Indigenous Internet Users: Learning to Trust Ourselves

ABSTRACT ‘Trust in the System’ is contentious, if not spurious for many Indigenous Internet users. ‘Trust’ signifies as a term that embodies (and disembodies) our experiences from over 200 years of colonisation. Research has shown that Indigenous people have typically been early adopters of digital technologies. Over the last decade or so, social media technologies have gradually become a central part of our everyday lives. These platforms offer opportunities to connect across vast distances and diverse populations. They provide a space to express one’s identity, connect with community, learn, play, seek love, organise political action, find lost friends and family, search for employment, seek help in times of need – and much more. Indigenous people have made particular use of social media for agitating for social justice. Information can be distributed, events coordinated and alliances spontaneously forged across great distances largely outside of the surveillance and control of state actors. Assessing the actual impact of online activism is not a straightforward matter – any concept of ‘trust in the system’ demands that we begin to infiltrate that system in order to force ‘it’ to incorporate the views and experiences of Indigenous actors and activists online.