Social Media – Page 4

After completing the first week’s readings, I thought about how it was that computers were at least partly to blame for transmitting the messages, images, and values which are incongruent with and degrading to traditional First Nations/Native culture. After last week’s discovery of Idle No More, decided to explore some of the other ways First Nation/Native people have co-opted computer technology and social media for their own purposes. YouTube proved to be an interesting resource for this objective.

I watched several promotional-style videos urging individuals to support the peaceful revolution behind the Idle No More movement, but one video in particular stuck out for me.

https://youtu.be/VEc3ZYqj5Fw

The video is a music video by Drezus for a song called Red Winter. Drezus is a Plains Cree-Saulteaux veteran hip hop artist and he presents quite an enigma with the cultural boundaries he simultaneously blurs and reinforces in this video.

A sample of his lyrics are telling:

My skins red, I bleed red, I‟m seeing red/
I’m praying for my people out there who haven’t seen it yet/
His blood is cold, tellin lies forever told/
By his ancestors 500 years ago/
Yeah I said it, got my people getting restless/
Making money off our land and we aint even on the guest-list/
Carry on traditions of a racist pilgrim/
And I know you really love it when my people play the victim/
Cause it makes it seem like we‟re folding under pressure/
But we’re up to bat now no more playing catcher/
Cause we see the bigger the picture that we have to capture/
See how quick we get together? We out to get ya!

This could be a useful piece of evidence for anyone analyzing cultural influence via computers/the media.

In recent months, Canada has loosened its regulations with regards to what constitutes “Canadian content” for broadcast on Canadian channels. Faye Ginsberg’s reading in the second week of this course prompted me to want to dig a little deeper into the topic of indigenous sovereignty in Canadian media. I wondered whether any part of this new definition of “Canadian content” reflected the First Nations/Native elements of Canada’s population. Interestingly, the first hit after a simple Google search was the Idle No More Movement.

Although I didn’t find any answers regarding the definition of “Canadian Content”, the movement is an interesting one insofar as First Nations/Native people used the power of social media to prompt the mobilization of people behind the cause.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/01/11/social_media_helps_drive_idle_no_more_movement.html

http://aptn.ca/news/2012/12/11/the-tweet-that-sparked-a-movement/

It’s worth a look for anyone who might be interested in First Nations and social media. It’s also worth searching up the hashtag #idlenomore on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sites.