I am a Cree woman who identifies as an urban Aboriginal (displaced) Canadian. Separated through forces of colonization from my traditional territory in Northern BC and Alberta and from my family who live throughout Western Canada, I rely on social media for some aspects of my social and familial connections, and my cultural identity development and learning. For example, the poem “Are you up for the journey” was shared on Facebook with friends and family as a way to share my personal journey of learning about Indigenous knowledge.
Previously, I have argued that Facebook can be viewed as a space where informal adult learning takes place on a daily basis. Through social interactions, sharing of information, and exposure to ideas and discussions, those of us who use social media sites like Facebook, are engaging in more than a mindless pursuit. In addition, an individual’s personal identity is brought to interactions in social media spaces; identity affects how we use social media and our identities are affected by our interactions on social media:
Ultimately, Facebook is a tangled web of social interactions, relationships, corporatization, political action, learning, identity development and more. To some extent, Facebook, and other social media sites, have become an online reflection and extension of our physical selves as Vasudevan (2010) describes in her conceptualization of digital geographies. We navigate these spaces with our smart phones and laptops – on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites. With these online platforms, our feet remain planted on solid ground, while our social interactions, and our learning, exist in a virtual world that has the potential to be just as relevant as our physical reality. (Hambler, unpublished manuscript, 2011)
My personal identity as mother, wife, daughter, scholar, and consumer is part of how I interact in these digital geographies: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn. In addition, I have found that my identity as a Cree woman and as an Aboriginal Canadian, is connected to how I interact with others and their ideas using social media.
Using this blog as a platform, I will expand on my previous argument that Facebook is a space of informal adult learning. Using my own social media interactions as a case study, I will use Indigenous education theory to explore cultural identity development and learning as an urban Aboriginal person living in Canada.