As I focus my final project on What Identity Is and how Indigenous people are using social media to maintain their identity, language and culture, I needed to determine, How Indigenous community members identify with their distinct identities. This blog is of a self-identified “Kwakwaka’wakw located between Comox and Port Hardy on Vancouver Island and adjacent mainland of British Columbia, I am an initiated member of the Hamatsa Society and am in line to become a hereditary chief. I am a status Indian” (Indigenous Corporate Training Inc., 2018). He establishes the importance and reason why many Indigenous community members have moved to self-identification rather being ascribed their identities. This is due to the historical practices of assimilation, where Indigenous people are constantly being told how to act and what their cultural practices should be like. Even today, many Western perspectives judge Indigenous people on their cultural practices. As well, historically, Indigenous people who lose their identities if they married non-Indian members. This constant control of their identities pushed Indigenous people to reclaim their own identities and reclaiming their own voices of who they are.
Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. (2018, February 8). What is Indigenous identity? Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/what-is-indigenous-identity