Aboriginal and Indigenous People's Resistance, the Internet, and Education

This article examines exchanges in an Internet newsgroup which is focused on issues pertaining to Aboriginal peoples. The examination of these exchanges highlights cyberspace as sites where colonial misunderstandings are evident and resistance to these dominant discourses is possible. Issues of pedagogy and Aboriginal peoples on the Internet are explored. Given that home and school use of the Internet is ever increasing, it is of growing importance for educators and academics to consider ways that cultural groups are represented in this context. Internet texts, just as texts, books, and media before them, produce cultural narratives in regard to Aboriginal peoples. How are cultures represented? Who controls these representations? This article provides examples of resistance to colonial discourses about Aboriginal peoples but cautions that there are risks with the increasing commercialisation of the Internet that dominant discourses might prevail.