In December 2012, shoppers in malls across Canada found themselves in the middle of round dances: drummers and singers in the food court, and hundreds of people joining hands in a circle. Many of those gatherings were organized in days through Facebook and Twitter under one hashtag, #IdleNoMore. Social media gave First Nations, Métis and Inuit people a way to reach large audiences without waiting for mainstream news outlets to decide their story mattered. The same tools also spread misinformation, reward outrage and can circulate images of grief without the consent of the people in them. This topic treats posts, hashtags, music and videos as media texts that can be read critically, the same way you would read a news article or a film, and asks what responsible sharing looks like.
Movements that spread online
| Movement | Origins | How it used media |
|---|---|---|
| Idle No More | Started in November 2012 by four women in Saskatchewan, in response to the federal omnibus Bill C-45, which changed rules on protected waterways and on the surrender of reserve lands | A hashtag, teach-ins, and flash-mob round dances in malls that turned public spaces into gatherings people photographed and shared |
| The MMIWG movement | Decades of families' advocacy for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people; the National Inquiry's 2019 final report issued 231 Calls for Justice | Métis artist Jaime Black's REDress Project, begun in 2010, hung empty red dresses in public places; Inuk advocate Holly Jarrett started #AmINext in 2014; red dresses now mark May 5 |
| Water protectors | Indigenous-led opposition to pipelines and threats to water, such as at Standing Rock in North Dakota in 2016 and in support of Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs in British Columbia in 2020 | Livestreams from the land, hashtags such as #NoDAPL, and solidarity actions shared online, including a rail blockade at Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory near Belleville, Ontario |
Music as a media text
A song reaches audiences as a package: sound, language, a music video, album art, live performance and the platform where people find it. Each part can be analyzed. The Halluci Nation, an Ottawa-based group formerly known as A Tribe Called Red, built its sound by combining powwow drumming and vocals with electronic dance music, carrying powwow sounds into clubs and festivals where they had rarely been heard. Jeremy Dutcher, a Wolastoqiyik musician and classically trained tenor from Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, built his album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa (2018) around early twentieth-century wax cylinder recordings of Wolastoq singers held at the Canadian Museum of History, singing in Wolastoqey alongside the voices of his ancestors. The album won the Polaris Music Prize in 2018. In both cases the media choices — genre fusion, language, archival sound — are themselves arguments about where Indigenous music and languages belong: on dance floors, on awards stages, and in the present.
- Sound. Which musical traditions are combined, and what does the combination suggest?
- Language. Which languages are sung, and who is positioned as the primary listener?
- Visuals. What do the video and cover art show, and who is shown in control of the images?
- Context. Where is the song heard — clubs, radio, ceremonies, protests, streaming playlists — and how does that change its meaning?
- Describe, don't reproduce. Analyze songs by describing sound, structure and imagery, and cite the artist, title and year; do not copy lyrics into your work.
Algorithms and attention
What you see online is chosen for you by algorithms, ranking systems that put posts in front of you based mainly on how likely you are to react. Posts that provoke strong emotion, especially outrage and shock, tend to travel further, which can help a movement break through but also rewards graphic images and misleading claims. Algorithms also build filter bubbles: if you never engage with Indigenous creators, the platform may rarely show them to you. Hashtags can be hijacked, flooded by people using them to mock or distract. Platforms and campaigns often measure success by engagement rate, which is the number of interactions (likes, comments, shares) as a percentage of views. A post with 1,800 interactions on 45,000 views has an engagement rate of 4%. Treat that number with care: a post can be widely shared and change nothing, while a small post that leads people to donate, attend or write to an MP can matter far more.