UsMob: Remapping Indigenous Futures in Cyberspace

Abstract

Geographical remoteness, lower economic status and technological inexperience have often placed Indigenous Peoples on the “wrong side” of the digital divide. Notwithstanding these challenges, digital technologies provide a vista, from a grassroots position, that enhances their own visibility and permits the expansion of Indigenous Peoples’ sphere of influence and ability to “mobilize political support in their struggles for cultural survival.” The present case study of the Aboriginal Youth project UsMob (http://www.usmob.com.au/home.php) exemplifies such an indigenization of digital technologies, one that “invites kids from ‘elsewhere’ to come over and play on their side.” UsMob underscores a potential to permeate oral history and storytelling with the help of digital technologies that broadens and engenders understandings of indigenous realities and cultures for wider audiences in general, and, crucially, for indigenous cultural futures and identities.