publishedJul 12, 2022 at 4:25 am
A new generation of Indigenous influencers are posting heavily on social media to educate about their cultures and traditions. To do this, they stand up to cyber bullies and strengthen the community from within.
Shina Novalinga from Montréal reports on Instagram and Tiktok about her everyday life as an Inuit woman.
Instagram/shinanova
China Novalinga eats raw beluga whale and caribou meat with her mother, has her face tattooed and performs the traditional Inuit throat singing. The 25-year-old uploads the clips to social media. Shina is an Inuk living in Montréal, Canada. She owes her close connection to the Inuit traditions to her mother, as she explains on her Instagram account. Here she addresses her way of life and shares it with 1.9 million followers. Since one of her Tiktok clips went viral in April 2020, Shina’s reach on social platforms has been steadily expanding. Last but not least, this success enabled her to be invited to the influencer festival Coachella or a cover story in the Canadian Elle magazine. In the long comment columns, Shina gets a lot of credit for her posts. The profile visitors feel that they have been educated and are given the opportunity to ask questions.
Empowered and Proud
Shina became a representative and advocate for her culture and is just one example of many emerging influencers with Indigenous roots. According to the Aboriginal organization, these communicate Creative Spirits share their values and who they are through social media: proud instead of shy, empowered instead of sidelined. They represent important identity figures for young people and allow people from all over the world to get in touch with their traditions. The content creators can take advantage of the reach of Tiktok and Co. to spread niche topics and discuss political issues, thus giving the concerns of indigenous groups greater visibility. On the other hand, according to Creative Spirits, this development is also putting increasing pressure on indigenous youth to present themselves and their culture to a digital public.
The fight against hate speech
The use of social media is popular among tribal peoples because it is easy to understand and access, writes the media company network The Conversation. In addition, they represented an important tool for networking and strengthening the sense of community. Here, culture, history and heritage can be passed on so effectively that social media is already understood as a modern manifestation of oral tradition.
Strengthening cohesion and mutual support on social media is important for indigenous people, as they are exposed to disrespectful comments there. One Analyse from the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University in Australia found that 97 percent of Indigenous study groups regularly have bad experiences on social media and are discriminated against and insulted there. This, in turn, has serious negative effects on the mental health of those affected. It is therefore important that the assembled community stands up for its individual members. In many cases this is already evident.
Shina Novalinga is also encouraged in this way. « Came to the comments section looking for judgmental and rude comments and quickly found many. Some of you look far too quickly with an Anglo-American perspective on foreign cultures that you don’t understand anything about,” writes a follower under Shina’s video, for example, trying to encourage the influencer.