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.

This award-winning work explores the complexities surrounding contemporary Aboriginal identity. Drawing on a range of historical and research literature, interviews and surveys, The Politics of Identity explores Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal understandings of Aboriginality and the way these concepts are produced and reproduced across a range of sites and contexts. Carlson discusses the multiple, yet narrow definitions of Aboriginal identity that have existed throughout Australias colonial history and its continuing impact upon contemporary Aboriginal identities. Emphasizing Indigenous debates and claims about Aboriginality, the work explores both the community and external tensions around appropriate measures of identity and the pressures and effects of identification. An analysis of online Indigenous communities on social media that have emerged as sites of contestation adds to the growing knowledge in this area, both nationally and globally. This is a brave and personal contribution to the often vexed subject of Aboriginal identity and offers a distinctive and fresh line of analysis.

This book explores the different colonial commemorations present in Australia today, andhow these related to Aboriginal peoples at the time of their creation, and how they relate toboth Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians today. It details the interesting storiesbehind many of these colonial commemorations and explores how Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities have worked together in an attempt to acknowledge and addressthe problems presented by these commemorations. By documenting these stories, thisbook honours the efforts and achievements of those Aboriginal and non-Aboriginalcommunities and individuals and identifies key elements of pathways forward that othercommunities may find useful.