How does media broadcast Native voice/perspective? How does this form of “storytelling” negotiate Native identity? How are non-Native audiences reacting to these performances? This study examines social media use in Native American communities and continues my previous engagement with Native American storytelling by investigating digital performances, stories, and discourses. By utilizing an anthropologically informed discourse-centered approach to language and culture, I collected and analyzed a range of social media posts from Tiktok, Youtube, and Instagram by individual influencers. Native Influencers act as “Masters of Social Media”, utilizing the interconnectivity of their platforms and their own agency to educate, self-represent, and create a space that is intrinsically “Native”. This is all a process of decolonization of media self-representation. By use of hashtags, Native users are able to index and create intertextual references to their online communities while also linking events in the offline world. Some Native users create media solely to entertain, but others have created hybridizations of “edu-tainment” where they utilize entextualized Native tropes and perspectives in order to make fun of non-natives and assert their own agency. My previous research investigated the ways in which Native people were always contributing to activism whether they were standing on a soapbox, dancing in their traditional regalia, or performing Qiarvaaq (Inuk throat singing). In this investigation, instead of allowing Native stereotypes to dominate media, Native influencers utilize social media as a forum for self-representation reaching broader audiences across multiple platforms. The ingeniousness of these Native Influencers lies in their agency and their ability to lead the world as individuals showcasing Native perspective. In a world where the “Hollywood Indian” may be the only reference of Native peoples, these influencers provide a much-needed point-of-view.
Author: Emma Fanning
Faculty Advisor: Leighton C. Peterson, Anthropology
You must be logged in to post a comment.