Prior to watching this video, I do warn you of some real pictures and stories of abuse and racism is pictured, so watch and listen with care. The problem with this statement that I had just made is that many stories we hear about Indigenous people require such a discretion to be read out.
My focus for my paper is on Social media and how it maintains Indigenous Identity, language and culture, this TedTalk resonated with me because social media allowed them to reverse the dialogue and to come out of stereotypes and deficit thinking. #IndigenousDads was started by Joel Bayliss who used his rage from racism and mistreatment and social media to reverse the dialogue of portraying Indigenous Dad’s in negative ways to that of positivity. It was started as a response to a cartoon that used a very negative stereotype of Indigenous people, particularly Indigenous father’s, showing them as alcoholics that can’t even know their child. This was shortly after a Detention Centre leaked photos of Indigenous youths that were detained had covers placed over their heads and were abused. This made Joel Bayliss and many Indigenous people feel like the blame was on families to what had happened in the Detention Centre. Joel’s hashtag and twitter post of his day spent with his family garnered much attention, and demonstrates how social media allows authentic representations of Indigenous people, their culture, identity and language.