Indigenized Leisure and Data Colonialist Systems

Addressing Invisible Presence Through the Visibility of Indigenous Identities Online

Abstract

Social media sites and the opportunities they advertise are often promoted as facilitating community connection, creativity, and listening with others. Many facets and descriptors of social media opportunities can be related to First Nations’ understanding of what comprises wellness and leisure. With this in mind, many Indigenous users may partake in social media with the expectation of a primarily leisurely online experience that would contribute to an individual’s health and wellness. Couldry and Mejias’ (2019) concept of ‘data colonialism’ frames the purpose of online spaces such as the social media platforms TikTok, Instagram, and X (Twitter) as having a very different goal, one removed from leisure or where leisure is nothing more than a symptom of data collection efforts. This digital auto-ethnographic project, assisted by discourse analysis, utilizes the researcher’s Anishinaabe identity markers through site profiles to gather data which explores whether or not social media sites are truly a space of leisure for First Nation’s users under ‘data colonialism.’ This project finds a clash in data collection functions and online community opportunities, which renders Indigenized leisure within the digital space a fallacy. In council with teachings from Velkova and Kaun’s (2021) article Algorithmic Resistance: Media Practices and the Politics of Repair and Wemigwans’ (2018) A Digital Bundle; Protecting and Promoting Indigenous Knowledge Online, this project looks to the future, discussing the manipulation of social media affordances towards a true online wellness space for Indigenous users.