Indigenous X
Description
Indigenous X examines Native Twitter as a defining moment in Indigenous digital life and as part of a longer history of Indigenous cultural production. Rather than treating the collapse of the platform as the end of the story, the book situates Indigenous engagement online as a set of relational practices that extend beyond any single technology.
This collection brings together essays, conversations, roundtables, and online texts by Indigenous scholars, writers, activists, and community members. It explores how Indigenous peoples have used social media to organize politically, share knowledge, sustain language and culture, debate ethics, and navigate visibility and surveillance. Topics include Indigenous movements, digital storytelling, language revitalization, research methods, and the responsibilities that govern Indigenous presence in digital spaces. Together, the chapters trace how Native Twitter functioned as a gathering place shaped by Indigenous protocols, histories, and relationships.
Rather than framing Twitter’s transformation as an endpoint, Indigenous X understands Native Twitter as a historically specific formation whose practices continue to inform Indigenous digital worlds across platforms and into everyday life. The book offers a grounded framework for understanding Indigenous digital life without romanticizing technology or resistance, and will be useful to scholars, students, librarians, and readers interested in Indigenous studies, media studies, and contemporary social and political life.
More details
Persons
Jeffrey Ansloos, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Studies in Health. His research examines social and political dimensions of Indigenous health, cultural production, and digital media, including Native Twitter. He is a member of Fisher River Cree Nation and lives in Toronto.
Ashley Caranto Morford (she/her) is a diasporic Filipina-British settler scholar and educator whose interdisciplinary work is in relationship with Filipinx/a/o studies, Indigenous studies, critical race studies, anti-colonial methods and praxis, literary studies, and digital humanities. Ashley is an Assistant Professor of Multiethnic American Literatures at Weber State University.
David Gaertner is a settler scholar and an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia. His research sits at the intersection of Indigenous studies, digital media, and critical AI studies, with a focus on extractivism, infrastructure, and colonial afterlives of technology. He teaches courses on community-engaged research, media theory, and digital storytelling.
Content
Introduction: Jeffrey Ansloos, Ashley Caranto-Morford, David Gaertner
Part I: Digital Smoke Signals: Movements within Indigenous X
Chapter 1: Social Media Potentialities and Legacy Media Framing: A Close Analysis on #NoDAPL - Shanna Peltier
Chapter 2: Public Square and Echo Chamber: Ten Years on Twitter - Dorothy Kim,
Chapter 3: How the Idle No More Movement Helped to Redefine Organizing - Nickita Longman
Chapter 4: Blacking Out Twitter: “Hashing Out” The Hashtag - Bronwyn Carlson
Chapter 5: Sharing Oshkimadizijik Inéwin (Youth Voices) through Social Media - Joey-Lynn Wabie, Michelle Kennedy, Candy Blair, Julia Coleman, Jordyn Hendricks, Michael Whiteloon, and Akin Taiwo
Part II: Cyber Ceremony: Language, Community, Culture, and Meaning with Indigenous X
Chapter 6: Doing Indigenous Language Revitalization and Reclamation through Twitter - Ǧvu̓í/Q̓vúq̓vsṃí - Rory Housty, Jessica Louise Verl McLay, and Mark Turin
Chapter 7: Indigenous X is not Technonullius: Land-based relations in Digital Territory - Ashley Caranto Morford and Jeffrey Ansloos
Chapter 8: Data Mining in Indigenous Virtual Communities: The Case for Indigenous Internet Research Protocols - Jordyn Hrenyk
Chapter 9: Spiral Galaxies”: On the possibility of care and community on Twitter - Daniel Heath Justice and David Gaertner
Part III: Virtual Powwow Protocols: Ethics and Methods with Indigenous X
Chapter 10: Research Ethics for InDigiScapes: Indigenous Voices on Twitter during the 2019 Canadian Federal Election - Kelsey Leonard, Chelsea Gabel, and Marrissa Mathews
Chapter 11: Technification and Surveillance: Concessions Inherent in a Digital Presence - Courteney Morin
Chapter 12: Black Indigenous #NativeTwitter Roundtable - Carrington Christmas and Joy Henderson
Chapter 13: Twitter Thread: Chelsea Vowel, “Land Back: Twitter Thread”
Chapter 14: Literary Works of Indigenous Life: On Reading Native Twitteratures - Jeffrey Ansloos and Ashley Caranto Morford
Chapter 15: Anti-Black Racism in Our Community: A Twitter Thread - Joy Henderson