kahs2012:

I had never realized how different the dynamics are for Native people when they use the internet until I got a tumblr account.

I don’t mean in terms of what sites we use, how we chat with people, etc but rather as to what we often tend to find on the internet when looking for information pertaining to ourselves, our Nations or our history. 

When I look up general words like “Native American” or “First Nations” a lot of stuff comes up that often bothers me. You see websites made by people to sell Native art replicas, replicas of traditional objects, auction sites selling actual traditional objects, fake websites with inaccurate information, etc. It’s really ridiculous. 

People are not going to be able to learn real accurate information with all of this junk circulating online. We are already a very misunderstood ethnic group and on top of that we have to deal with the misinterpretations of our culture, language and history online. People use the internet to find out all sorts of information and the things they are finding about us is often incorrect. 

How in the world can we even begin to fix this? The internet is like public domain….it’s used, access and retained by tons of people all over the world. I’m actually glad to see that the Navajo Nation was able to fight against companies that were trying to market their products by using the name of their Nation. How can we make this more universal? How can we help ensure that people are getting the right information?

I’m not sure how to explain this any other way but to describe the frustration I feel when I look up photos of my Nations and see pictures on auction sites of artifacts that belonged to my ancestors - sometimes going for $10 or $15 on some website. Can you imagine looking up your mother or grandmother’s name on the internet and stumbling upon websites selling their hair, their bones, their clothes, their favourite objects? When I see artifacts on auction sites that is how I feel. I feel like people have come to my grandmother’s house and decided to steal and sell her personal belongings. Perhaps people may have found these objects in the ground or near their homes but it doesn’t give them any right to take these objects and sell them. These objects mean something to people - entire Nations - they are part of our history.

I feel similar frustration when I look up information about Nations and I see all of these fake websites set up about Nations, etc. I can’t even begin to discuss how frustrated it all makes me. I want people to learn but I don’t actually want people to use the internet to do it. That’s the difficult thing because the internet has become a huge source of information.