence disguised as concern, hatred disguised as compassion, and colonialism disguised as sympathy? The answer came in the form of a selfie of a father holding his son. “There comes a point where maybe anger isn’t the right place to come from”, Joel Bayliss, the Aboriginal man who tweeted the photo, explained later in a TEDx talk. Bayliss, in the midst of this rapidly circulating outrage, shared the photo with his followers, captioned with the message: “To counter the bill leak cartoon here is a pic of me & my kids. I am a proud Aboriginal father.” The simple message evidently resonated. It was enthusiastically liked and retweeted, and soon became a meme—with hundreds of users sharing tender moments of love, intimacy and joy of their relationships with their fathers, all linked through the hashtag #IndigenousDads. “My Dad, always loving, proud and greatly missed”, one person tweeted. “I’m so lucky to

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have such an amazing dad love me and be there throughout my life”, tweeted another. “Standing strong on the shoulders of #IndigenousDads.” National broadcaster the ABC reported that “Users challenged the stereotype shown in Leak’s cartoon with photos and memories of love and dedication, and pride in Aboriginal culture” (ABC 2016). The images and message challenged the settler-colonial stereotype of the neglectful Indigenous father, while emphasising culturally specific parenting practices involving wider familial networks. The outpouring of love stood in stark contrast to the politics that inspired it. The simple articulation of Indigenous love between fathers and their children rapidly gained incredible affective force. “These tweets were accompanied by evocative photos of strong, active Indigenous men— directly challenging the tired image of a wasted Indigenous man that Leak offered” (McLean 2020, 102), creating what McLean, following Bruns and Burgess (2011), describes as an “ad hoc public” (McLean 2020, 102)—a public intensified and solidified through collective expressions of Indigenous love. “The campaign trended nationally”, Elfie Shiosaki (2016) later explained, “creating a vivid digital archive”. “And through the power of this collective consciousness”, Noongar singer Gina Williams (2016) wrote, “we were able to shift a conversation from the anger of copping yet another cheap media shot, to showing just how loved the men in our community truly are”. 4.3  The Danger of Indigenous Love Moreno (2019) writes that Indigenous people’s love stands against the colonial order; it does not fit within the logics that sustain settler power. Luke Pearson, Gamilaraay man and founder of IndigenousX, writes that for colonialism to be successful, “we need to be framed as outside of normal, we need to be understood as undeserving, needy, irresponsible, and irreparable recalcitrants who lay about, contributing nothing, and as people who don’t subscribe to everyday rhythms of humanity – loving, sharing, caring, responsible rhythms”. Thus, Indigenous love presents a direct threat to settler colonialism. As Leanne Simpson (2017, 9) points out, it is “the intense love of land, of family, and of our [Indigenous] nations that has always been the spine of Indigenous resistance”. Moreno thus describes Indigenous love as ‘decolonial love’; Indigenous love directly intervenes in colonial discourse and contributes to Indigenous healing.

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The affective force of Indigenous love was clearly not lost on defenders of the cartoon and the image of Indigenous life it depicted. Conservative journalist Chris Kenny wrote in the offending paper that, while the #IndigenousDads campaign might have “lifted the spirits of social media users’, “The trouble is that [it] has been used to deny or distract from a serious social crisis” (Kenny 2016). He explained that “The campaign was designed to combat what was seen as a damaging stereotype, to show that not all indigenous dads are neglectful”. However, he continued, “This is disappointing and damaging because it diminishes a crucial debate. Leak, as he has explained to those who have not been informed by the discussion, was not portraying a stereotype but referencing a specific and tragic dilemma”. Evidently, Indigenous people are not even allowed to publicly express love or pride in their families—even Indigenous love for their children, according to this settler logic, is dangerous.

5   Closing: Our Resistance Is Written in Both Rage and Love Our Facebook and Twitter feeds are not disembodied spaces, free from the pains, loves and joys of everyday life. Rather, to be online is to remain a fleshy, feeling body that can be pulled and pushed, crushed and exalted. Feeling spreads through our online connections in ways both predictable and unruly. Emotion and affect are generated and circulated through webs of ties forged through social media, producing what Döveling, Harju and Sommer (2018, 1) describe as “a globally mediatized emotional exchange”. It often seems as if we cannot but feel the pain of others echoed in our own bodies, such as when footage of a Black man’s death appears on our Twitter feed. But why do some expressions of suffering pass away unnoticed while others galvanise a new movement, a powerful political force? Why do some anguished cries seem to fall on unhearing ears, while others gather strength and volume, stirring otherwise disparate bodies into connected action? In this chapter, we have sought to explore the entanglement of emotion with Indigenous social media activism. Emotions work to align bodies one way or another, towards an object or in fierce opposition to it; they work by producing boundaries of belonging, the inside and the outside of a group, those working towards justice and those working against it. Thus, as Barker (2015, 46) writes, “Affective resistance is premised on the

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understanding that social relationships … are a crucial site of struggle”. Pain and trauma can ignite a fire, an immense righteous anger, which spreads across nations, pulling people together onto streets, calling for radical change to systems that work to oppress and traumatise Black and Indigenous people. Indigenous social media activism, animated by pain, anger and love, are clearly producing what McLean (2020) calls ‘decolonising digital geographies’. “Indigenous resistance simultaneously disrupts settler colonial space while reasserting Indigenous spaces, altering the spatialities of both”, explains Barker (2015, 46). And emotions, while privately felt, are also collective forces, sometimes building with incredible affective force— moving across bodies, circulating through the digital pathways made possibly by social media, spilling into streets and city centres. The circulation of emotion works to bring new political collectives into being, bonded through pain, anger and love, working towards new Indigenous futures. “Our resistance is written in both rage and love”, writes Flowers (2015, 40). However, we must not fall into the trap of thinking linearly about emotions. It is not a clean movement from pain, to anger, to love. Instead, these can all work simultaneously, all work together, all directed towards different object(ive)s. Anger is not just a ‘negative’ emotion, it can be an affirmation of one’s identity, community and sovereignty. A loud ‘no’, as Flowers argues, is often a resounding ‘yes’ to another future. Likewise, love is not just a ‘positive’ emotion, but can be a resounding rejection of colonial violence, control and erasure. Neither is any particular emotional expression guaranteed to have the desired effect: Indigenous emotion, for the settler state, is always a problem. Just as Indigenous people’s anger threatens the stability of the social order, so too Indigenous love becomes a danger to an order premised on the pathologisation of Indigenous family life.

References ABC (2016). #IndigenousDads counter Bill Leak cartoon with stories of fatherhood. 6 August 2016, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-06/indigenousdads-counter-bill-leak-cartoon-with-stories/7697668 Ahmed, S. (2004). Affective economies. Social Text, 22(2), 117–139. Ahmed, S. (2008). The Politics of Good Feeling. Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association Journal, 4(1), 1–18. Ahmed, S. (2014). The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh University Press.

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Barker, A. J. (2015). ‘A Direct Act of Resurgence, a Direct Act of Sovereignty’: Reflections on Idle No More, Indigenous Activism, and Canadian Settler Colonialism. Globalizations, 12(1), 43–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/147 47731.2014.971531 BBC (2020). George Floyd: Videos of police brutality during protests shock US.  Accessed 17.03.2021. Available: https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-­us-­canada-­52932611 Belton, K.  A. (2010). From Cyberspace to Offline Communities: Indigenous Peoples and Global Connectivity. Alternatives, 35(3), 193–215. Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Information Communication and Society, 15(5), 739–768. https://doi.org/10.108 0/1369118X.2012.670661 Bond, C. 2018. The Audacity of Anger. The Guardian. Available: https://www. theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/31/the-­a udacity-­o f-­a nger. Accessed 10/05/2019. Bond, C. 2019, The uncomfortable truth about Reconciliation. SBS. Available: https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2019/05/30/uncomfortable-­truth-­ about-­reconciliation. Accessed 17/02/2021 Bruns, A., & Burgess, J. E. (2011). The Use of Twitter Hashtags in the Formation of Ad Hoc Publics. In Proceedings of the 6th European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conference 2011. Retrieved June 24, 2019, from https://eprints.qut.edu.au/46515/ Callison, C., & Hermida, A. (2015). Dissent and Resonance: IdleNoMore as an Emergent Middle Ground. Canadian Journal of Communication, 40, 695–716. Campbell, F., & Valera, P. (2020). “The Only Thing New is the Cameras”: A Study of US College Students’ Perceptions of Police Violence on Social Media. Journal of Black Studies, 51(7), 654–670. Cappelli, M. L. (2018). Standing With Standing Rock: Affective Alignment and Artful Resistance at the Native Nations Rise March. SAGE Open, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244018785703 Carlson, B., & Frazer, R. (2016). Indigenous activism and social media: a global response to #SOSBLAKAUSTRALIA. Negotiating Digital Citizenship: Control, Contest and Culture, 115–130. Carlson, B., Jones, L. V., Harris, M., Quezada, N., & Frazer, R. (2017). Trauma, shared recognition and Indigenous resistance on social media. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21(1995), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.3127/ ajis.v21i0.1570 Castells, M. (2013). Communication Power. OUP Oxford. Chen, S. (2019). How to Discredit a Social Movement: Negative Framing of “Idle No More” in Canadian Print Media. Environmental Communication ISSN: 13(2), 144–151. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2018.1546201

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Cooper, S. (2020), I am an Aboriginal woman, and my people are hurting. Online Opinion. https://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=20944 Dahlberg-Grundberg, M., & Lindgren, S. (2014). Translocal Frame Extensions in a Networked Protest: situating the # IdleNoMore hashtag. Revista Científica de Información y Comunicación, 45, 48–77. Davey, M. (2016). #IndigenousDads and their children take to Twitter over Bill Leak cartoon. The Guardian. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/ australia-­n ews/2016/aug/07/indigenousdads-­a nd-­t heir-­c hildren­take-­to-­twitter-­over-­bill-­leak-­cartoon Dreher, T., McCallum, K., & Waller, L. (2016). Indigenous voices and mediatized policy-making in the digital age. Information Communication and Society, 19(1), 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1093534 Duarte, M. (2017). Connected Activism : Indigenous Uses of Social Media for Shaping Political Change. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21, 1–12. Döveling, K., Harju, A. A., & Sommer, D. (2018). From Mediatized Emotion to Digital Affect Cultures: New Technologies and Global Flows of Emotion. Social Media and Society, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/205630 5117743141 Estes, N. (2019). Our history is the future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the long tradition of indigenous resistance. Verso. Felt, M. (2016). Mobilizing affective political networks: The role of affect in calls for a national inquiry to murdered and missing indigenous women during the 2015 Canadian federal election. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1145/2930971.2930978 Flowers, R. (2015). Refusal to forgive: Indigenous women’s love and rage. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 4(2), 32–49. http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/download/22829 Fransen-Taylor, P., & Narayan, B. (2018). Challenging prevailing narratives with Twitter: An #AustraliaDay case study of participation, representation and elimination of voice in an archive. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 50(3), 310–321. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000618769981 Hayman-Reber, M. (2020). ‘I can’t breathe’: Indigenous rallies planned in solidarity with George Floyd. NITV.  Available: https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/ article/2020/06/01/i-­cant-­breathe-­indigenous-­rallies-­planned-­solidarity-­ george-­floyd. Accessed 17/02/2020 Hopkins, A. & Kemp, D. (2020). Juukan Gorge: how could they not have known? (And how can we be sure they will in future?), The Conversation. Accessed 17.03.2021. Available: https://theconversation.com/juukan-­gorge-­how-­ c o u l d -­t h e y -­n o t -­h a v e -­k n o w n -­a n d -­h o w -­c a n -­w e -­b e -­s u r e -­t h e y -­w i l l -­ in-­future-­151580 Hutchings, S., & Rodger, D. (2018). Reclaiming Australia: Indigenous Hip-Hop group A.B.  Original’s use of Twitter. Media International Australia, 169(1), 84–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X18803382

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Jasper, J. M., & Owens, L. (2014). Social Movements and Emotions. In J. E. Stets & J. H. Turner (Eds.), Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions. Springer. Kenny, C. 2016. Outrage over Bill Leak cartoon misses the point. The Australian. Available: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/opinion/outrage-­ over-­b ill-­l eak-­c artoon-­m isses-­t he-­p oint/news-­s tor y/db1a205b2d78ff61a309ced66df226ae. Accessed 10/05/2019. Kerin, L. 2016. Bill Leak defends controversial cartoon against ‘sanctimonious Tweety Birds’. ABC. Available: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-­08-­05/ bill-­leak-­defends-­controversial-­cartoon/7693244. Accessed 10/05/2019. Kluttz, J., Walker, J., & Walter, P. (2020). Unsettling allyship, unlearning and learning towards decolonising solidarity. Studies in the Education of Adults, 52(1), 49–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/02660830.2019.1654591 Khondker, H. H. (2011). Role of the new media in the Arab Spring. Globalizations, 8(5), 675–679. Kramer, A. D., Guillory, J. E., & Hancock, J. T. (2014). Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(24), 8788–8790. Latimore, J., Nolan, D., Simons, M., & Khan, E. (2017). Reassembling the Indigenous public sphere. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v21i0.1529 Liddle, C. 2020. Seeing the con in reconciliation. Eureka Street. Available: https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/seeing-­the-­con-­in-­reconciliation. Accessed 17/02/2021. McLean, J. (2020). Decolonising Digital Technologies? Digital Geographies and Indigenous Peoples. Changing Digital Geographies, 91–111. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­28307-­0_5 McQuire. A. (2020). We must bear witness to black deaths in our own country. The Canberra Times. Available: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/ story/6775418/we-­must-­bear-­witness-­to-­black-­deaths-­in-­our-­own-­country/ Moreno, S. (2019). Love as resistance: Exploring conceptualizations of decolonial love in settler states. Girlhood Studies, 12(3), 116–133. https://doi. org/10.3167/ghs.2019.120310 Morozov, E. (2009). Iran: Downside to the “Twitter revolution”. Dissent, 56(4), 10–14. Petray, T.  L. (2011). Protest 2.0: Online interactions and aboriginal activists. Media, Culture and Society, 33(6), 923–940. https://doi.org/10.1 177/0163443711411009 Petray, T. L. (2013). Self-writing a movement and contesting Indigeneity: Being an Aboriginal activist on social media. Global Media Journal, 7(1). Reconciliation Australia. 2020. National Reconciliation Week 2020. Available at: https://www.reconciliation.org.au/national-­reconciliation-­week/. Accessed 17/02/2021

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Salazar, J. F. (2003). Articulating an activist imaginary: Internet as counter public sphere in the Mapuche movement, 1997/2002. Media International Australia, 107, 19–30. Shiosaki, E. 2016. Hand on Heart. Overland. Available: https://overland.org.au/ previous-­issues/issue-­233/feature-­hand-­on-­heart/. Accessed 10/05/2019 Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. 2017. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press Stern, J. (2020). They Used Smartphone Cameras to Record Police Brutality— and Change History. Wall Street Journal. Accessed 17.03.2021. Available: https://www.wsj.com/articles/they-­used-­smartphone-­cameras-­to-­r ecord-­ police-­brutalityand-­change-­history-­11592020827 Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40. https://www.latrobe.edu.au/ staff-­profiles/data/docs/fjcollins.pdf Veracini, L. (2007). Historylessness: Australia as a settler colonial collective. Postcolonial Studies, 10(3), 271–285. https://doi.org/10.1080/1368 8790701488155 Whittaker, A. 2020. Despite 432 Indigenous deaths in custody since 1991, no one has ever been convicted. Racist silence and complicity are to blame. The Conversation. Williams, G. 2016. My #indigenousdad would never forget my name, he was the epitome of love and honour. Sydney Morning Herald. Available: https://www. smh.com.au/opinion/my-­indigenousdad-­would-­never-­forget-­my-­name-­he-­ was-­the-­epitome-­of-­love-­and-­honour-­20160809-­gqo9uv.html. Accessed 10/05/2019

Histories

1   Introduction: Forgetting and Remembering Australia, when it was founded as a settlement, as New South Wales, was on the basis that there’d be no slavery. And while slave ships continued to travel around the world, when Australia was established yes, sure, it was a pretty brutal settlement. My forefathers and foremothers were on the First and Second Fleets. It was a pretty brutal place, but there was no slavery in Australia. (Scott Morrison (ABC 2020)) There wasn’t Slavery in Australia. Blackfullas worked for free, for the love of it. Bit of sun, bit of air, bit of a chain around your neck, bit of a stolen wage. (@Briggs (2020))

Talking on Sydney radio in the context of the unfolding Black Lives Matter protests across the US and Australia in 2020, Prime Minister Morrison claimed there was “no slavery in Australia”. Morrison sought to demarcate historical distance between what was happening in the US and what was happening here in Australia. The two contexts, he argued, could not be compared. The comments came in the turbulent wake of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man arrested for using a counterfeit bill, held to the ground by police offers, and left in a chokehold for eight minutes until he died from asphyxiation (see chapter “Activism”). While Floyd’s death led to mass protests across the country, it also reignited discussions about

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_9

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the long history of White supremacy in the US, including the founding crime of chattel slavery. Morrison’s comments were notable not only because they were unequivocally incorrect—Australia has a long history of slavery—but because they captured a much broader settler politics: the purposeful shaping of the national narrative to fit the project of the settler state. As Indigenous and settler-colonial studies scholars have long argued, the settler state rests on a distinct colonial imaginary, one in which its past is free of blemish and its future is free of Indigenous people (Veracini 2007). The story of the Australian nation, as it exists in the collective national mindset, is one of discovery, hardship, mateship and economic success. It is one of the heroic white explorer overcoming the empty, harsh Australian landscape and, over two centuries, building a strong, wealthy, proudly diverse nation. Of course, there are many things wrong with this dominant narrative. Conveniently, it reproduces the settler myth of a land without a people—a land that was not really inhabited by anyone before the British ‘discovered’ and laid claim to it. Instead, it was only through European toil that this land was transformed into a ‘real nation’. This narrative has attracted increasing scrutiny over the last 50 years. Historians from the mid-1960s onwards have revisited historical documents, accounts and artefacts from this early settler history, and sought to rectify the many glaring omissions from the official national narrative. Meanwhile, however, both inside and outside academia and these ‘formal’ realms of historical knowledge, Indigenous Australians have never forgotten what began with the arrival of the British in January, 1788, nor have they forgotten all that has taken place since. The collective remembering and national meaning-making of Indigenous Australians has long painted a very different picture from those cosy scenes of the peaceful arrival of strong, hardworking Europeans on the shores of Botany Bay, ready to build a new nation in the image of the Old Country. The memories of what was destroyed, stolen and lost have been kept, even in the face of settler colonialism’s aggressive forgetfulness. Immediately after Morrison’s comments were broadcast, they were shared and challenged across social media. On Twitter, in particular, Indigenous people directly countered Morrison’s claim that there was “no slavery in Australia”, sharing histories of their peoples, stories of members of their families whose labour was taken without recompense, and whose very surnames often derived from their status as slave. This collective

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digital remembering laid aside any doubt to the falseness of Morrison’s claim, and instead intensified an entirely different image of the Australian nation: one built on the exclusion and oppression of Indigenous peoples, their uncompensated labour, their appropriated lands, and the ongoing erasure of this violent history from collective national memory—an action that constitutes another form of violence. This chapter seeks to understand the role that social media now plays in meaning-making around the Australian national narrative and identity. We look at social media as a form of counter media, offering opportunities for spontaneous decolonising discourses to spring up and challenge dominant, mainstream national narratives. Building on arguments developed in chapter “Activism”, we understand social media as offering opportunities for the production of ‘ad hoc publics’—“the moment they are needed” (Bruns and Burgess 2015, 23)—through which public discourse is formed, challenged, defended and transformed. We suggest that, while national discourses have been relatively impervious to transformational change, social media is providing real decolonising opportunities to chip away at their hegemony. The chapter begins by describing, first, the debates around the ‘birth’ of the Australian nation, particularly as they played out through the so-­ called History Wars—a debate that centres on the nature of British settlement as either essentially ‘peaceful’ or essentially ‘violent’. We then discuss Indigenous practices of remembering, arguing that collective remembering of what colonialism forgets can be understood as a decolonising politics. Next, we turn to two case studies to unpack how social media now figures in the ad hoc decolonial remembering and meaning-making around the Australian nation. First, we discuss the event at the heart of the Australian narrative: the arrival of British colonisers and their claim to territory on 26 January, 1788. Each year, this date is officially celebrated as a national holiday, ‘Australia Day’—a day in which Australians can proudly remember their history and celebrate the nation’s success as a prosperous, egalitarian and multicultural society. This foundational narrative has long been disputed by Indigenous peoples, many of whom 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 peaceful nationhood.

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Second, we discuss in more detail the context in which Morrison’s ‘no slavery”’ claim was made and the broader racial and colonial politics that were being challenged at the time: the treatment of Black and Indigenous peoples by the state and its law enforcement apparatus, the police. We argue that Indigenous people in Australia were able to use the moment of racial intensification and scrutiny to draw lines between the over-policing of Indigenous peoples and the hundreds of Indigenous people who’ve died in custody, before extending this critique to longer histories of colonial violence and erasure. 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. While the History Wars of the last 50 years tended to be characterised by debates waged between, generally, white men in positions of political or academic power, social media has radically changed who participates in these debates, their dynamics, and the pace at which they take place.

2   Settler Colonialism: A Cult of Forgetfulness While early settlers were generally well aware of the violence of British settlement, from the late nineteenth century and well into the 1960s, the view that Australia was settled ‘peacefully’ had become dominant. “She alone of all the continents has no history”, proclaimed journalist Flora Shaw (cited in Clark 2018) in a presentation about Australia to the Royal Colonial Institute in London in 1894. In John Farrell’s (1889) poem ‘Australia’, the continent is described as “preserved, unspotted, bloodless, tearless”, which the “Strong English voices” only needed to cry “Awake!” and the land would become theirs. “One land whose history had not begun!”, the poet exclaims. In 1959, taking stock of Australia’s blinkered historiography, J. A. La Nauze observed that “the Australian Aboriginal is noticed in our history only in a melancholy anthropological footnote” (cited in MacIntyre and Clark 2013, 43). And in WEH Stanner’s now landmark 1968 Boyer Lectures, on the “great Australian silence”, he argued that “[w]hat may well have begun as a simple forgetting of other possible views turned under habit and over time into something like a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale” (cited in Clark 2018). In the decade that followed Stanner’s lecture, however, Australian historian Henry Reynolds began what became a lifetime project of researching this ‘forgotten’ colonisation of Australia, seeking to understand it

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from the perspective of ‘the colonised’ rather than the coloniser—what he described as “the other side of the frontier” (Reynolds 2006).1 His work helped uncover a past that was unequivocally brutal, with British settlement unfolding through a series of violent events, including state-­ sanctioned or unpunished massacres of Aboriginal peoples, colonial policy directly at erasing or controlling Aboriginal peoples, and decades of coordinated Aboriginal resistance—what became known generally as the Frontier Wars. In contrast to the sunny scenes of “bloodless, tearless” settlement that occupied the mainstream national imagination, this was a history of intentional and determined elimination of Indigenous people. Reynolds’s work was not well received by many conservative politicians and academics. Historian Geoffrey Blainey described this version of Australian settlement as ‘Black armband history’ (see McKenna 1997)—a heavily biased, ‘politically correct’ rewriting of Australian history that overlooked the nation’s many achievements, that exaggerated its wrongdoing, and which morbidly fixated on violence, grief and trauma. The term proved influential and was quickly taken up by mainstream conservatives, including John Howard during his four terms as Prime Minister between 1996 and 2007. In his general policy manifesto as opposition leader, Future Directions (1988), Howard described people who held this view as “professional purveyors of guilt” who had been “Taught to be ashamed of their past” (McKenna 1997). Indeed, throughout his terms as Prime Minister, Howard actively sought to produce and ‘fix’ a particular Australian identity. His government, Austin and Fozdar (2018, 278) explain, “sought to reconstruct Australian identity in its historical connection with the UK and a celebratory version of colonial and ANZAC history, and set about systematically embedding this version of Australianness in public discourse”. The Australian national myth increasingly stabilised as one characterised by a heroic struggle with land and its elements; it was dominated by the image of the pioneer, the bushman, the farmer, and the digger; and it celebrated a small set of folk heroes, like Ned Kelly and Burke and Wills, as mythologised by national poets such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson (Moran 2002, 1022). Under this new national narrative, Australia was transformed from “the embodiment of ‘hell on earth’ for convicts” (Austin and Fozdar 2018, 277) into a jovial, hardworking, egalitarian, and conflict-free nation (Veracini 2007). The moniker ‘black armband history’ meanwhile became pejorative shorthand to describe progressive, unpatriotic activists, who had no pride in country and who sought to rewrite the past for their own

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agenda. This reactionary view was buttressed by a growing body of literature by historians who sought to undermine the influence of this new national narrative. Perhaps most influentially, in 2002 conservative historical Keith Windschuttle published The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, the thesis of which centred on countering claims of an intentional genocidal program of Aboriginal Australians, particularly the Palawa people of Tasmania. He argued that ‘black armband historians’ were, as the title suggests, ‘fabricating’ or at least greatly exaggerating events of the past. The revisionist historians’ “accounts of the past were designed to advance the goals of Aboriginality and Aboriginal self-determination or sovereignty in a way that threatened to undermine the unitary nature of the Australian nation”, as Attwood sums up Windshuttle’s position (2002, 183–4). These two competing versions of Australia’s foundational story became known as the ‘History Wars’—a war that largely played out in history books, political rhetoric and mainstream media reporting. As scholars of settler colonialism have argued, the settler state is, in many ways, sustained both by the stories that are remembered and those that are forgotten. While straightforwardly ‘colonial’ states seek to maintain the unequal power relationship between the coloniser and the colonised, the ‘settler colonial’ state seeks to erase any trace of a precolonial past—including the original peoples of the land (Wolfe 2006). Instead, the settler colony needs to romantically imagine itself as an entirely new place with an entirely new future, free of the shackles of the past. This ‘historia nullius’ (Veracini 2007) is necessary for the settler to claim legitimate connection to the land: Indigenous land claims undermine settler associations with land (Moran 2002); and for this reason, as Veracini explains, the existence of settler colonialism is most obvious when it is most imperfectly realised—with Australia being a prime example. Understanding the History Wars through the project of settler colonialism, we can see what is at stake. The conservative narrative of Australia as a nation peacefully settled and characterised by 230 years of prosperous progress erases the violence of colonisation and, ultimately, erases the fact of colonisation. The selective amnesia, in this sense, makes the nation possible; and thus to remember is to challenge the very foundations of the nation.

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2.1  ‘Aboriginal Histories’: Remembering Forgotten Things The History Wars constitute the core debate around Australian history, settler colonialism, identity, and the nation’s relationship to Indigenous people. However, the voices elevated through this debate have, on the whole, tended to be those of white, usually male people in positions of academic or political power. While Henry Reynolds’s project was to understand Australian colonisation from the perspective of the colonised, he himself was not Indigenous.2 As Attwood (2011) explains, ‘Aboriginal History’ was largely conventional history-making by academic historians, drawing on formal research techniques, academic literacy and grounded in distinctly Western knowledge frameworks. Moran (2002) argues that far from challenging settler colonialism, this new discipline of ‘Aboriginal History’ worked to establish a new form of more ‘progressive’ settler nationalism, which they describe as ‘Indigenizing settler nationalism’. Indeed, more critically, Attwood (2011) questions Reynolds’s motivations, arguing that his aim was not to understand Indigenous peoples on their own terms, but to elicit a new ethical relation from settlers towards Indigenous people. This nationalism seeks to account for Indigenous people, their connection to land, and the suffering they were subject to under colonialism; it mourns the past treatment of Indigenous people and seeks to celebrate and mobilise Indigenous symbolism, spirituality, and connection to Country—but only to establish a new kind of settler nationalism. “The indigenous are seen as those who can add depth and continuity to a national culture that has only sunk shallow roots into Australian soil”, Moran writes (2002, 1033). Despite an increased sensitivity to the violence of colonialism, from the 1960s onwards, the voices of Indigenous peoples were seldom heard first-­ hand in mainstream discourse. This is not because Indigenous people weren’t speaking. Since British colonisation, Indigenous peoples in Australia have experienced, witnessed, remembered and testified to the violence of the nation’s establishment. While this history may have been long left off the pages of the official history books, it was alive and well in Indigenous peoples’ shared, collective memories. Stories of theft, massacre, rape, incarceration, kidnapping, slavery—these were never forgotten by the people that experienced them or the family members to whom the memories were passed on. Attwood (2011) argues that ‘Aboriginal histories’ (as opposed to the formal discipline of ‘Aboriginal History’) bear a radically different relation

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to the state and its knowledge of itself. These ‘minority histories’, or ‘subaltern pasts’, which draw upon other, more personal and democratic forms of remembering the past, pose a direct challenge to what constitutes ‘history’. Aboriginal histories are often democratised, characterised by memory, orality and legend; they often emerge through life histories, oral traditions, everyday yarning, autobiographies, testimony and the production of genealogies. They are not just about a ‘past’ understood as an objective reality distinct from the ‘present’. Instead, Attwood (2011, 178) explains: [M]emory challenges the discipline’s foundational premise of the clean break between past and present. Not only does it rest upon a connection between past and present, but times past and times present necessarily become entangled with one another in its work.

This collective remembering constitutes Australian colonialism’s bottom-­up, grassroots history. While white academics wrote history books and white politicians fortified Australia’s great past, Indigenous people nationwide kept alive those things that settler colonialism sought to forget. Remembering, then, can be a powerful form of decolonial work: a process of rewriting the landscape, of reframing the nation’s identity, and rectifying the ‘spatial amnesia’ (Nixon 2011) that invariably characterises colonial settlement. Indigenous remembering works to deny the settler goal of covering its own tracks, to paraphrase Veracini (2007). Indigenous artists, in particular, have collectively sustained a vivid archive of Australian colonialism’s myriad misdeeds. The writings of Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Jack Davis and Alexis Wright; the visual art of Judy Watson and Richard Bell; the films of Warwick Thorton and Darlene Johnston—Indigenous artists have long painted in the gaps of Australia’s colonial memory. The autobiography emerged as the most popular and influential form of this decolonising remembering, such as Aboriginal author Sally Morgan’s best-selling My Place, published in 1987, which documents Morgan’s childhood, her coming to understand her Aboriginality, and the violence that had been hidden in her family. More recently, Indigenous comedian and playwright Steven Oliver (2020) released his co-written musical-documentary Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky, which revisits the arrival of James Cook from Indigenous perspectives.

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A call by Indigenous people for a formal process of remembering constituted a central pillar of the most significant political document about Australian colonialism in recent history. In 2017, the National Constitutional Convention “brought together 250 Indigenous representatives from across the country to reach a consensus on the most meaningful and appropriate way to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within the Constitution” (From the Heart 2017). The resulting document was the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which called for “constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country”—reforms that would see a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution. A central component of these reforms involved the establishment of the Makarrata Commission. Makarrata is a Yolŋu word, meaning a coming-together after a struggle—a relational process towards peace and justice between parties. The Commission would be responsible for both mediating agreements between Government and First Nations, and overseeing a process of ‘truth-telling’—which constitutes the third of the three legs of the Statement. 2.2  Indigenous Digital Memories While Indigenous people have long engaged in these more formal avenues for collectively remembering the impacts of Australian colonialism, underneath, there exist all kinds of everyday expressions, stories, artefacts, photos, commemorations, and recollections that constitute the actual memories of Indigenous people as they’re kept alive in their everyday lives. With its rapid popularisation over the last two decades, social media has become a key sphere through which these ‘other’, everyday histories are established, maintained and challenged. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram— these are some of the latest public spheres through which collective national meaning-making takes place. Social media has transformed how the nation’s history is shared, circulated, debated and archived through civil society. Since the establishment of the public internet, Indigenous groups have been using the connections digital technologies afford to attest to the violence of colonialism: from the Zapatistas’ ‘net-war’ to the hashtag-led protest against the development of an oil pipeline at Standing Rock. Dreher, McCallum and Waller (2016, 23) write: “Digital and social media open up unprecedented opportunities for voice”; they are key forms of Indigenous participatory media, which have presented profound

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challenges to “established forums of influence” (McCallum et al. 2016, 31), such as mainstream media and ‘official history’. As Ryan, Gilroy and Gibson (2020, 406) argue, social media “provide Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with an avenue to share their truth”—including those truths around the foundation of the Australian nation. To this end, Fransen-Taylor and Narayan (2018, 4) argue that posting on social media such as Twitter can be understood “as a form of written public address employed by minority groups to challenge prevailing cultural narratives”. This is the ‘mediatisation’ of national historical discourse—the process through which changes in communications technologies are bound up in changes in culture and society more broadly. For the remainder of this chapter, we unpack what Chakrabarty (2008) describes as the ‘public life of history’ as it plays out through social media. We look at two moments of online decolonial remembering. First, we discuss online expressions around the national holiday held on 26 January, formally known as Australia Day but understood by many Indigenous people as Survival Day or Invasion Day. Second, we discuss the online remembering that took place in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, including the nation’s history of slavery. Social media, we show, has provided new platforms through which the official national narrative can be challenged, and Indigenous perspectives on Australian settlement—as embodied in living memory—can be expressed, shared and strengthened.

3   January 26, 1788 January 26 occupies a central position in Australian national consciousness. Marking the day in 1788 that Captain Arthur Phillip landed on Sydney Cove, raised the Union Jack, and officially proclaimed the establishment of a penal colony on what was now—according to Phillip—sovereign British soil, it is the moment that colonisation of Indigenous lands formally commenced. While Australia was only federated as a nation over a hundred years later, January 26 has become seared into the public imagination as signalling the birth of the nation. This has not always been the case. It was only in the lead up to the nation’s federation, in 1901, that the date was formally recognised as significant—at this time known as Federation Day. It was in 1938, marking 150 years since British colonisation, that the date was officially marked as ‘Australia Day’ across all states. The day was not taken up with particular enthusiasm by the Australian public until the 1990s, and not until later in

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the decade that it was almost universally considered the national day—a fact that would surprise most Australians, demonstrating again the nation’s convenient proclivity to collective forgetfulness. While in the mainstream, officially sanctioned imagination, Australia Day is a day of celebration—marked by barbeques, drinking, fireworks, and listening to the Triple J Hottest 100 (the national youth broadcaster’s countdown of best songs of the year)—for Indigenous people, it has long been considered a day of violence, mourning and protest. “It is … well known what this day represents for Indigenous people”, Palawa academic Maggie Walter (2018) writes. [T]he massacres, the near-genocides, the abduction of women, the forced relocations, and the denial of basic human rights dictated by the euphemistically named Aboriginal Protection Acts—some not fully repealed until the 1970s. Why would Indigenous people choose to celebrate that?

Rather than a day of national celebration, many Indigenous people consider January 26 to mark the first moment their lands were violently appropriated by the British colonists. Walter continues: “We are convincing no-one … that we are doing anything else on January 26 but celebrating colonisation and the dispossession of Indigenous people.” For almost a century, Indigenous people have protested what Munanjahli and South Sea Islander academic Chelsea Bond (2015) describes as “the collective amnesia that sweeps the nation on January 26 each year”. In 1938, at the 150th anniversary of Captain Phillips’s claim to British sovereignty, the Aborigines Progressive Association declared it a “day of mourning”. Towards the bicentenary, it was declared Invasion Day, and the slogan “White Australia has a Black History” became an enduring rallying cry. In 1988, 40,000 Indigenous and non-Indigenous people marched from Redfern Park to Sydney Harbour, protesting the celebration of 200 years of invasion, colonisation and dispossession. The debate around Australia Day and the meaning of January 26 in the national imagination cuts to the very core of Australian history and national identity. It is perhaps the most palpable manifestation of the History Wars. The debate turns on the question: Is January 26 a day of national pride and celebration, or one of shame and mourning? More recently, an incredible whirl of debate around the meaning and purpose of January 26, and the collective national identity that then flows from this, has been sustained through social media. Each year, as Noongar

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sociologist Tristan Kennedy (2018) notes, “January is increasingly becoming a time for fierce debate about Indigenous identities and Australian nationhood. … Indigenous voices, especially on social media, are getting louder.” In this section, we follow some of the ways that social media is now mediating discourse around Australia’s national day. We argue that the debate constitutes a contemporary extension of the History Wars, and we show that social media has changed the power dynamics of the debate— from one taking place between mostly professional settler historians, to one taking place more laterally between Indigenous peoples themselves, settler Australians, politicians and traditional media. 3.1  Challenging National Discourse on Social Media In the lead up to Australia Day 2016, popular breakfast television show Sunrise hosted a panel asked to debate whether James Cook ‘discovered’ or ‘invaded’ Australia. On top of the all-white hosts, the panel consisted of three other white people, including conservative shock-jock Alan Jones—a man long accused of propagating racist views, including lending support to the notorious 2005 Cronulla Race Riots (see Boltin 2020). Mainstream media, on the whole, has long been deeply complicit in the nation’s collective historical amnesia, and the sunny faces of breakfast television have proved a particularly powerful medium through which settler narratives are maintained. However, watching the debate take place that morning, Aboriginal musician Thelma Plum tweeted directly at the program: [I]f you want to have an actual real discussion about racism, how about not getting three white people (Alan Jones one of them) to weigh in and decide if it is or not. I think you are a bunch of racist cunts and you should 100% deserve to be ashamed of yourselves adding to the issue of thinking Aboriginal people don’t have a voice.

Plum is one of the more prominent Indigenous voices on social media, but her criticism was echoed by hundreds of others that day. Indeed, while traditional media still largely locks out Indigenous voices from speaking on Indigenous issues—embodied clearly in Sunrise’s ‘debate’—social media has provided an often-powerful platform to speak back to these kinds of colonial discourses, challenging the dominant symbols, narratives and practices of mainstream settler nationalism.

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As Kennedy notes above, all throughout January, social media is flooded with debate around the meaning of January 26, with thoughts and opinions often networked through the ‘hashtag publics’ (Bruns and Burgess 2015) of #AustraliaDay, #InvasionDay and #SurvivalDay. Indeed, the lead up to the day is often described with foreboding and dread, as Indigenous social media users know that these online spaces are going to be marked by an elevated intensity of hate speech, Indigenous erasure and nationalistic vitriol. In the weeks before Australia Day 2014, for instance, retail giants Aldi and Big W removed a range of t-shirts from their stores that read: “Australia Est. 1788” after they were widely criticised on Twitter and Facebook. In January each year, the Meat and Livestock Association releases a new Australia Day ad, which often attempts to capture something supposedly distinct about Australian history, life or identity. After being criticised for long pushing an almost exclusively white settler narrative of Australia, in 2017 the ad featured a sea of diverse, happy faces. It began with an Aboriginal man standing on a beach, happily claiming ‘first here’, before telling his mate to start up the BBQ. One by one, boats carrying people from different nations arrive—Portugal, Britain, France, China—until the beach becomes a lively party. When someone points out the arrival of a boat, this one carrying refugees, someone asks: “Aren’t we all boat people?”, and the Aboriginal host responds jubilantly: “And you’re welcome”. The ad featured all the hallmarks of the jovial, multicultural, egalitarian, conflict-free nation Veracini describes. The ad sparked a storm of commentary across social media. On YouTube, in particular, comments to the video oscillated between the celebratory to the critical. “It wasn’t ‘aboriginal land’ as there were no formal laws designating Australia as a ‘country’”, one person wrote. “There was no ‘invasion’, there was settlement”—replicating common colonial discourse that a land not ‘owned’ could not be ‘taken’. More positive reception rested on its seemingly more ‘accurate’ representation of the Australian populace. “A non-distortion of history, Very clever”, one person wrote, to which someone else corrected: “left out a genocide there m8 [mate]”. Indeed, while the ad acknowledges the primary presence of Indigenous people, they are pictured only as welcoming hosts to a big party. Luke Pearson of IndigenousX tweeted: “The ad perhaps is a fitting theme for Australia Day: forget about or completely misrepresent Australian history and contemporary society, and buy stuff instead.” While Indigenous people use social media to challenge the official narrative of Australian settlement, they often also seek to shed light on the

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ongoing workings of colonialism in the present, through sharing stories of violence and trauma. In 2016, an Australia Day event called ‘Floatopia’ was cancelled after debate broke out on the event’s Facebook page. One person commented: “Invasion Day is a day where drunk yobbos scream ‘straya’ for 12 hours and have absolutely no regard for the atrocities that have been and are still being committed to my race to this day.” Another wrote: “Imagine I went and partied about someone in yr fam [your family] dying.” This call to imagine the day from the perspective of the colonised is common on social media. In 2019, for instance, football star Buddy Franklin shared an Instagram post that detailed the institutional and personal racism experienced in his family. “My Pop was stolen from the back of a ute and brought to a mission at the tender age of 4,” he explained. “The pain is still raw for Aboriginal people,” he said. This collective remembering of settler violence directly challenges the colonial narrative of a peaceful, egalitarian nation. 3.2  ‘Professional Mourners’ But as the challenge to the meaning of Australia Day has intensified, reactionary actors have shifted tactics in defending the national narrative of peaceful settlement. Rather than denying this version of events, these defences have often relied on calls to ‘get over’ a past that cannot be changed and ad hominem attacks on progressive commentators. In 2018, for instance, Albury Mayor Kevin Mack shared a meme on Facebook of US actor Robert Downey Jr. rolling his eyeballs that included the caption “When someone tells you January 26 is Invasion Day”. In 2013, in an online argument between TheKooriWoman and Federal MP Dennic Jenson about Australia Day, MP Jensen wrote: “Hell, how long ago was colonialism? Get over it”. He continued by telling her that “Being a victim doesn’t help overcoming those depradations [sic]. All need to progress with positive agenda”. These narratives of Australian history leave room for the violence of the past, but suggest it should be left there to move forward; consequently, those who remain fixated on it are standing in the way of ‘progress’. The movement to change both the date and meaning of January 26 has also been challenged by Indigenous peoples themselves, including Alice Springs town councillor Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and academic Anthony Dillon. In 2017, Price, who vocally opposes changing the date, shared a Facebook post that attracted over 100,000 likes. Price argued, like MP

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Jensen, that a politics of mourning prevents Aboriginal peoples from progressing into a better future. “People want to call it a day of mourning. Us aboriginal people have become professional mourners. … Mourning does not give us freedom, it imprisons us.” Instead, she continued, “I don’t want anyone to feel bad or guilty for feeling joy and celebrating a country we love”. She went on to argue that changing the date is mainly the politics of the urban, educated elite: “It is the aboriginal middle class who are concerned about date changes. Those pushing the agenda come from privilege themselves in comparison to the aboriginal people most marginalised.” Rather than being focused on ‘real issues’—which she includes “domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse”—these people, who live lives of privilege, just want something to be offended about. Likewise, criticising Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance’s (WAR) Facebook post on Invasion Day 2018, calling activists to, figuratively, ‘burn’ Australian colonialism to the ground, The Australian published a piece that argued: “As rants go, this belongs to the middle-class, university student, and publicly funded, activist genre. There are real warriors and then there are keyboard warriors. This clearly comes from the latter”. In a rhetorical tactic that is seeing increasingly widespread use, conservative commentators often argue that acknowledging racism sows division between different racial groups. In 2017, The Australian published an anonymous opinion piece by Aboriginal woman who argued against a date change. She argues, the debate “threatens to pit indigenous pitted against indigenous, black against white”; she instead suggests that “life is about unity not division and not to hate the people of today for the sins of the past”. Here, those who seek to acknowledge the settler violence of the past are in fact the ones stirring racial tension; those who seek to ‘move forward’ are those who seek racial unity. The ‘mourners’ are the real racists, whose ‘black armband’ activism harms Indigenous people by holding them back from progress. In these ways, social media is also being used to challenge Indigenous memory, to reject recognition of past and present wrongs, and to refuse to acknowledge the gaps in Australia’s national memory.

4   Indigenous Lives Matter On May 25, 2020, a 46-year-old black man named George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis. Footage of the incident spread wildly on social media, intensifying righteous anger across the country,

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with protests eventually spreading to over 2000 US cities and 60 countries. As we discuss in chapters “Activism” and “Allies”, it also ignited anger in Australia, with many Australians sharing in the anger and grief of seeing Floyd’s death play out through their social media feeds. The issue of anti-black racism in the US became a major talking point in news media; solidarity with victims and protesters was expressed through social media; and Black Lives Matter solidarity protests were organised in every major city across the nation. For Indigenous Australians, however, Floyd’s death meant something more. It was a resounding echo of how Indigenous people in Australia are treated by the justice system, how they’re positioned within the structure of Australian colonialism. For years, the Black Lives Matter movement in the US has been paralleled with an Aboriginal Lives Matter movement, which in Australia has centred on Indigenous incarceration and deaths in custody. Floyd’s death catalysed this incipient energy into something larger than had been seen in decades. In the weeks following his death, Indigenous people continuously leveraged social media to not only express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protests, but to educate the public about anti-Indigenous racism, white supremacy, and settler colonialism. 4.1  No Slavery in Australia Prime Minister Morrison, likely seeing the protests spreading across the US and sensing the potential for greater unrest here, sought to produce historical distance between US and Australian race relations. On June 4, as things were beginning to spread in Australia, he warned against “importing the things that are happening overseas to Australia”. “We don’t need the divisions that we’re seeing in other countries”, he said, “we don’t need to draw equivalence here”. Again, he made clear, “Australia is not the United States”. But it was a claim he made a week later, on Sydney radio, that drew rapid, widespread criticism. “While slave ships continued to travel around the world,” he said “there was no slavery in Australia”. The comment, which sought to draw a clear line between US and Australian history and politics, was immediately challenged by Indigenous people. While slavery in Australia did not occur on the same scale as the US’s mass, chattel slavery, through which millions of people from Africa were forcibly shipped across the world, bought sold and held captive by slaveowners, Morrison’s claim was simply untrue. Slavery in Australia, as Moran (2002, 1015)

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explains, came in many forms, including “indentured labourers, kidnapped or enticed with false promises from the neighbouring Pacific islands in the late nineteenth century to dive for pearls and to provide labour for the sugar industry”. And almost exclusively, those forced into labour were Aboriginal peoples, Torres Strait Islander peoples, and Pasifika peoples. “Some 62,000 Melanesian people were brought to Australia and enslaved to work in Queensland’s sugar plantations between 1863 and 1904,” explain Anthony and Gray (2020). This form of unrecompensed labour, in many cases, was absolutely central to the development of Australia’s fishing, pastoral and agricultural industries. Indigenous children taken from parents were often forced to become domestic servants for white families. “This country was built with slavery,” Gamillario/Torres Strait Islander woman Nakkiah Lui tweeted at the time, “We just called it stolen wages or didn’t acknowledge it at all”. For many Indigenous peoples, this history is so recent that it remains in living memory. And many Indigenous people used the moment to recall stories of their family members, who’d been forced to work for white settlers, stories often linked through the ad hoc ‘hashtag public’ (Bruns and Burgess 2015) #SlaveryInAustralia. Warlpiri and Pitjantjatjara-Luritja woman Anyupa Butcher tweeted that her “direct grandfather was a slave for the Lutheran mission church at Haast Bluff, west of Alice Springs. Aboriginal men and women built the roads and cattle industry with their bare hands. No wages. That’s how recent slavery is & colonialism is here in Central Australia” (3/6). She explained that many Aboriginal last names come from the slavery occupation of our great grandparents. My surname “Butcher” is a slave name which was given to my great grandfather, he was forced to cut meat for colonisers if not he would be tortured, he literally was a slave butcher for the pastoralist who robbed his land now worth more than 30–40 million dollars. (11/6)

Likewise, Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist Amy McQuire tweeted: “It’s not semantics. It was slavery. My ancestors were slaves” (11/6). She described her “great great grandfather James Youse who was stolen from the beach on Tanna as a teenager. He was tricked onto the ship and when he came back out they were out to sea. He never saw his village again but they have kept land there for him” (13/6). These personal testimonies—family histories kept alive in memory, then shared through social media—invariably depicted Indigenous life in indentured slavery:

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My great grandmother was a slave. She went from a mission and was forced to work by the state on a farm and the govt took her money. Any time she wanted a new piece of clothing she had to write to the Chief Protector. Thank you for erasing her history and many others @ScottMorrisonMP. (Roxy Moore, 11/6) My grandmother was a house servant/slave for this white woman in the picture. My grandmother raised that woman’s children when her babies had to stay somewhere else. The youngest child in the picture is my mother. Don’t tell me there wasn’t slavery in Australia! (Rarriwuy Hick 12/6) When the State Aborigine Protections Acts were abolished & we won the right to equal pay (or even just the right to be paid for our labour) they removed us from the stations. My Ancestors built the pastoral industry of this country under force & with no pay #slaveryinAustralia. (Charlee-Sue Frail, 12/6)

In a surprising development, the social media movement countering Morrison’s claim was tempered by Facebook’s own ‘community standards’. One particular image was being shared widely on Facebook, which featured nine Aboriginal men chained together by their necks, wearing only loincloths, apparently sitting outside Roebourne Gaol in 1896. “Kidnapped, ripped from the arms of their loved ones and forced into back-breaking labour: The brutal reality of life as a Kanaka worker—but Scott Morrison claims ‘there was no slavery in Australia’”, the post read. The viral image was removed by Facebook, with the company claiming that it breached its community standards for nudity, and the person who originally posted it had their account restricted; and in an ironic twist, Facebook also blocked users from sharing The Guardian’s subsequent reporting about the site’s ban on the image. 4.2  The Policing of Settler Monuments While Black Lives Matter protests were still rolling across the nation, another incident called into contrast the relation of the settler state to Indigenous presence. The BLM protests in some US cities had become increasingly active, and some protestors had begun pulling down statues of historical figures representing white supremacy, Black oppression and settler colonialism. The destruction of historical monuments has a long history. From the 410 AD Sack of Rome, to the French Revolution, to the

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US Army’s televised toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad, the removal of monuments is often a marker of major shifts in social structure, power and values. And in recent decades, civil rights activists have increasingly campaigned for the removal of monuments that uncritically celebrate the ‘great white men’ of history, so often directly responsible for the murder, rape and enslavement of Black and Indigenous peoples. In 2018, for instance, a statue of Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was removed because of his role in the creation of the notorious residential school system, in which some 150,000 First Nations people were taken from their families in order to rid them of their culture and heritage. In 2019, a statue of Captain James Cook was removed from Gisborne, Aotearoa (New Zealand), after being repeatedly vandalised. And in 2020, England, in the heat of the Black Lives Matter protests, a statue of British slave trader, Edward Colston, was rolled into the Bristol Harbour. There was growing concern among some settler Australians that the practice would spread here, and governments, powerful segments of mainstream media, and counter-protesters organised to ‘protect’ their colonial monuments. Several statues of Captain James Cook had already been vandalised—with “sovereignty never ceded” and “no pride in genocide” being spray-painted across a statue in Hyde Park. These incidents eventually prompted police to physically guard the statue, with a small group of civilian pro-Cook counter-protestors standing behind police, arms linked, apparently protecting it. The scene, widely shared and mocked on Twitter and Facebook, seemed to highlight perfectly the relationship between settler history and the police: “Police are seriously guarding Captain Cook statues around the country right now,” tweeted Kamilaroi academic Amy Thunig. “In case you had any doubts left about what the role of Police actually is,” she continued, “they’re being deployed to proactively protect racist statues upholding the white supremacists who invaded should clarify it tbh” (13/6). Australian satirical news website, Betoota Advocate, also responded with an Instagram story captioned: “Police urged to treat Indigenous people in custody as carefully as they treat the statues”. This broader critique of the literal policing of settler material history was shared with Indigenous peoples in the US, with Lower Brule Sioux scholar Nick Estes explaining on Twitter: “Historian here: tearing down a statue is not erasing history. Putting up a statue on land whose original caretakers you can’t name is” (14/6).

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In response to calls for Cook statues to be removed, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told protesters to “get a grip”, stating that the protest movement against Aboriginal deaths in custody was being hijacked by radical left-wingers. “This is not a licence for people to just go nuts on this stuff,” he said (Henriques-Gomes 2020). Former Prime Minister Turnbull likewise described it as “a fringe preoccupation”. Those calling for change were characterised as ‘troublemakers’, who sought to ‘erase’ and rewrite history for their own ends—an argument with strong reactionary echoes of the likes of Windshuttle and Blainey. The calls from politicians to refrain from destroying national monuments jarred with many Indigenous Australians, with reports of mining giant Rio Tinto destroying an ancient Aboriginal rock site published that same week (Hopkins and Kemp 2020). “Hypocrisy is when people say that you can’t tear down statues because ‘it’s part of our nation’s history’, but then are silent when multinational companies destroy 46,000 year old Aboriginal rock art cities”, tweeted Joshua Waters (11/6). Echoing this sentiment, Bhiamie Williamson tweeted: “Wouldn’t mind seeing this kind of presence at Aboriginal rock art sites. I guess some people’s histories are worth protecting while others are worth more when they’re blown away” (12/6). The claim that colonial monuments were someway ‘sacred’, immutable and untouchable pieces of history rang hollow when the country’s oldest heritage sites could be intentionally destroyed without a word—a glaring hypocrisy that Indigenous people used social media to make clear. While discussion around the place of colonial statues raged through political and mainstream news discourse, ad hoc counter-publics also spontaneously arose through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, adding the memories, values and perspectives of Indigenous people so often left out of national debate.

5   Closing: To Remember What Settler Colonialism Forgets Settler colonialism, as Veracini argues, is sustained by a contradictory relationship to history. On the one hand, it seeks to make a clean break with the past, discursively framing the ‘new’ land as one without history, and on which an entirely new future, free from the shackles of the past, can be created. On the other, however, it must carefully construct a racialised national history to which settlers can identify and feel pride. Both of these

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discursive movements involve the erasure of Indigenous peoples and the violence wrought on them by settler invasion. Morrison’s claim there was no slavery in Australia, is exactly the kind of settler historylessness that Veracini is talking about. We, here, in Australia, do not have the terrible histories of other places, which intrude on their presents, Morrison is claiming. Instead, our history is a clean plate, a tabula rasa, a land without conflict. “According to this narrative frame of reference”, Veracini (2007, 276) explains, “history does not generate within Australia and its unwanted manifestations also emanate from elsewhere and have to be stopped on their way in—on inbound ships, in international waters, at the beach”. It seemed Morrison wanted to stop history from arriving on our shores—but it was already here, soaked deep into the soil, scarred on bodies, and maintained in the collective memory of all Indigenous peoples touched by the violence of settler colonialism. Who has the power to determine history? Whose memories matter? And how are these power relations changing? The Australian ‘nation’ as it exists in the popular settler imagination, is characterised by egalitarianism, a protestant work ethic, multiculturalism, and a history free of conflict. This image is one sustained by political rhetoric, popular discourse and sunny breakfast television shows. Indeed, settler colonialism in this country is so thoroughly embedded that most Australians have difficulty even acknowledging that this is a colonial nation. But social media is changing the dynamics of this ‘public life of history’. On Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms, Indigenous people worked to make these connections clear to settler Australians; they shared stories from history, their own lives and families, which revealed a nation that differs considerably from the image of a happy, multicultural, egalitarian nation held in the popular imagination. In this way, social media is used to contextualise contemporary events—Australia Day, the Black Lives Matter movement, the removal of national monuments— within the enduring structure of colonialism. “Every Black Death in custody is a casualty of an undeclared war”, tweeted Wiradjuri and Badu Island Yinaa scholar Lynda-June Coe. “Our country is illegally occupied by a foreign power, our people dominated by a military effort—this #truth is the fabric of Australia’s relationship with First Nations. 232 years and counting. #BlackLivesMatter.” To remember what settler colonialism forgets is to directly undermine the settler project itself. Thus, the History Wars now play out not only between professional historians, but also through social media platforms, where Indigenous

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people have developed significant voice, influence and reach. This is the History Wars 2.0, in which Indigenous people themselves are sustaining a collective, grassroots history characterised by decolonising remembering. Indeed, it seems not coincidental that the movement to change the date of Australia Day has gained so much momentum in the last few years, corresponding with the rapid ascension of social media.

Notes 1. Curthoys has complicated the “too-simple narrative” (2008, 464) of the ‘great silence’ being shattered from Stanner’s lectures. Instead of ‘instigating’ an academic movement, Curthoys (2008, 463) argues, Stanner can be better understood as “giving impetus to a process that was already underway through a growing and powerful combination of Indigenous and non-­ Indigenous initiatives”. 2. In later life, Reynolds (2005) raised the possibility of having Indigenous ancestry, after discovering a gap in his family history and unanswered questions around the origins of his paternal grandmother.

References ABC. (2020). Scott Morrison says the colony of New South Wales was founded on the basis there would be no slavery. Is he correct? Available: https://www.abc. net.au/news/2020-­0 7-­0 2/fact-­c heck-­s cott-­m orrison-­s laver y-­n sw-­ australia/12407280. Accessed 20/01/21. Anthony, T. & Gray, S. (2020). Was there slavery in Australia? Yes. It shouldn’t even be up for debate. SBS.  Available: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/was-­ there-­s laver y-­i n-­a ustralia-­y es-­i t-­s houldn-­t -­e ven-­b e-­u p-­f or-­d ebate/. Accessed 19/01/21. Attwood, B. (2011). Aboriginal history, minority histories and historical wounds: The postcolonial condition, historical knowledge and the public life of history in Australia. Postcolonial Studies, 14(2), 171–186. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13688790.2011.563454 Austin, C., & Fozdar, F. (2018). Australian national identity: empirical research since 1998. National Identities, 20(3), 277–298. https://doi.org/10.108 0/14608944.2016.1244520 Boltin, K. (2020). How many Arab-Australians will remember Alan Jones. SBS.  Available: https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/voices/culture/article/2020/05/13/how-­m any-­a rab-­a ustralians-­w ill-­r emember-­a lan-­j ones. Accessed 19/01/21. Chakrabarty, D. (2008). The public life of history: an argument out of India. Postcolonial Studies, 11(2), 169–190.

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Curthoys, A. (2008). WEH Stanner and the historians. Appreciation of Difference: WEH Stanner and Aboriginal Australia, 233–238. Bond, C. (2015). The day I don’t feel Australian? That would be Australia Day. The Conversation. Available: https://theconversation.com/the-­day-­i-­dont-­ feel-­australian-­that-­would-­be-­australia-­day-­36352. Accessed 20/01/21. Bruns, A., & Burgess, J. (2015). Twitter hashtags from ad hoc to calculated publics. Hashtag publics: The power and politics of discursive networks, 13–28. Clark, A. (2018). ‘Friday essay: the ‘great Australian silence’ 50 years on’, The Conversation. Available: https://theconversation.com/friday-­essay-­the-­great-­ australian-­silence-­50-­years-­on-­100737. Accessed 20/01/21. Dreher, T., McCallum, K., & Waller, L. (2016). Indigenous voices and mediatized policy-making in the digital age. Information Communication and Society, 19(1), 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1093534 Fransen-Taylor, P., & Narayan, B. (2018). Challenging prevailing narratives with Twitter: An #AustraliaDay case study of participation, representation and elimination of voice in an archive. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 50(3), 310–321. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000618769981 From The Heart. (2017). The Uluru Statement. Available: https://fromtheheart. com.au/explore-­the-­uluru-­statement/. Accessed 20/01/21. Henriques-Gomes, L. (2020). Indigenous inequality in spotlight as Australia faces reckoning on race. The Guardian. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/ australia-­news/2020/jun/12/indiginous-­inequality-­in-­spotlight-­as-­australia-­ faces-­reckoning-­on-­race. Accessed 20/01/21. Hopkins, A. & Kemp, D. (2020). Juukan Gorge: how could they not have known? (And how can we be sure they will in future?), The Conversation. Accessed 17.03.2021. Available: https://theconversation.com/juukan-­gorge-­how­c ould-­t hey-­n ot-­h ave-­k nown-­a nd-­h ow-­c an-­w e-­b e-­s ure-­t hey-­w ill-­i n-­ future-­151580 Kennedy, T. (2018). We must listen to Indigenous voices. Social media is a good place to start. The Guardian. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/05/we-­must-­listen-­to-­indigenous-­voices-­social-­media-­ is-­a-­good-­place-­to-­start. Accessed 20/01/21. Macintyre, S., & Clark, A. (2013). The history wars. Melbourne Univ. Publishing. McCallum, K., Waller, L., & Dreher, T. (2016). Mediatisation, marginalisation and disruption in australian indigenous affairs. Media and Communication, 4(4), 30–42. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v4i4.695 McKenna, M. (1997). Different perspectives on black armband history. Department of the Parliamentary Library. Moran, A. (2002). As Australia decolonizes: indigenizing settler nationalism and the challenges of settler/indigenous relations. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 9870(January). https://doi.org/10.1080/014198702200000941 Morgan, S. (2010). My place. Fremantle Press.

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Nixon, R. (2011). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press. Oliver, S. (2020). Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky. Reynolds, H. (2005). Nowhere people: how international race thinking shaped Australia’s identity. Penguin. Reynolds, H. (2006). The other side of the frontier: Aboriginal resistance to the European invasion of Australia. UNSW Press. Ryan, A., Gilroy, J., & Gibson, C. (2020). #Changethedate: Advocacy as an on-­ line and decolonising occupation. Journal of Occupational Science, May. https://doi.org/10.1080/14427591.2020.1759448 Veracini, L. (2007). Historylessness: Australia as a settler colonial collective. Postcolonial Studies, 10(3), 271–285. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688 790701488155 Walter, M. (2018). First reconciliation, then a republic – starting with changing the date of Australia Day. The Conversation. Available: https://theconversation.com/first-­r econciliation-­then-­a-­r epublic-­starting-­with-­changing-­the-­ date-­of-­australia-­day-­89955. Accessed 20/01/21. Windschuttle, K. (2002). The fabrication of Aboriginal history. 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

Allies

Allyship is the corruption of radical spirit and imagination, it’s the dead end of decolonization. (Indigenous Action (2014)) [T]oo many allies, not enough land back. (@NayukaGorrie (2020))

1   Introduction: ‘11 Things You Can Do to End Police Violence’ The death of George Floyd ignited immense protest action not only from Americans of colour; it elicited outrage among many white Americans. Indeed, in June 2020, polls showed that 60% percent of white Americans supported the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement (Pew Research 2020). As the BLM protests spread across the world, a question swirled around both social media and news media: What could white allies do to help? A huge body of literature was produced—blog after article after Instagram post—such as Teen Vogue’s (2020) ‘11 Things You Can Do to Help Black Lives Matter End Police Violence’. These pieces were shared by Black activists and white allies alike on social media, spreading the word to other potential allies about how to support Black rights. As the BLM movement gained momentum in Australia, we started producing our own body of ally literature. The central calls to action—to get out on the streets, to show support through physical presence, to demand change—led to protest actions being organised in all major cities across © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_10

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the country. Social media, in large part, had rolled the BLM movement into a truly global one, composed of a rich coalition of diverse social groups. Also on social media, however, another, a more critical discussion about white allies was taking place. While many of the BLM rallies in Australia were organised in coordination with local Aboriginal groups and communities, at least one major rally wasn’t. “Imagine the audacity to organise a BLM protest on stolen Aboriginal land without the involvement of mob … most importantly families who have had loved ones taken by the racist Australian system”, tweeted Gunnai and Gunditjmara organiser and writer Meriki Onus—referring to the exclusion from the protest of daughter of Aboriginal woman Tanya Day, who was left to die alone in police custody in 2017. Arrernte union organiser and writer Celeste Liddle tweeted that it reminded them “of a few yrs ago in Melbs where 1000s turned out for a BLM US solidarity rally, yet hardly any bothered returning a wk later when we marched to shut down Don Dale [youth detention centre]” (see chapter “Activism”). White Australians’ support of Black Americans over Indigenous Australians has a long history; as writer Eugenia Flynn explained on Twitter: “Aust loves to highlight racial violence in America, but not when it comes to Blackfellas. They rarely stand in solidarity with us. Previous BLM protests, organised without us, with larger numbers than Aboriginal protests on similar issues are proof”. White Australians’ ignorance of colonial violence at home while expressing shock of racial violence elsewhere was even captured in satirical news media The Shovel’s (2020) story ‘Australian man watching riots relieved he doesn’t live in a country with a shameful history of systematic racism and violence against black people’. The situation illustrated clearly a number of overlapping issues around the role of white allies in Black movements. First, it demonstrated the power of social media in recruiting and mobilising an incredible movement of white and other non-Black allies across the world. Social media can elicit ad hoc publics of inter-racial solidarity, impromptu ‘rainbow coalitions’, often ready to act in support of causes—something demonstrated in countless cases over the last 20 years, including Aboriginal activism like the #SOSBlakAustralia protests over the forced closure of Aboriginal communities. On the other hand, however, it also became clear that being an ‘ally’ to Black people does not, necessarily, make one an ally to Indigenous people. They are bundles of separate, though sometimes overlapping, causes. Instead, it seems the subject position of ‘ally’ is bound by a more complex

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politics—which the Indigenous women above sought to unpack and problematise on Twitter, pointing out the hypocritical position of being a white ally for Black justice without first recognising settler violence towards the Indigenous peoples on whose land one lives. In this chapter, we unpack the politics of settler allyship with Indigenous peoples on social media. Understanding ‘ally’ as a particular political subjectivity, in which one seeks to support the cause of a social group to which one is not a member, 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? In the next section, we discuss some of the literature on allyship with Black and Indigenous peoples. We illustrate concretely the ways that one does not equal the other, and explain that the figure of the ‘ally’ is neither straightforward nor unequivocally 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. We close by reflecting on the contradictory, always unsettled position of the settler ally.

2   Black Allies The figure of the ‘ally’ has long roots in many social justice and civil rights movements. Most generally, the ‘ally’ is the person from a dominant social group who supports the political, social and moral claims of people from a comparatively more marginal social group: men supporting women; straight people supporting LGBTQIA+ peoples; non-disabled people supporting people with disabilities; white people supporting people of colour; settlers supporting Indigenous peoples and so on. A significant body of work has sought to specifically unpack the politics of white people’s involvement in Black movements (Regan 2010). This inter-racial solidarity is widely, though not universally, understood as political expedient; racial justice movements, Black internet scholar Meredith Clark writes, “require the direct efforts and cooperation of members from both the dominant and subjugated groups” (2019, 521). The ally is understood as a necessary, if often problematic partner in these movements towards racial justice.

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2.1  Three Directives of Allyship This literature reveals much disagreement about what, in practice, actually constitutes an ally. In reviewing work on allyship praxis, however, Clark (2019, 530) identifies “three core directives” for white allies participating in Black movements. First, white allies need to actually understand themselves as white. In white-dominant societies, such as Australia, the US and Great Britain, whiteness is the ‘unmarked’ social category; it is naturalised and normalised to the point of becoming invisible. Thus, race is only visible for those who are marked as not white, and whiteness becomes, as Aveling (2004, np) writes, “the norm against which other ‘races’ are judged”. The very first step in becoming an ally, then, involves coming to recognise oneself as, also, a racialised subject; it necessitates developing a white racial consciousness. Second, Clark explains that potential allies must understand the power and privilege afforded to white subjects simply by fact of being white. This power, as Giroux argues, comes “largely at the expense of other racial groups” (1997, 314). To be an ally, it is not enough to recognise oneself as white; that is something even white supremacists do. Instead, one must recognise the broader structures that mean that more power—as manifested through social, political, cultural and economic capital—is distributed among white subjects than non-white subjects. For many white people, this can be a difficult fact to accept, as liberal white-dominant societies tend to emphasise values of ‘meritocracy’—an ideology that boils down to the belief that, for good or bad, one gets what one deserves, regardless of social status. Instead, being an ally requires having a political and structural understanding of racial (dis)advantage. Finally, allies must be prepared to use that power and privilege to “actively work to dismantle systems of White supremacy” (Clark 2019, 523), and be willing to relinquish or share it with others. While the first two components of allyship involve learning, listening and reflection— engaging in a critical pedagogy—this is the active part of allyship: using one’s comparatively privileged position to actually help others. It means being not only not racist, but actively anti-racist. It is this final ‘directive’ that moves beyond social theory—developing a critical race consciousness of one’s own whiteness—and towards a racial praxis. While there have long been pamphlets, guidebooks, and other texts centred on the question of white action in Black movements, the genre seems to have grown rapidly in recent years. Books on white allyship have

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become international bestsellers, such as Kendi’s ‘How to be an Antiracist’ (2019) and DiAngelo’s ‘White Fragility’ (2018). Articles with titles like ‘How Can I Become a Better Ally?’ (Marie Claire 2020) and ‘6 Ways to Become a Valuable Ally at a Black Lives Matter Protest’ (Popsugar 2020) have become so common as to have established a new genre. The content of each ‘how to’ guide for allies generally depends on the issue at hand; however, around the rolling Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, they tended to involve listening to Black people talking about being Black, in books, podcasts and on social media; signing petitions to calls to end police brutality and Black over-incarceration; video recording police encounters; and donating to Black political organisers, bail funds and legal defense funds. In short, to be an active ally, one’s own white privilege and power need to be directed towards the very institutions and discursive structures that unevenly distribute that privilege and power. 2.2  The Trouble with Allies Importantly, however, the scholarly literature also troubles the possibility of any neat or easy routes to allyship. Becoming an ‘ally’ is no simple or straightforward matter; it is neither a linear nor a comfortable movement. Instead, it requires that one continually reflect on one’s social position, and remain accountable to those to whom one is ‘allied’. There are, it seems, many pitfalls along the way. First, in beginning to understand one’s privilege, white people can often become overwhelmed with feelings of guilt, shame and despair; the realisation that one’s very existence is bound up in the violent marginalisation of another can be deeply unsettling. This is what McGloin (2016, 11) describes as ‘dis-ease’, an affective state that “is necessary to set in motion a transformation of the self that recognises our implication in the ongoing oppression of Others”. There are a few dangers here, however. On the one hand, white guilt can lead to paralysis: that one doesn’t know what to do, as one becomes afraid of reproducing the harm. On the other hand, Black activists have pointed out that white guilt is often another way of re-­ centring whiteness: it is the white person’s feelings that become the issue at hand, rather than the broader structures of anti-Black racism, racial injustice and marginalisation. Second, there is an issue with the label ‘ally’ itself, in that can “[lull] us into a false notion of having ‘achieved’ a status that does not invite continued questioning and constant un-settling”, as Kluttz, Walker and Walter

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explain (2020, 53). On one hand, it is not a label that one can claim for oneself; instead, the label of ‘ally’ can only really be bestowed by those to whom one seeks to ally oneself. On the other, allies must be vigilant not to seek comfort or stability in their ally status. Instead, allyship is an always messy and often awkward process: it is not fixed or settled or easy, but requires continuous self-reflection on positionality, power, and oppression. Being an ally necessarily requires experiencing and learning from the discomfort and ‘dis-ease’ of one’s racial identity and the political blindness and actual harm this can entail. Finally, there is a danger that in seeking ‘ally’ status, one is really seeking to position oneself as the ‘good white person’: as someone who is “not implicated in racism because we do not commit acts of racist violence”, as Aveling explains (2004, np). Instead, one must always interrogate one’s own intentions for desiring to be an ally. White allies are always, at least in part, self-interested (Kluttz et al. 2020). This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it must be acknowledged, understood and critically interrogated. If white allies are motivated solely by a desire to be seen as a ‘good person’, there is a danger that they might remain ignorant of or indifferent to larger structures of power (see McGloin 2015). More problematically, there is also the danger of allies harbouring what is often called the ‘White Saviour Complex’—a paternalistic, missionising tendency in many white people’s involvement in social justice, in which they come to believe that only they know what is right for Black people and only they are capable of making Black people’s lives better.

3   Indigenous Allies In popular discourse, there has been a tendency to collapse forms of Black and Indigenous allyship, when in fact Black and Indigenous movements are often working towards entirely different ends. While movements such as Black Lives Matter demand racial justice—manifested through reforms to police conduct, police funding, sentencing laws and so on—the central object of Indigenous activism is settler colonialism. Indigenous and Black movements overlap in many ways, particularly in their resistance to white supremacy, but Indigenous people do not want just racial equality; they want, as Nayuka Gorrie bluntly tweets, “land back.” The demand of Indigenous activism is, then, decolonisation, which cannot be conflated with either social justice or racial equality. Decolonisation is a distinct political project, one which “brings about the repatriation of

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Indigenous land and life” (Tuck and Yang 2012, 1). Understood in this way, racial equality would lead not to decolonisation, but only a more ‘equal’ form of colonialism—one in which Indigenous peoples would only have as much right to land and life as other racial groups settled on their land. Movements to racial equality, then, are not only not decolonising, they are often recolonising. In this light, Walia (2012, 46) warns against other progressive political groups subsuming Indigenous struggles within their own: “Indigenous struggle cannot simply be accommodated within other struggles”, she writes, “it demands solidarity on its own terms”. Environmental movements, in particular, have long sought to reduce Indigenous causes to their own, claiming a natural alliance of causes. Too often, they have too readily overlooked the profound damage the environmental movement has wrought on Indigenous people: marking particular territories, long inhabited and cared for by Indigenous people, as ‘pristine wilderness’ and, in the process, forcibly dislocating Indigenous people from their own lands (Powys White 2018). This issue can be also seen with appropriation of Indigenous causes by anarchists, feminists, and even Black racial justice movements—as the opening story to this chapter illustrates. 3.1  Allying with Indigenous Movements Considering this, Indigenous scholar-activists have sought to theorise what exactly settler allyship with Indigenous movements involves, and how it might differ in kind from white allyship with Black movements. While the ‘object’ of Black activism is white supremacy and its manifestation through racial injustice and inequality; the object of Indigenous activism is settler colonialism. Therefore, the ‘subject’ of Indigenous allyship is not just the white person, but the settler; and the ‘object’ of Indigenous activism is not racial equality, but decolonisation. True allyship with Indigenous peoples, then, necessitates what Walia (2012) calls a ‘decolonising solidarity’—a much more demanding, radical, unsettled and unsettling notion of settler involvement in Indigenous movements. Like white allyship with Black movements, a settler’s decolonising solidarity with Indigenous peoples involves both careful listening and effective acting. However, the actual content of these two directives differs significantly. As a very first step, settlers must recognise their position as settlers. As Flowers (2015, 33) explains, the purposeful application of the term ‘settler’ “denaturalizes and politicizes the presence of non-­Indigenous

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people on Indigenous lands, but also can disrupt the comfort of non-­ Indigenous people by bringing ongoing colonial power relations into their consciousness”. The term marks clearly a person’s social location in regards to colonialism, one which is often made invisible. Second, they must recognise that the privilege afforded to settlers has largely come at the expense of the Indigenous peoples on whose land they occupy. To this end, McGloin (2015, 269) argues for a practice of what they call “listening to hear”. This is “not simply a matter of active listening,” they write, but instead “must be accompanied by a conscious attentiveness to colonial relations of power and acquiescence to the possibilities generated by the ‘discomfort’ arising from this awareness” (2015, 269). This necessitates understanding the settler project of Indigenous elimination, and its manifestation through policy, practice, desire and discourse. And it means understanding colonialism not as a historical event, but as a current, ongoing, lived reality (Wolfe 2006). However—and this is an important point—this understanding must always be grounded on the particular lands on which one is located; it “means beginning from our own locations,” as Boudreau Morris explains (2017, 9), a practice they call ‘location-telling’: It is not enough to be self-reflexive while imagining oneself as existing nowhere. I must ask, ‘Who am I? What are my relationships with my communities? What are my relationships with the land I live on?’ (Boudreau Morris 2017, 9)

For many people, realising that one is a settler on stolen lands is deeply discomforting. “Directly and indirectly benefitting from the erasure and assimilation of Indigenous peoples is a difficult reality for settlers to accept”, explain Tuck and Yang (2012, 9). But Indigenous activists and scholars have repeatedly emphasised that discomfort is a necessary and irresolvable element of decolonising solidarity. As a settler, in order to work towards decolonisation, one must seek to be continuously unsettled—what Irlbacher-Fox (2014) calls ‘self-decolonisation’, and Tuck and Yang (2012) more critically call an ‘ethic of incommensurability’. Boudreau Morris (2017, 2) argues that “the deployment of discomfort towards seeking highly contextualized, contingent, and specific knowledge of similarities and differences with others over time can work to create an environment of decolonizing solidarity”. They emphasise the importance of embedded, emplaced discomfort in always centring the present situation;

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of “listening to our discomforts, sitting with them and wading through them, and then deploying them towards decolonization” (2017, 2). It is through these unsettling encounters, difficult emotions, and disorientating dilemmas that we might “engage in a process of letting go of deeply held beliefs” (Kluttz et al. 2020, 51). Finally, decolonising solidarity requires action with the concrete aim of dismantling settler colonialism—its legal, economic, social and political institutions, and its illegitimate claim to sovereignty over Indigenous lands. “Should we desire to merely ‘unlearn’ oppression, or to smash it to fucking pieces, and have its very existence gone?” Indigenous Action provokes (2014, 5). Decolonisation is not a metaphor, as Tuck and Yang (2012) remind us, and therefore it is not enough to be an ‘enlightened settler’: one must instead work towards bringing an end to colonisation itself, in whatever ways Indigenous people decide that should look like. While the actual content of these actions must emerge from the particular location on which one lives, recent Indigenous movements in Australia have focused on land rights, Aboriginal deaths in police custody, the forced closure of remote Aboriginal communities, demands to #PayTheRent, and the imprisonment of Indigenous women for unpaid fines, such as the #FreeHer campaign. 3.2  The Well-Intentioned Settler There are, however, many issues with well-intentioned settlers’ allyship. Indeed, a zine by activist group Indigenous Action (2014, 2) states, “The term ally has been rendered ineffective and meaningless”. First, while settlers often reproduce racist discourses of Indigeneity—framing Indigenous people as lazy, alcoholic, dangerous and so on (see chapter “Identity”)— well-meaning settlers often reproduce their own set of problematic discourses. These include romantic and essentialist notions of Aboriginal proximity/unity with nature. “Some people have tried to create bonds of allyship by believing that Indigenous wisdom and spirituality are so profound that Indigenous people have always lived in ecological harmony”, writes Kyle Powys White (2018)—a trope infamously depicted in Australian rapper Iggy Azalea’s claim that Aboriginal people “sleep under the stars, it’s how they live”. Likewise, Boudreau Morris (2017, 10) warns against “Othering in the name of feminism”: “Western feminists have tended to employ a Eurocentric, essentialist image of global women in the name of solidarity based on ‘sameness’”, they explain (2017, 10). These feminist

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discourses of ‘global sisterhood’, in which all women are necessarily working against the same structures, were powerfully critiqued in Goenpul scholar Moreton-Robinson’s (2000) seminal text Talkin’ Up to the White Woman. Finally, and relatedly, the depiction of Indigenous people as somehow ‘helpless victims’ works to infantilise them, rob them of their own power and agency, and embed the heroic settler as the only figure capable of helping them in their plight. These problematic discourses link into a broader, overarching issue in settler-Indigenous relations of solidarity: the interpersonal reproduction of broader colonial power relations. “One of the greatest causes of underlying tension and dispute between Kooris and their non-Koori supporters”, explains Gumbainggir activist Gary Foley, “is how these support groups and their members relate to Koori people” (2000, 1). Foley describes the paternalistic attitudes of many settler allies towards Aboriginal people—which Irlbacher-Fox (2014, 150) describes as a form of “reinscription of dominant-subordinate, settler-Indigenous relations”. Like the white ally of Black movements, the figure of the heroic settler saviour looms large over Indigenous movements. More broadly again, the term ‘ally’ risks what Tuck and Yang (2012, 10) describe as “moves to innocence”, which they define as “strategies or positionings that attempt to relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility without giving up land or power or privilege, without having to change much at all”. Again, the intention of settlers must be critically interrogated. As Regan (2010) warns, the ally is sometimes motivated by a desire to rid themselves of settler guilt. “The desire to reconcile is just as relentless as the desire to disappear the Native”, Tuck and Yang likewise explain, “it is a desire to not have to deal with this (Indian) problem anymore” (2012, 9). Instead, settler feelings of discomfort and guilt should be understood as necessary—offering possibilities for reevaluating one’s relation to the land on which one is situated and the people to whom it rightfully belongs. A decolonising solidarity, as Kluttz, Walker and Walter (2020, 55) explain, “unsettles the possibility of fully reconciling settler guilt and disallows the continuing denial and ignorance of complicity in colonisation”. Allies, then, need to instead constantly unsettle any ‘moves to innocence’, which seek to seamlessly and effortlessly resolve the problem of their ontological existence. “No matter how liberated you are”, Indigenous Action (2014, 7) explain, “if you are still occupying Indigenous lands you are still a colonizer”.

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3.3  Decolonising Together As we’ve sought to make clear, allyship with Indigenous peoples cannot be equated with or reduced to moves to racial justice more broadly. Instead, it necessarily involves challenging the structures of colonialism: recognising oneself as a settler on Indigenous lands, recognising the unearned benefits this affords, and actively working towards decolonised futures. This decolonising solidarity is a much more open, relational and unsettling process than allyship with racial equality. It is not enough for settlers to sympathise with the demands of Indigenous peoples; they must seek to literally unsettle themselves. If settler colonisation involves erasing Indigenous peoples’ sovereign connection to land and assuming it for oneself, decolonisation involves the opposite: first through settler imaginations, by refusing their assumed right to the land which they occupy; and second through settler actions, by taking responsibility for colonialism and responding to the material demands of Indigenous peoples. This approach transforms allyship from a relation of white benevolence to a vested, necessary solidarity—a painful project in which the futures of settlers and Indigenous people alike have a significant stake. It is about building ‘right’ relations between Indigenous and settler subjects. As Kluttz, Walker and Walter explain, “a decolonising solidarity requires potential allies to recognise that they do not want to live in a world where oppression continues: a world that is structurally unconducive to an equal and just society is of mutual concern for everyone” (2020, 54). Or as Indigenous Murri Gangulu, artist, activist and academic, Lilla Watson famously stated: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together” (cited in Kluttz et al. 2020, 49). While there has been much written on allyship in Black movements, very little has attended to how this might play out through digital media (although see Clark 2019), and most significantly for this chapter, there has been no analysis on the role of settler allies in Indigenous movements as facilitated through social media. This is unfortunate, as the role of allies in Indigenous movements is perhaps intensified in a settler nation like Australia, in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people comprise just 3 percent of the population. For the remainder of this chapter, then, we ask: If decolonising solidarity has as its target the transfer of land from settlers to Indigenous peoples, what role can social media play in this material process? We follow two

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lines of analysis. First, we discuss how social media is facilitating important impromptu debates among Indigenous activists around the role of settlers in Indigenous movements. In surveying these online discussions, we suggest they broadly align with the two key directives outlined in the literature above: the importance of ‘listening to hear’ Indigenous people, and the importance of effective action. Second, drawing on the narratives of two settler scholar-activists, we explore how the directives to listen and act manifest online. We close by reflecting on the inevitably problematic position of settler allies in Indigenous movements.

4   Online Allyship Discourse Twitter and Facebook have become important platforms for Indigenous people to critically unpack what constitutes an ally—what attributes they should have, what actions they should perform, and what problems they present. There are often impromptu discussions about settler allyship on social media, and popular Twitter account @IndigneousX, for instance, has hosted several well-engaged discussions on the issue. In this section, we follow some of these allyship discourses, knitting into themes a range of actual expressions of allyship encountered on Facebook and Twitter. We demonstrate they largely align with Meridith Clark’s (2019) directives of being an ally: recognising one’s positionality, acknowledging one’s privilege, and taking informed action. 4.1  Shutting the Fuck Up and Listening The acknowledgement of settler subjectivity and the importance of attending to the experiences and world views of Indigenous peoples were understood as far the most fundamental attributes of allyship. “The biggest one is to listen”, one person explains; “Listen to mob”, another likewise states. Listening as an ally, here, is about decentring oneself and one’s own opinions and beliefs, and instead opening oneself up to the lives of Indigenous people. It involves understanding how one’s privilege often comes at the expense of another’s sovereignty. “Listen when we talk about our experiences”, one person explains. “Be willing to listen instead of having opinions”, another says. Or as one person more bluntly explained, being an ally involves “Shutting the fuck up and listening”. Social media has produced new platforms for both giving voice and listening; and as we’ve sought to make clear in this book, Indigenous

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people are all over social media—giving opportunities for more enlightened settlers to better understand the world views and experiences of Indigenous people. Allies can use this public discourse to better listen, by “Follow[ing] mob voices on Twitter”, as they’re continuously sharing stories, critiques and resources that will better equip allies towards a decolonising solidarity. Ongoing listening, even when it’s no longer ‘trending’, is central to being an ally. As IndigenousX founder Luke Pearson explains, “If there are people out there who this last week have been tweeting Black Lives Matter, but they’re not now following an extra 100 accounts, then how are they going to keep up to date with this issue and ensure that appropriate reforms are implemented?” In short, a decolonising solidarity begins by recognising oneself as a settler on Indigenous lands, acknowledging one’s always partial world view, and beginning to develop an understanding of Indigenous standpoints. As one person explains: “If they’re ‘helping’ without before actively learning and listening, they are white saviours”—not allies. 4.2  Get in Trouble with me Listening alone does not constitute an ally. Instead, as one person explains, “Ally isn’t a noun”; it is, as another explains, “a continuous and active act”, one that “never stops”. It is not enough to ‘decolonise the mind; “It’s about healing harm and dismantling the systems that cause it”, one person on Twitter explains. For an ally to work towards decolonising solidarity, they must actually work. “I don’t want Allies,” tweets one person. “I want traitors to colonisation and racism. Get in trouble with me”. Similarly another writes: “I hate the term allies. You’re either into it elbow deep with me or you’re all talk. Accomplices all the way”. While the specific actions involved in actually being an ‘accomplice’ to decolonisation are highly contextual, depending on the particular lands and peoples involved, several general actions are common across allyship discourse online. First, an ally cannot just stop at curbing the harm done by their own presence, by refraining in participating in explicit forms of racism, for instance. Instead, they must actively oppose the structures that support colonialism. “It’s not enough to be an ally”, one person writes, “Be anti-­ racist”; and “not just around their few black friends”, another person adds. “It’s 20 fuckin 20”, tweets another. “Trying to be an ally isn’t enough. You don’t get a medal for almost doing the right thing”.

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Second, allies can do this anti-racism work within their own immediate circles of influence. “Take care of your own circles”, one person writes, “white people listen to other white people”. This includes, as another person explains, “talk[ing] to racist/problematic friends and family rather than being complacent”. Challenging friends and family about problematic views, attempting to educate them on settler colonialism and Indigenous sovereignty can be uncomfortable. But as Black and Indigenous people have long explained, discomfort is part of the deal; if an ally has nothing at stake, Indigenous people have nothing to gain. In seeking to sustain a decolonising solidarity, settler allies must seek to unsettle their friends and family; and, as one person explains, “be prepared to lose a few”. A third action in allyship involves, as one person explains, “Using privilege and power to make space for Indigenous people”. In one sense, this is an action of absence, articulated by a range of Indigenous people as: “Clearing the stage”; “Knowing when to leave”, and “getting out of the way”. This isn’t about settler complacency or inaction, but about knowing how to “Hold spaces at tables of influence”, so that one can “take a step back and assist us into our own power”. Social media has provided new ways for settler allies to hold this space for Indigenous peoples. On Facebook and Twitter in particular, allies can “Elevate Indigenous voices and causes”, “share resources, amplify black voices and create space”, and “Retweet”—but “Without dissertation length commentary”, as one person adds. Allies commonly fail to do this, instead seeking to keep themselves in the centre of Black and Indigenous movements—such as when white people and settlers posted black squares on Instagram en masse during #BlackOutTuesday: a day of online protest in support of BLM. “That isn’t muting yourself”, one person explains, “that is the opposite”. 4.3  Problem Allies Much of the online allyship discourse focuses on what might be called ‘problem allies’—people who believe they are helping Indigenous people, but are actually furthering harm. “Nice white people are incredibly dangerous”, one person warns. “Having your heart in the right place doesn’t make you an ally. They often become as much as a burden as the opposite”, another says. For instance, there was a long discussion on Twitter on white scholars who talk about stopping racism, yet behave in harmful, racist ways with Black and Indigenous students and staff. “They spout anti-racist rhetoric in public but terrorise and undermine BIPOC

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whenever they can”, one person explains. This problematic allyship was illustrated during a controversy caused when the Queensland Firebirds netball team didn’t play their only Indigenous player during the ‘Indigenous round’, which is meant to centre and celebrate Indigenous players. There was heated discussion on Twitter about the incident, in which some white ‘allies’ called for ‘calm’ and ‘balance’: “speaking up and out for a better way forward”, as one ally claimed, while telling Indigenous people they should “work together, not against”. The incident also demonstrated the problems that can arise when allies are challenged about their own conduct. The literature documents white and settler allies actively resisting the discomfort that is part and parcel of decolonisation work. But, as one person explains, “Having hurt feelings about it just centres yourself”. Instead, a decolonising solidarity involves “get[ing] uncomfortable and stay[ing] there until something changes”; it means “[p]utting your personal feelings aside”. While “it sucks to hear you’re part of the problem and you benefit in ways that you haven’t been forced to consider … that doesn’t mean you should get so defensive that you’re not part of the solution”. This move was demonstrated in the netball controversy, as one Indigenous person sarcastically responded: “Wow you really are an ally. You can’t even own when you mess up. Wanna tell us Aboriginal folk to shut up again?” Finally, the incident also illuminated a significant problem around how allyship has become commercialised and mainstreamed. While many of the major sporting codes have ‘Indigenous rounds’, which are often part of their Reconciliation Action Plans (RAPs), this form of allyship to Indigenous people is often criticised for being ‘performative’ rather than substantive. People who are only ‘performative allies’ tend to outwardly profess support for a particular cause, but are motivated solely for their own self-interest: in the cultural kudos it brings, the ‘likes’ their posts attract on Instagram, how it contributes to their ‘brand’, and so on. More signs include very surface-level support for progressive causes, the centring of themselves in their assertion of support, the lack of any real work or change their support actually involves, and their total absence when the issue is no longer ‘trending’. Another telltale sign: just how quickly self-­ described allies revert to reproducing problematic power relations when they’re challenged for their behaviour—as the settler ally did when the Firebirds were criticised for their seemingly performative allyship.

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5   Online Allyship Praxis While the previous section discussed how social media acts as a platform for debating what, if anything, constitutes allyship, in this section we seek to understand how social media has affected the practice of being an ally— what Clark (2019) calls ‘digital allyship praxis’. We draw mainly on the narratives of two settler scholars, Sam and Kathy,1 both of whom are actively involved in Indigenous politics—one in health promotion, the other in media studies. In following their narratives, we again draw on the two central directives of decolonising allyship—jointly distilled in the imperative to ‘informed action’—to understand the practice, rationale and experience of ‘being an ally’ both on and through social media. 5.1  Eavesdropping with Permission Both Sam and Kathy emphasised repeatedly the importance of listening rather than speaking in online allyship praxis. While many Australians might not personally know any Indigenous peoples—or, more likely, not know that they know any—social media makes it relatively straightforward to directly connect with Indigenous people across Australia. It allows allies, as Kathy explained, to hear Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander “voices every day on Twitter. So I just think it’s been a fantastic, you know, the various platforms are just fantastic for hearing different voices and perspectives”. Sam described this ally practice as “eavesdropping with permission”: [T]he eavesdropping is important because it’s about trying to not be the centre of attention, not the one who’s setting the agenda, not the one who’s asking the questions, you know, so that everything has to be channelled back through whiteness once again. But you know, there is a way to be on the sidelines and be visible, with permission like “I’m here” or whatever, but able to listen in on conversations and communications that don’t need to be directed at me quite in that way.

It’s through this online listening to Indigenous folk that allies might come to better understand their own positionality and subjectivity as settlers on Indigenous lands. One of the problems with white and settler subjectivities, as we discussed above, is that they are ‘unmarked categories’, to the point that the vast majority of settlers don’t ever understand

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themselves as settlers. As Sam reflected, as a settler, “you’re immersed in whiteness”. “You’re trying to see it”, she explained, “but you can never see it from the outside”. Social media offers one way for potential allies to learn to understand their own positionality as settlers. Kathy explained that its “a fantastic platform for learning about whiteness, you know, whether it’s through the eyes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people or through white people just, you know, expressing it—and you see it. So it’s that looking both ways, I guess”, she said. “You get the full sort of very clear views of whiteness”, Kathy repeated, “how it’s perceived and expressed from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s perspectives”. An important part of this online listening involves being sensitive to moments when you yourself are being called out, what Sam described as “listening for accountability”: If you’re listening in on Black Twitter for any amount of time, … you’ll hear and see—and maybe sometimes it’s directed at you—you know, feedback, calling out, all of that kind of thing, about the many ways in which white people, you know, can get ally work really wrong.

Good listening practice involves understanding that Indigenous peoples are not homogeneous, that there are diverse views and important contextual differences across movements towards decolonisation; indeed, this is one of the central objectives of the @IndigenousX project. In listening to Indigenous voices online, Kathy explained: You have to be conscious that people will have different views, you know, there’s diverse communities and diverse perspectives, and some people might appreciate some things other people might not or, you know, people might have a line drawn differently over what’s appropriate for people to do or not to do. The context can change, what might be okay, one situational context might not be okay in another. So I guess it’s just being careful of blanket statements or generalizations in a way.

Understanding and accepting this diversity of views is vital; it also means allies recognising that they are not always welcomed (McGloin 2016). “For many Indigenous peoples the settler never ceases to be the enemy”, Flowers explains (2015, 38); there is no imperative for Indigenous peoples to forgive settlers, and allies must accept this fact.

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To sum, then, decolonising listening is about unsettling one’s own beliefs and assumptions, and instead accepting as real and true the knowledge and experiences of Indigenous peoples. By following Indigenous people on social media—on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and so forth—settlers can develop a better understanding of their own positionality, their ‘settler-ness’ and whiteness, the experiences of Indigenous peoples, and listen for moments when they’re being called on and called out to change their practice. 5.2  Amplifying people’s Voices Beyond just listening to and consuming the expressions of Indigenous peoples online, social media also provides new ways to act through decolonising solidarity. As we discussed in the previous section, ‘making space’ for Indigenous peoples is one of the core ways allies can help in a material way to the project of decolonisation. Again, this is a practice of unsettling settler dominance, as Kathy explains: I think a certain degree of humility is really a crucial part of working for change and justice and also, of, you know, stepping back in order to foreground self-determination and Indigenous sovereignties, you know. That really needs us white people to step back to stop taking up all the space.

One of the central ways that social media facilitates new forms of making space is through sharing, retweeting and otherwise ‘amplifying’ the expressions of Indigenous peoples. Rather than centring herself through constantly expressing her own opinions, Kathy explains, “[I am] very careful what I say or do or you know, that type of thing. And I guess my main thing I do is try to retweet—I see it more as amplifying people’s voices”. Kathy explained that a key part of her online allyship praxis involves “privileging Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people’s voices so whether that’s in your social media feed, you know, make sure that your Twitter feed is full of them”. Sam likewise described her “practices around listening, amplifying, sharing, you know, creating space—general principles and practices that I think are really important. It’s kind of like they are key features of social media”. On the other hand, social media provides new ways for Indigenous people and settlers to connect. As Kathy explained, without social media, she “wouldn’t have had the connections or relationships. So it’s really

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enabled a lot of relationships to grow”—including a long-term professional and personal relationship she had developed with an Indigenous scholar. In this way, then, social media opens possibilities for settlers to begin growing ‘right relationships’ with Indigenous peoples—relationships founded not on settler relations of dominance, but humility, respect, reciprocity, and most importantly, acknowledgement of Indigenous sovereignty. 5.3  The Limits of Online Solidarity Before closing, we want to outline several potential pitfalls of digital allyship praxis in Indigenous movements. First, and perhaps most obviously, there is a risk that the digital nature on social media allyship dematerialises what is, necessarily, a material politics. As Nayuka Gorrie tweeted, “too many allies, not enough land back”. For as long as there has been online activism, there have been warnings of ‘clicktivism’, ‘slacktivism’ and ‘keyboard warriors’—forms of discursive political action that involve little effort and come with correspondingly little benefit. “Social media has made it entirely too easy for lazy progressives to feel politically fashionable or better about their position on racial inequality by tossing up a thematically appropriate GIF or TikTok”, writes McFarland (2020). While the success of movements such as Black Lives Matter, #NoDAPL and #SOSBlakAustralia counter any arguments that online activism is entirely impotent, there is still a danger that it offers allies a too easy ride towards solidarity. Settler solidarity necessarily requires unsettling and, as one person tweets, “A paypal receipt is about 1000 times more impactful than a black square”. Second, if a properly decolonising solidarity requires that one ground oneself on the lands on which one is materially located—what Boudreau Morris calls location-telling—then social media risks erasing this emplaced material context. In an attempt to counteract this, many Indigenous people and settler allies on Twitter attempt to recontextualise their ‘place’ by stating their clan affiliation, nationality, and physical location on Country in their bio. Third, Black and Indigenous activists alike invest an incredible amount of emotional, intellectual and physical labour towards bringing about political change. Well-intentioned settlers often look to these activists for advice, knowledge and direction, not knowing they are, in fact, increasing the workload. Social media has multiplied incredibly the number of

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connections both Indigenous people and settler have with one another; and many Indigenous peoples report being constantly barraged with requests for help and advice from settler allies. As Flowers (2015, 38) explains: “there is always a settler seeking my recognition. She wants me to recognize that she is distanced from the others. She is innocent”. A properly decolonising solidarity, however, would involve settlers, as one person tweets, “Reducing the exhaustion” for Indigenous peoples, rather than increasing it. The imperative to listen must not increase the load of Indigenous peoples. The settler must take responsibility for their own learning; they must “Recognis[e] it’s not [Indigenous peoples’] job to explain privilege to them”. Finally, as the #BlackOutTuesday example illustrates, there is a paradox in white/settler involvement in Black/Indigenous movements. The directive to ‘make space’ for Black/Indigenous voices can be manifested in ways that, in fact, reduce space for effective activism. On the day of #BlackOutTuesday, thousands of white allies people posted black screens, which in effect took up entire Instagram feeds of many users: “That isn’t muting yourself”, one person tweeted, “that is the opposite”. The creation of online ‘space’, therefore, needs to be carefully considered and balanced against the well-intentioned amplifying efforts of allies.

6   Closing: Kill the Settler, Save the Man While Black movements, by and large, tend to work towards racial justice, Indigenous movements aim towards decolonisation—the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty. This chapter has sought to unpack what social media has meant for allies participating in Indigenous movements towards decolonisation. We showed that, on the one hand, social media has become an important space for Indigenous peoples to discuss and ‘unsettle’ the role of settlers in Indigenous activism. Broadly aligning with the more established literature on white allyship with Black politics, we argued that settler allies must first listen—and in doing so, come to understand themselves as a settler on Indigenous lands and their entanglement in colonial structures that benefit them at the expense of Indigenous peoples—and then take informed action. As one person explained, “Ally isn’t a noun”— it is not some label that one attains in perpetuity, but is an active, ongoing orientation to the powerful social structures in which one is embedded. Thus, allies must be willing to “get in trouble”, they must become accomplices, “traitors to colonisation”, by actively making space for and working

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with Indigenous people to challenge those political formations that sustain colonialism. On the other hand, we discussed the politics of being an ally on and through social media. Following the narratives of two settler scholar– activists, we sought to better understand how the dual imperatives to ‘listen’ and then ‘act’ are manifested online. They described how social media has, in many ways, made it much easier to ‘listen’ to Indigenous people and “hear […] different voices and perspectives”, as Kathy explained. It allows settler allies to “eavesdrop with permission”, as Sam described it, and through this, to better reflect on their own positionality and subjectivity as white settlers on Indigenous lands. They illustrated how social media also facilitates new forms of ally praxis, creating opportunities for allies to create new spaces for Indigenous expression—through amplifying, sharing and retweeting—and to begin to form ‘right relations’ with Indigenous peoples, based on respect, friendship and solidarity. There is, however, a deeply uncomfortable and irresolvable tension in a properly decolonising solidarity. “Solidarity is an uneasy, reserved, and unsettled matter that neither reconciles present grievances nor forecloses future conflict”, Tuck and Yang explain (2012, 3). Rather than understanding the settler ally as unequivocally good, we must always recognise that there is a complex politics at play, which means that allyship is sometimes not enough, is not always adequate, and is fact inevitably saturated with settler power relations. “What is not understood is that decolonization is a threat to the very existence of settler ‘allies’”, explains Indigenous Action (2014, 7). The settler desire for true decolonisation is, in a sense, a desire for self-elimination—a tall order for anyone. Kathy explained she is still learning to live with her position as a ‘problem’ within Indigenous movements: I guess it’s just accepting you can never … it’s always going to be problematic what you do, in a way. And you have to be able to live with that. But think it’s still worth trying to do something.

Being an ally is not just about symbolically supporting the plight or fight of Indigenous peoples—what’s often called ‘performative allyship’. It demands much more than that. It requires a “dangerous understanding” (Tuck and Yang 2012) of the very structures of social, political and economic life, and a commitment to transforming them—even if it comes at the expense of one’s own power and privilege. It requires the formation of

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a new kind of settler, or the destruction of the settler subject itself; as Veracini (2017) more bluntly argues, decolonisation requires that we “Kill the settler in him and save the man”.

Note 1. As per our ethics clearance for this project, these are pseudonyms.

References Aveling, N. (2004). Critical whiteness studies and the challenges of learning to be a “White Ally.” Borderlands: E-Journal, 3(2). Boudreau Morris, K. (2017). Decolonizing solidarity: cultivating relationships of discomfort. Settler Colonial Studies, 7(4), 456–473. https://doi.org/10.108 0/2201473X.2016.1241210 Clark, M.  D. (2019). White folks’ work: digital allyship praxis in the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Social Movement Studies, 18(5), 519–534. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2019.1603104 DiAngelo, R. (2018). White fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism. Beacon Press. Flowers, R. (2015). Refusal to forgive: Indigenous women’s love and rage. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 4(2), 32–49. http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/download/22829 Foley, G. (2000). Whiteness and Blackness in the Koori struggle for self-­ determination: strategic considerations in the struggle for social justice for Indigenous people. Just Policy: A Journal of Australian Social Policy, (19-20), 74. Giroux, H. (1997). Rewriting the discourse of racial identity: Towards a pedagogy and politics of whiteness. Harvard educational review, 67(2), 285-321. Indigenous Action. (2014). Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex. Irlbacher-Fox, S. (2014). Traditional knowledge, co-existence and co-resistance. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3), 145–158. http:// decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/22236/18046 Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an Antiracist. One world. Kluttz, J., Walker, J., & Walter, P. (2020). Unsettling allyship, unlearning and learning towards decolonising solidarity. Studies in the Education of Adults, 52(1), 49–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/02660830.2019.1654591 Marie Claire. (2020). How Can I Become a Better Ally? Available: https://www. marieclaire.com.au/becoming-­a-­better-­white-­ally. Accessed 22/01/21 McFarland, M. (2020). White allies: Here’s a basic list of do’s and don’ts to help you with your helplessness. Salon. Available: https://www.salon.

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com/2020/06/01/white-­a llies-­d os-­d onts-­r acism-­b lack-­l ives-­m atter-­ protest/. Accessed: 22/01/21. McGloin, C. (2016). Critical allies and feminist praxis: rethinking dis-ease. Gender and Education, 28(7), 839–850. https://doi.org/10.1080/0954025 3.2015.1129055 McGloin, C. (2015). Listening to hear: Critical allies in indigenous studies. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 55(2), 267–282. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2000). Talkin’up to the white woman: Aboriginal women and feminism. Univ. of Queensland Press. Pew Research Center. (2020). Support for Black Lives Matter has decreased since June but remains strong among Black Americans. Available: https://www. pewresearch.org/fact-­tank/2020/09/16/support-­for-­black-­lives-­matter-­has-­ decreased-­s ince-­j une-­b ut-­r emains-­s trong-­a mong-­b lack-­a mericans/. Accessed 22/01/21 Popsugar. (2020) 6 Ways to Become a Valuable Ally at a Black Lives Matter Protest’. Available: https://www.popsugar.com.au/news/how-­to-­be-­ally-­at-­ black-­lives-­matter-­protests-­47532687. Accessed 22/01/21 Powys White, K. (2018). White Allies, Let’s Be Honest About Decolonization. Yes! Available: https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/decolonize/2018/ 0 4 / 0 3 / w h i t e -­a l l i e s -­l e t s -­b e -­h o n e s t -­a b o u t -­d e c o l o n i z a t i o n / . Accessed 22/01/21 Regan, P. (2010). Unsettling the settler within: Indian residential schools, truth telling, and reconciliation in Canada. ubc Press. Teen Vogue. (2020). 11 Things You Can Do To Help Black Lives Matter End Police Violence. Available: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/support-­the-­ black-­lives-­matter-­movement. Accessed 22/01/21 The Shovel. (2020). Australian man watching BLM protests relieved he doesn’t live in a country with a shameful history of systematic racism and violence against black people. Available: https://www.theshovel.com.au/2020/06/01/ australian-­man-­shameful-­history-­of-­racism/. Accessed 22/01/21 Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40. https://www.latrobe.edu.au/ staff-­profiles/data/docs/fjcollins.pdf Veracini, L. (2017). Decolonizing settler colonialism: Kill the settler in him and save the man. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 41(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.17953/aicrj.41.1.veracini Walia, H. (2012). Decolonizing together: Moving beyond a politics of solidarity toward a practice of decolonization. In The Winter We Danced. Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623 520601056240

Futures

One of the strategies that indigenous peoples have employed effectively to bind people together politically, asks that people imagine a future, that they rise above present-day situations which are generally depressing, dream a new dream and set a new vision. (Linda Tuhiwai Smith 2013, 255)

1   Introduction: Past, Present, Futures This book has centred on the question of how social media has become entangled in the everyday lives of Indigenous peoples in Australia. In this sense, it is about a very particular time—the ever-present ‘now’, in which we gathered data, conducted interviews and scrolled through the infinite feeds of Facebook and Twitter (and much less so, Instagram and TikTok). This book is, then, a kind of time capsule of Indigenous digital life in the seemingly endless years between 2015 and 2021. And because of the speed in which digital technologies now change, the incredible mass of information and events that now litter our lives, and the rate that digital cultures shift and transform and reinvent themselves, by the time this book is published and then later read, much of it will likely seem quite outdated. But as has likely been clear to those who’ve read until this point, the ever-present ‘now’ is continuously intruded upon by the past—Indigenous and settler histories, the knowledges of the peoples of this land, the crimes of the colonisers, and the discourses, policies and events that have so deeply affected Indigenous life. As we’ve argued several times now, one © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8_11

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cannot just ‘be’ Indigenous online. Instead, Indigenous people on social media are always entangled in much longer histories of attempted erasure by settlers, including dispossession of land, community and culture—a violent process which continues today. So in trying to understand the present moment, we’re always inevitably referring back to pasts. But what of the future? In this closing chapter, we want to 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, discourses and power relations? First, we discuss the place of Indigenous futures in settler society— which, to anticipate the point are, by necessity, 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 imaginations of possible other worlds, which exist outside or beyond settler politics. 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 everyday 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 practices opened or prefigured other possible futures.

2   Settler Futures/Indigenous Pasts From the moment of settler invasion, Indigenous people were seen as only a temporary people, soon to be left behind by the unstoppable forward march of modernity. They were posited as “mere vestiges of a quickly fading and increasingly irrelevant past”, as Kanaka Maoli scholar Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua writes (2017, 184). For the first two centuries of settlement in Australia, popular ideas from race science dominated settler thinking, which straightforwardly envisioned a future that was free from Indigenous people. Public policy and discourse not only imagined Indigenous people as a people without a future, but actively sought to bring that vision into fruition. Policies of segregation, separation,

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absorption and assimilation variously but directly sought to hasten the disappearance of Indigenous people. On the one hand, ‘full-blooded’ Aboriginal people were seen as archaic survivors of the past, soon to die out completely; on the other hand, ‘part-Aboriginal’ people were understood as in the process of being absorbed and assimilated into the mainstream population, where their claims and connections to their Indigenous heritage would soon be erased and forgotten. In both cases, there was no future for Indigenous people. Anthropologists have been particularly complicit with this reifying of Indigenous peoples as only having a past, with anthropological work both predicting and aiding the total, imminent disappearance of Aboriginal people. The work of anthropologists posited Indigenous people as biologically inferior, on the brink of extinction, and it was used to rationalise, justify, develop and hone policies of Indigenous elimination. On the other hand, anthropologists long posited Indigenous people as somehow ‘stuck’ in a static past, incapable of cultural change. Indeed, any evidence of cultural change only became understood as further proof of the disappearance of supposedly ‘authentic’ Indigenous people. Ginsburg and Myers (2006, 27) summarise the early work of anthropologist Terry Turner, who pushed back against these disciplinary truisms, and “took issue with the model that identified indigenous futures only with cultural preservation, ossifying such life-worlds into unchanging enclaves”. As objects of scientific enquiry, then, Indigenous peoples were given no opportunity for alternative futures: they could either die out biologically and culturally, as predicted; or they could become like the settler, and lose their Indigenous soul (Wolfe 2006). This complete foreclosure of Indigenous futures is no accident; it is central to the logic of settler futurity. Settler colonialism, as a political structure, “aims to vanish Indigenous peoples and replace them with settlers, who see themselves as the rightful claimants to land, and indeed, as indigenous”, as Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández write (2013, 73). The disappearance of Indigenous people, their absence from the future, is absolutely necessary for settler futures. Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández (2013, 79) explain that “settler futurity is ensured through an understanding of Native-European relations as a thing of the past”. And again, they write: “The future of the white race … require[s] the elimination of lesser humans and the refinement of the cultural attributes that define the white subject, whose manifest destiny it is to take the place of the savage in the promised land” (2013, 77).

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While settler imaginings of wholesale Indigenous elimination may no longer be quite as explicit in political and popular discourse as they were for the first two centuries of Australian colonisation, Indigenous futures are still tightly constrained by settler narratives. Indigenous people are still understood primarily by what they supposedly lack: education, employment, good health, good morals, a work ethic, capacity for change. And popular discourse still distinguishes between so-called authentic Indigenous people—who, in the settler mind, live in the remote outback, barefoot on red earth—and so-called urban Indigenous people, who have lost all connection to ‘real’ Indigenous life (Fredericks 2013). In this sense, the widespread ‘deficit discourse’ also extends forwards in time: Indigenous people supposedly even lack a future. In these ways, settler futures—as expressed through political, cultural and national narratives—invariably foreclose Indigenous futures. “The structures, systems, and stories of settler colonialism, then, guide what future settler societies can look like”, write Barker and Lowman (2016, 198). But settler futures are also astonishingly myopic. Actions justified in the name of ‘progress’ are, in fact, often radically short-sighted. The wealthiest settler states—including the US, Canada, Aotearoa and Australia—all seem to be working towards a future that is limited in depth, imagination and sustainability. Wholesale ecological collapse, devastating wars and famines, rapid deforestation, the poisoning of vital water sources by pipelines cutting across Country, the extinction of entire species, the acidification of oceans, the aridification of once-lush plains, the leaking of oil into oceans, bushfires scorching tens of millions of hectares of bushland, the rapid heating of the entire planet—settler futures indeed necessarily foreclose Indigenous futures, but they evidently work towards the collapse of human and planetary futures altogether. 2.1  Indigenous Futurisms: A People of the Future But what if this weren’t the case? What if the settler logics of elimination, possession and domination were not the prevailing logics of society? What might more hopeful futures then look like, as Hunt (2018, 84) asks, “wherein Indigenous futurities are not subjected to the processes of settler colonialism”? The politics of ‘hope’ has long attracted the attention of radical thinkers, such as Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch (1986), postcolonial educator Paulo Freire (1996), and feminist and anti-colonial scholar Sara Ahmed

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(2014). Far from constituting a form of naïve or politically impotent optimism, these scholars have instead conceptualized hope as constituting new horizons of the possible. To hope is to keep the future open to difference, to what Bloch describes as the not-yet become (see Anderson 2006). Hopeful imaginaries are not just reactions to current power structures, but radical expressions of creative love and desire. Over the last 20 years, an identifiable Indigenous movement has been coalescing around this kind of radical hopeful imaginaries, unconstrained by settler logics. First described by Anishinaabe scholar Grace Dillon (2012), ‘Indigenous Futurisms’ encompasses distinctively Indigenous perspectives on the past, present and futures, often expressed through the forms of science fiction, speculative fiction, comics and visual art, and often incorporating Indigenous knowledges, ontologies and cultures. The movement closely parallels that of ‘Afrofuturism’, which plays at the intersection of the African diaspora with technologies both current and fantastic, and as embodied in the novels of Octavia Butler, the music of Janelle Monáe and Sun Ra, and the Marvel film Black Panther (2018). Indigenous Futurisms emerged partly as a response to concerns from Indigenous scholars around current academic framings of both Indigeneity and settler colonialism. Indigenous Studies, historically, has tended to reproduce colonial ideas of Indigenous precarity, often unwittingly, by understanding Indigenous peoples as culturally static and threatened with imminent extinction. The urgent task, then, is to ‘salvage’ this knowledge before it is lost for all time. Settler Colonial Studies, on the other hand, centres on understanding colonialism as a continuing force in the present; but here there is a concern that seeing colonialism as a ‘structure’ precludes possibilities of creative action and hopeful becomings (Davis et al. 2017). Indigenous Futurisms bypasses both these issues by seeing Indigenous people as always-already imagining and building other futures. “Indigenous Futurisms are not the product of a victimized people’s wishful amelioration of their past”, Dillon (2016, 2) explains, “but instead a continuation of a spiritual and cultural path that remains unbroken by genocide and war”. While only recently formalising, and indeed only loosely, the work of Indigenous Futurisms has a long history—even if these works have not always been described as such (Hunt 2018). Like Afrofuturism, it has primarily been understood as an aesthetico-political movement, particularly the visual arts, though it also includes music, literature, cultural studies and anthropology. Examples include Yakama and Pawnee artist Bunky

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Echo-Hawk’s images of sci-fi characters as Indigenous (such as Yoda in a headdress); and the video game Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna), which was the first game developed in collaboration with the tribe actually featured in the game, the Iñupiaq people of Alaska, and based entirely on their stories and knowledges. Sci-fi features prominently in discussions of Indigenous Futurisms. Supposedly unfettered by the old structures of the ‘actual’, science fiction is meant to make possible radical alternatives, future worlds, previously unimaginable utopias. But as a genre, even in the most fanciful sci-fi stories, settler narratives of Indigenous elimination are often perpetuated. For instance, science fiction narratives often centre on ecoactivists saving worlds from ecological collapse and achieving more sustainable futures. But as Cree scholar Dallas Hunt (2018, 71) prompts us to ask: “who is accorded space in these futures and who is not?” The 2009 blockbuster, Avatar, for instance, draws liberally on Indigenous narratives and symbolism—but notably it is still the white lead that saves the day, and it is through himself ‘becoming Indigenous’ that this happens. Likewise, the “subversive potential” of George Miller’s 2015 Mad Max: Fury Road is ultimately undermined by the realisation of a “liberal multicultural future that requires Indigenous peoples to disappear” (Hunt 2018, 72). Hunt situates this narrative within what Fee (1987) describes as ‘totem transfers’, where an identifiably Indigenous character suddenly appears in the narrative, gifts a particular, always significant item or knowledge to a settler, which in effect ‘Indigenises’ them, and then just as suddenly disappears. This narrative constitutes a form of a key figure in settler storytelling: what Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández (2013) term ‘the vanishing Indian’. Hunt (2018, 74) describes these totem transfers as “attempts by white settlers to become autochthonous to the area, a sort of passing of the torch from Indigenous peoples to the new ‘rightful’ inhabitants of the land, white settlers”. While always concerned with futures yet-to-come, sci-fi narratives have rarely afforded a future for Indigenous peoples. Instead, when they do appear, it is only as what Byrd (cited in Hunt 2018) describes as ‘past tense presences’. Despite these ongoing issues, and against the dominant trope of Indigenous peoples as somehow backward-looking, sci-fi has long been an important art form for Indigenous peoples globally. It has constituted a vital outlet for expression of Indigenous desire, hope, longing and imagination. Indeed, it’s no accident that the first film dubbed into Diné (Navajo) was Star Wars: A New Hope (Fricke 2019). “I am often told that

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it is unusual to be both Indigenous and a speculative-fiction writer”, explains Palyku writer and scholar Ambelin Kwaymullina (2014, 27). “But many of the ideas that populate speculative-fiction books—notions of time travel, astral projection, speaking the languages of animals or trees—are part of Indigenous cultures”, Kwaymullina points out (2014, 27). More than this, sci-fi stories are very often set in post-apocalyptic societies—and which peoples have more experience of surviving ecological, cultural and social apocalypses than Indigenous peoples? Indigenous engagement with sci-fi and experimental film is not just about aesthetic enjoyment, but has much broader implications, “where Indigenous cultural activists make room for perceiving and making life otherwise” (Gómez-Barris 2017, 87). And as Kwaymullina explains, the imaginatively expansive nature of the genre means it remains open to Indigenous life ways—particularly its engagement with what Elizabeth La Pensée calls ‘the hyper present now’: “That we look seven generations before, and seven generations ahead” (La Pensée cited in Fricke 2019, 119). 2.2  The Futures in Indigenous Activism However, we want to think about Indigenous Futurisms as extending far beyond particular aesthetic forms, such as sci-fi, and into the fluid, multifarious, continuously unfolding plane of everyday life—self-expressions, artistic experimentation, relationalities, intimacies and, perhaps most centrally, political activism. Ginsburg and Myers (2006) argue for Indigenous political movements and cultural production as forms of different imagining, in which Indigenous peoples are not only understood as either ‘traditional’ (and therefore doomed to extinction) or ‘assimilated’ (and therefore already without culture). They draw on the work of anthropologist Turner who, in contrast to the dominant trope of Indigenous cultural fixity, proposed an emphasis on “indigenous self-production” (Ginsburg and Myers 2006, 28)—which can take place at cultural, social and political levels. Aboriginal activists—both cultural and political—have long offered “hope and a foundation for an Aboriginal future beyond the non-choices of total assimilation or a frozen traditionalism”, Ginsburg and Myers write (2006, 28). Indigenous people in Australia have long expressed distinctively Indigenous futures through a myriad forms of political expression. In 1963, for instance, the Yolngu people at Yirrkala sent petitions to Australian Parliament’s House of Representatives, written in both English and

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Gupapuyngu on tree bark, in protest of the excision of 300 square kilometres of their land for a bauxite mining project. In 1972, four Aboriginal men set up a beach umbrella on the lawns of Parliament House and established the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in protest of the Commonwealth’s approach to land rights. And in 2015, the #SOSBlakAustralia campaign digitally connected Indigenous and non-Indigenous people globally, opposing policy that would see the closure of hundreds of small, remote Indigenous communities across West Australia, and bringing major Australian cities to a standstill. This Indigenous activism is often framed as only ‘standing in the way of progress’: the #SOSBlakAustralia protesters, for instance, were framed by mainstream media as ‘selfish rabble’ who were inconveniencing upstanding citizens trying to get to work (Carlson and Frazer 2016); and protesters at Mauna a Wākea in Hawaiʻi, who were opposing the development of a massive telescope on top of a sacred mountain, were widely understood as “obstructions on a march to ‘the future’” (Goodyear-Ka’opua 2017, 186). While these kinds of political expressions might be understood as purely ‘reactionary’—as entirely entangled within the dualistic, Manichean battle between the evil of colonialism and the good of Indigenous sovereignty—we suggest they contain much more than that. As Flowers (2015, 36) argues: “For Indigenous peoples’ struggles, the unified ‘no’ is also a resounding ‘yes’ to something different, a yes to a reality ‘to-come’”. That is, Indigenous political expression is always about other futures; it “is actually protecting the possibilities of multiple futures” (Goodyear-Ka’opua 2017, 186)—futures generally more expansive and propitious for human and non-human flourishing. Indigenous people are concerned with what Goodyear-Ka’opua calls “the deep time of human survival” (2017, 192)— not settler time, not extractive time, which will sacrifice almost everything, including future possibilities of human existence, for the myopic vision of a settler future. In this sense, Indigenous activists are, as Goodyear-­ Ka’opua (2017) explains, “Protectors of the future, not protestors of the past”. With this in mind, then, we want to emphasise the prefigurative politics of Indigenous Futurisms. Moving beyond ‘just’ opposition, “prefigurative formations involve activists directing effort into performing now their vision of a ‘better world’ to come”, explain Jeffrey and Dyson (2020, 2). They are about ‘being the change’, rather than just hoping for change in some far-distant future. Understanding Indigenous Futurisms through the way it prefigures another future allows us to move beyond the

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aesthetics of Indigenous Futurisms and instead see it as a distinct way of being in the world, an ‘art of existence’, through which something entirely beyond settler colonialism might emerge—and, indeed, is already emerging.

3   Indigenous Digital Futures There is still something transgressive about Indigenous people being online. As we’ve discussed throughout this book, Black and Indigenous people are not associated with technology, particularly digital technology, which remains the realm of white, wealthy, highly urbanised subjects. In this sense, for scholar Andre Brock Jr. (2020), Black cybercultures are, in themselves, cultures of hope. They are a prefigurative politics: the present enactment of a future to come. To be online, as an Indigenous person, is to refuse the settler logic of Indigenous elimination, it is to counter the dominant view that technology is the realm of white people, it is to challenge the view that Indigenous people only exist within some imagined static past, it is to reject the idea that to be ‘authentic’, Indigenous people must live in some far-off, remote region of outback Australia. And associations between digital technology and visions of the future are straightforwardly extended into Indigenous online practice. “The location of the future appears in many places”, Fricke (2019, 117) writes, “including indigenous lands, in space, and perhaps especially online”. For the rest of this chapter, we explore the implications of social media for Indigenous futures. We look back through the ideas, experiences and actions collected in this book, and draw out moments in which other Indigenous Futurisms were being imagined, opened and realised. We unpack the futurities implicit in the digital practices of Indigenous social media users, which we describe below as Future Identities, Future Peoples, and Future Sovereignties. We argue, following this, that rather than being ‘a people of the past’, Indigenous people are already living in the future, and are waiting for the world to catch up. 3.1  Future Identities As we’ve discussed throughout this book, a core function of the settler project is to control ‘who’ and ‘what’ counts as Indigenous. From the moment of invasion, settlers have radically and violently reduced Indigenous people to a highly restricted set of pejorative characteristics.

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The ‘Aborigine’ was a relic of the past, a people on the brink of extinction, a ‘dying race’ who could not be saved. When this supposedly ‘natural’ process of biological extinction did not come to fruition, Indigenous people were subject to increasingly fine-tuned, sophisticated, and contradictory measures of Indigeneity, which ultimately sought “to puzzle, divide, and ultimately cause to vanish, the Indigenous people who continued to pose a problem by their unwillingness to disappear” (Read 1998, 170). While ‘who counts’ as Indigenous is now supposedly a decision left to Indigenous people themselves, as determined in the three-part assessment of Indigeneity, the question of identity appears as contentious as ever (Carlson 2016). Indigenous people with light skin, with university degrees, who ride trams and live in cities are frequently cast as ‘not Indigenous’ (Fredericks 2013)—but also not white either. They are confined to the ‘prison house’ of identity, from which it often appears impossible to escape (Paradies 2006). But all throughout this book, we encountered people who are already producing radically different ways of ‘being Indigenous’. Social media is facilitating not only the strengthening of a collective Indigenous identity, it is aiding the creative proliferation of more diverse forms of Indigeneity. It is producing new ways of ‘being’ Indigenous, by taking the piss out of colonial stereotypes, playing with identity and challenging the colonial logics that demand Indigenous people look, act and speak in a very delimited set of ways. As Dodson (1994, 10) argues, “more than enough ‘fixing’ has already occurred”—what is needed is not more debate around what’s ‘truly’ or ‘authentically’ or ‘traditionally’ Indigenous, but more expansive, fluid and open-ended practices of the self. Rather than settler ‘fixity’, a sense of playfulness pervades Indigenous experimentations of identity. As we argue in chapter “Fun”, through participating in collective forms of Indigenous fun, people can temporarily break free from “the disciplined constraints of daily life, normative obligations, and organised power” (Bayat 2013, 130). This includes expressions of love of country music, waxing nostalgic about Keen’s Curry Powder, bully beef, or shit on toast, or creating memes about Royals complaining about the lack of tomato sauce on their devon. Rather than just being a reactionary response to a colonial reality, fun is a potent form of Indigenous freedom—it is a celebration of identity, connection, experience and group-being. This is seen perhaps most clearly in queer Indigenous expressions of identity, which directly challenge settler understandings of Indigeneity

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and, indeed, even what are often considered ‘Indigenous’ understandings of identity. Rejecting fixed colonial categorisations of human gender and sexuality, queer mob are producing entirely new, joyful and expansive understandings of Indigenous life. As one person explained, Online, in the queer Indigenous context … we have separate kinds of groups on Instagram for sharing different bits and pieces of photos. Because I do a bit of drag as well, so I’m part of a drag family. So there’s also our drag group Facebook and things like that. So there’s definitely that regional kind of queer Black stuff.

Far from being a people of the past, unchanging and fixed in time, Indigeneity is radically dynamic, and the connections formed through social media are providing new pathways for experimentation with and expression of identity. Future Indigenous identities are already being realised in the here-and-now, outside the colonial categorisations that have served only to contain and erase the incredible heterogeneity and joy of Indigenous life. 3.2  Future Communities Social media has always been framed as a tool for social connection; providing platforms through which entirely new communities of concern, care and interest can be sustained—unshackled by the social, cultural and political problems or ‘real’ territorially bound communities. Indigenous communities, on the other hand, are often pathologized as sites of social disfunction, alcoholism, and sexual abuse. Media reporting on the intersection between Indigenous communities and social media almost exclusively focused on the ways it has apparently intensified existing issues, including inter-family conflict. Outside both of these discourses, and as we discuss in chapter “Community”, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of community for Indigenous people. Indigenous people occupy a ‘kin-centric’ universe, populated by the people, more-than-humans, places and things to whom one is related. Indigenous life is thus structured around the community; and for many Indigenous people, community is both the core unit and central value of social life. But this is not to say ‘community’ is not, very often, a problematic space for Indigenous people. First, the ‘Indigenous community’ is often

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discussed as if it were a fixed, monolithic social structure; it is often understood as comprised of a clearly defined set of members who hold homogeneous views, hopes and desires. This is far from the case, however. Dudgeon et al. (2002) note that there is “no definitive position on the notion of ‘community’” among Indigenous people; instead, they found a rich “diversity and pluralism amongst what is broadly termed ‘the Aboriginal community’” (2002, 2). Second, the existence of relatively discrete Indigenous communities are often bound up within colonial policies of separation and segregation, through which Indigenous people were taken from their Country, fenced in on missions and reserves, and forced to live together. And third, ‘community’ is not always a welcome space for many Indigenous people. People who, through historical disconnections brought about through colonial policy, don’t ‘have’ an identifiable community are often not included within these social formations. Moreover, people with diverse gender and sexuality identities often experience exclusion from their communities, as fixed, hierarchical, colonial conceptualisations of gender and sexuality have been accepted as fact (Farrell 2017). But social media—a digital technology apparently dedicated to the production of connections between people—is providing new forms of social expression. While there was some disagreement among the people we spoke to about whether the connections formed online could ever constitute an ‘Indigenous community’, there is no doubt that it is producing some kind of community. Indigenous people described recreating their kinship connections online; reconnecting with lost kin, people separated through policies of removal; and creating connections to Indigenous people the country over, or even across geopolitical boundaries. In this sense, it is a new continuation of what one person described as the “Great Black Bond”. “It is still a traditional way of communication going on”, another person explained to us, “but it’s giving us a new form. So it will create a way for kids to access a lot more experience to create their identity than just with their family”. Importantly, the kin-centric world of Indigenous community extends beyond the living, encompassing communal connections with the dead. Emerging digital practices of death are producing new norms, protocols and logics around Sorry Business— including practices of maintaining living connections with those who have passed. Again, it was the LGBTIQ+ people we talked to who described the most radical digital formations of Indigenous community. As the

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participant above explained, there exist proliferating spaces of communal connection for queer mob, including for people engaged in drag, sistergirls and brotherboys, and trans mob. Social media is, as Farrell (2017, 8) argues, “facilitat[ing] Indigenous LGBTIQ+ politics to benefit the wider Indigenous community as it reconceptualises how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities know themselves, their histories and identities”. Indigenous LGBTIQ+ people are collectively creating new forms of Indigenous connection, new spaces of inclusion, and new digital arenas for communal expression—far beyond any fixed and reductive colonial conceptualisations of what an Indigenous community ‘should’ look like. 3.3  Future Sovereignties Finally, this book is littered with powerful examples of Indigenous people’s expression of their rights to determine who they are, who they belong to, and what should happen to their people and their country. This is not contained only to those acts most obviously categorised as ‘political’, such as those ‘movement moments’ discussed in chapter “Activism”. Instead, reclamation of the right to assert one’s own sense of oneself and one’s connection to others is central to Indigenous sovereignty. Sovereignty is contained within every Indigenous expression that does not neatly abide by the settler vision of how the world ‘should’ be. An Indigenous politics of refusal, as Audra Simpson (2017) argues, is not just a reactionary opposition to a dominant power structure, it is an expression of one’s own agency and the sovereignty of one’s people. The refusal to be contained and ‘fixed’ within colonial articulations of Indigeneity, the refusal to obediently fulfil a settler vision of an Indigenous community stuck in an unchanging past, the refusal to quietly die out—these actions contain within them seeds of freedom and sovereignty from which other Indigenous futures might blossom. This does not have to be contained to sovereignty at the level of the nation. Instead, it can begin from reclaiming one’s “first homelands: the body”, as Driskill (2004, 53) argues. As Alex Wilson similarly argues, “Indigenous sovereignty over our lands is inseparable from sovereignty over our bodies, sexuality and gender expression” (2015, 4). In chapter “Desire”, we discussed how Indigenous people are engaged with dating apps in ways that directly work towards this ‘Sovereign Erotic’, as Driskill describes it. The relations of sexual desire that apps like Grindr make possible are often reproductive of colonial power relations, which position

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muscular white men at the apex of the sexual hierarchy. But they also offer opportunities to develop critical consciousness of this colonial desire, to question it, and ultimately reject it. As one person told us, their decision to begin dating non-white men came about through: my own reflections about, like, decolonising sexual preferences and desire…the majority of the men that I’ve slept with in my lengthy sexual career have been majority white. There’s been other mob [Indigenous] but um, you know, mostly white men. And like, why is that? (Gay male, 30s, NSW)

Likewise, another explained how they had directly sought to reclaim sovereignty over their body, using dating apps to assert their rejection of colonial desire, and to mark their body as not available for the use of white men: because white people have colonised my land and I’m not gonna let them colonise my body. It’s that last part of sovereignty of my body that I want to maintain. … You know, our bodies have been used in ways by white people that even today that I don’t want to let a white man touch my body. (Heterosexual female, 40s NSW)

The digital practices of Indigenous people are expanding Indigenous sovereignties—sovereignties that extend across space both digital and terrestrial, encompassing the intimate realms of sexual desire, the virtual lines of digital connection, and one’s more ‘grounded’ attachments to place. Far from only rejecting one form of desire, they are already prefiguring a future where one’s own body has been decolonised.

4   Openings: Indigenous People Are Already Living in the Future More than any other people, Indigenous people have been defined by what they supposedly do not have—good morals, well-functioning communities, capacity for change and even a future. Our broad look at Indigenous digital life tells a very different story. Rather than being somehow technology-averse, Indigenous peoples are engaged complexly, adeptly and playfully with digital technology. The dynamic digital life of Indigenous people marks not a culture in decline, but one full of life. The

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connections sustained online are not just sites of social tension, but are very often productive of joyful, experimental social formations of care, desire, friendship and love. And instead of being a ‘people of the past’, as Kuwada (2015) argues, Indigenous people are already living in the future—a future where their identities are unshackled from settler knowledge formations, where their connections to one another proliferate joyfully into new, more inclusive combinations, and where their lands and bodies are no longer the free domain of settler desire, but instead become powerful agents of their own sovereignties. Settler futurities invariably foreclose Indigenous futurities; but Indigenous futurities can open new futures for all. Far exceeding the tightly constrained, highly myopic vision of settler futurity, these Indigenous Futurisms are instead embedded within the highly heterogenous, everyday digital articulations of Indigeneity—of desire, community, love and hope.

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Index1

NUMBERS AND SYMBOLS #BlackfullaTwitter, 15, 125, 129–131, 136 #BlakTok, 15, 125, 131–135 #IdleNoMore, 171, 172 #IndigenousDads, 15, 167, 181–182 #Koorioke, 125, 128–131, 136 #SOSBlakAustralia, 170, 214, 231, 244 A Abbott, Tony, 40 Aboriginal Lives Matter, 15, 36, 167, 174–179, 204 Aboriginal Tent Embassy, 27, 169, 244 Aboriginal, urban, 40, 74 Absorption, policy, 25, 239 Activism, 9, 13, 15, 27, 125, 128, 165–184, 189, 191, 203, 204, 214, 218, 219, 231, 232, 243–245, 249

Affect, 72, 75, 105, 125, 128, 136, 137, 142, 143, 150, 160, 167, 183 Afrofuturism, 8, 106, 241 Ahmed, Sara, 143, 167, 173, 174, 179, 240 Ally, allies, allyship, 16, 22, 172, 204, 213–234 Assimilation, policy, 27 Australia Day, 79, 87, 191, 198–202, 209, 210 Australian nationalism, Australian nation, 15, 16, 190, 191, 194, 198 B Black armband history, 193 Black Lives Matter (BLM), 36, 110, 128, 167, 175–178, 189, 204, 206, 207, 209, 213, 214, 217, 218, 225, 226, 231 Blood quantum, 24, 38

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 B. Carlson, R. Frazer, Indigenous Digital Life, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84796-8

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INDEX

Body sovereignty, 104, 111–116 Bolt, Andrew, 28–30, 35 Bringing Them Home report, 100 Brotherboys, 107, 249 C Capitalism, 51 Colonial desire, 112, 250 Community, communities, 1, 22, 47, 71, 96, 121, 141, 170, 206, 214, 238 Confirmation of identity, 27 Conflict, 37, 55, 60, 67, 80, 153, 156, 159, 168, 209, 233, 247 Country music, 129, 130, 246 COVID-19, coronavirus, 81, 128, 131, 141, 155, 173 Culture, 8, 10, 12, 15, 40, 54–56, 60, 63, 72, 74, 75, 78, 81, 91, 99, 102, 103, 107, 112, 126, 132, 134–136, 143, 146–152, 157, 159–161, 166, 169, 182, 195, 198, 207, 237, 238, 241, 243, 245, 250 Cyberbullying, 5, 6, 85 Cybercultures, 245 D Dating, 14, 36, 95–99, 103–108, 111, 114, 115, 250 Dating apps, 63, 96–99, 104, 105, 107, 109, 116, 249, 250 Day of mourning, 199, 203 Deaths in custody, 128, 176–179, 204, 208 Decolonisation, 112, 173, 218–221, 223, 225, 227, 229, 230, 232–234 Decolonising desire, 111–117 Deficiency, discourse, 240

Deficit discourse, 240 Desire, desirability, 14, 17, 29, 49, 63, 73, 76, 95–117, 121, 136, 166, 170, 218, 220–222, 233, 238, 241, 242, 248–251 Devon, 21, 40–42, 126–128, 136, 246 Digital divide, 3, 8, 49 Digital revolution, 51, 52 Divas Chat, 47 Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, 173 E Emotion, 12, 15, 87, 144, 145, 154, 167, 171–173, 175, 177, 183, 184, 221 F Facebook, 1–4, 7, 9, 10, 14, 32, 34, 47–49, 57–61, 65, 66, 71, 75, 79, 81–84, 86, 89, 96, 106, 107, 121, 125, 136, 141, 144, 145, 150–154, 157–159, 161, 171, 174, 183, 197, 201–203, 206–209, 224, 226, 230, 237, 247 Floyd, George, 166, 167, 173–178, 189, 198, 203, 204, 213 Food, Indigenous, 126, 128, 136 Free speech, 75, 77, 91, 181 Friendship, friends, 2, 5, 14, 18n3, 32, 34, 56, 59, 61, 66, 77, 78, 89, 95–98, 102, 105–108, 111, 115, 126, 134, 142, 144, 145, 150, 151, 153, 159, 225, 226, 233, 251 Futures, 7, 8, 13, 15–17, 49, 52, 54, 60, 68, 78, 100, 165, 167, 168, 179, 184, 190, 194, 203, 208, 223, 233, 237–251

 INDEX 

Futurism, futurity, 239, 240, 245, 251 Futurisms, Indigenous, 8, 16, 17, 238, 240–245, 251 G Gay community, 62, 63, 65–68, 108 Gender, 6, 8, 12, 52, 62, 63, 96–98, 103, 106–108, 112, 247–249 Gender-based violence, rape, sexual violence, 71, 98–101, 103, 108, 116, 121, 195, 207 Governance, internet, 75 Grief, 141–146, 149, 150, 155, 156, 158–160, 167, 180, 193, 204 Grindr, 65, 66, 97–99, 104–106, 108, 109, 115, 249 H Hanson, Pauline, 28, 29, 35 Hashtag, 40, 134, 136, 171, 175, 178, 201, 205 Hate, 9, 14, 52, 71–91, 96, 110, 111, 121, 135, 203, 225 Hate speech, 5, 72, 75–77, 82, 86, 89, 91, 201 Heteronormative, 98 Heteropatriarchy, 106, 116 History Wars, 16, 191, 192, 194, 195, 199, 200, 209 Homophobia, 64, 65, 106 Hope, 17, 49, 52, 53, 126, 167, 172, 179, 238, 240–243, 245, 248, 251 Howard, John, 193 Humour, 39–41, 80–82, 122–128, 132, 136 racist, 80–82

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I Identifying, 2, 27, 35, 38, 108 Identity, 1, 21, 49, 72, 108, 121, 146, 172, 191, 218, 246 Indigeneity, 13, 15, 17, 22–24, 26–28, 30–35, 37, 38, 41, 42, 65, 67, 74, 88, 90, 91, 110, 112, 124, 134, 221, 238, 241, 246, 247, 249, 251 Indigenous Futurisms, 16, 17, 238, 240–245, 251 Indigenous lives matter, 179, 203–208 Indigenous Studies, 2, 4, 241 IndigenousX, 32, 121, 131, 170, 182, 225 Instagram, 7, 10, 14, 32, 36, 65, 81, 85, 86, 95, 121, 135, 174, 197, 202, 207, 208, 213, 226, 227, 230, 232, 237, 247 Invasion Day, 16, 87, 191, 198, 199, 202 J Jokes, Aboriginal, 39, 81 K Kin, kinship, 5, 14, 34, 35, 50, 53, 55–62, 67, 148, 153, 154, 157, 160, 161, 168, 248 L Latham, Mark, 29, 30, 35 Leak, Bill, 102, 180–183 LGBTIQ+, 6, 53, 63–64, 97, 98, 106, 248, 249 Logic of elimination, 26, 41, 240, 245 Love, 5, 14, 15, 17, 40, 95–99, 103–107, 111, 116, 121, 130, 131, 141, 147, 154, 158, 159, 167, 172, 174, 179–184, 189, 203, 214, 238, 241, 246, 251

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INDEX

M Memes, 10, 14, 40, 81, 82, 87, 122, 127, 128, 136, 141, 142, 181, 202, 246 Memes, Aboriginal, 81, 82, 85 Morrison, Scott, 177, 189–192, 204, 206, 208, 209 N Native Title, 165 Neville, A. O., 25, 30, 38, 41, 42 Norms, 4, 15, 51, 53, 63, 76, 96, 98, 99, 106, 126, 143, 144, 146, 147, 149, 151–153, 156, 157, 160, 161, 216, 248 O OkCupid, 98, 104 P Pascoe, Bruce, 21–23 Peris, Nova, 86 Platformed racism, 75 Platform vernaculars, 149, 156, 160 Play, 13, 16, 22, 23, 31, 40, 41, 60, 61, 68, 77, 85, 91, 102, 110, 112, 113, 116, 117, 122, 123, 125, 136, 137, 149, 151, 191, 198, 204, 209, 215, 223, 227, 233, 241 Possessive logics, possession, 73, 74, 240 Prefigurative politics, 244, 245 Protection, policy, 111 Publics, 16, 78 ad hoc, 182, 191, 214 affective, 125, 136, 137 networked, 124, 125

Q Queer, 62–65, 67, 97, 99, 106–107, 134–136, 246, 247, 249 R Race, 8, 12, 24, 30, 63, 72, 73, 77, 80, 82, 86, 90, 91, 96, 98, 99, 103, 107, 108, 113, 149, 202, 204, 216, 238, 239, 246 Race misrecognition, 35, 37–38 Racial Discrimination Act (RDA), 29, 76, 82 Racial exclusion, 83, 110 Racialisation, 73–77, 86, 91 Racism, 5, 34, 63, 71, 95, 127, 168, 200, 214 Reconciliation, 166, 178, 179 Reconciliation Week, 165–167, 177 Refusal, a politics of, 249 Reproductive rights, 100 RSVP, 104, 108 S Science fiction, 241, 242 Self-determination, 26–28, 41, 173, 194 Settler, the, 10, 21, 53, 73, 100, 121, 141, 165, 190, 215, 237 Settler colonialism, 11, 12, 30, 73–77, 124, 147, 150, 182, 190, 192–198, 204, 206, 208–210, 218, 219, 221, 226, 239–241, 245 Settler Colonial Studies, 190, 241 Sexuality, 8, 12, 63, 96, 98–100, 102–103, 106–108, 111–113, 117, 134, 247–249 Sexual racism, 63, 110–111 Sistergirls, 47, 63, 106, 107, 249 Skin, colour, 25, 35, 38

 INDEX 

Slavery, 189, 190, 192, 195, 198, 204–206, 209 Solidarity, 16, 35, 39, 49, 50, 53, 55, 67, 83, 95, 124, 125, 137, 167, 170, 172, 204, 214, 215, 219–223, 225–227, 230–233 Sorry Business, 15, 142, 143, 146–150, 153–155, 159–161, 248 Sovereign Erotic, 112, 114, 116–117, 249 Sovereignty, 11, 14, 23, 32, 33, 38, 41, 55, 67, 91, 96, 104, 112, 115–117, 166, 168, 169, 171, 179, 184, 194, 199, 207, 221, 224, 226, 230–232, 244, 249–251 Stanner, WEH, 21, 39, 123, 192, 210n1 T Taking the piss, 13, 23, 38–42, 124, 126, 246 Technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV), 98 Terra nullius, 21, 22, 165, 168 Three-part assessment, 27, 246 TikTok, 81, 125, 131–136, 230, 231, 237

259

Tinder, 95, 97, 98, 104, 109, 111, 112, 115 Twitter, 10, 14, 27, 31–33, 40, 41, 48, 57, 65, 71, 89, 113, 121, 125, 129, 131, 136, 157, 174, 183, 190, 197, 198, 201, 207–209, 214, 215, 224–228, 230, 231, 237 U Uluru Statement from the Heart, 32, 197 Utopia, utopian, 51–53, 61, 72, 75, 242 W White Australia policy, 100 Whiteness, 73, 98, 99, 216, 217, 228–230 Y YouTube, 87, 201 Z Zapatistas, 170, 197