Growing up in the foster care system, Nich Richie never really felt connected to Indigenous culture.
“I didn’t have ready access to information growing up … I didn’t know anything about Indigenous people’s culture. I didn’t know about activism. I didn’t get to see myself on any platform,” says Richie, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.
Although Richie is a proud Erub person from the Torres Strait Islands, they grew up in a non-Indigenous household, disconnected from land and people. Strangely, it was downloading the video-sharing app TikTok that kickstarted their cultural journey, when they discovered the community of extremely popular First Nations creators on the app.
“It helped me in my process of reconnection to culture, because beforehand I was very much struggling,” they say.
“That has been one of the most rewarding things. I’ve developed a community of other Indigenous people on social media, who just love each other, who just want to keep each other accountable but also keep each other strong.”
But Richie isn’t just an observer on the app, they are now a prominent creator, boasting more than 60,000 followers and nearly 4m likes. Now, they say they have the chance to reach other queer Indigenous kids struggling with identity.
“The thing that motivates me most on my platform is that I know that I am being that person for someone else that I wish I had,” Richie says.
Another member of that TikTok community is Sari-Ella Thaiday, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander creator belonging to the Darnley, Saibai and Yidinji people, who has become known on the platform for her activism and talent for makeup.
Thaiday says the reason TikTok has fostered such a strong Indigenous creator community, where other social media platforms haven’t, is all to do with the algorithms the app’s central “for you page” uses.
“On TikTok, it’s so easy to be exposed to a whole lot of people without having a following. You have those chances to grow your following. Just put out a good video and a lot of people are going to see it,” she says.
“It seems as though a lot of my most popular content surrounds my culture … I did a makeup look inspired by my culture. I made a really nice headpiece where every piece was symbolic of something from the Torres Strait and I spoke about it.”
“Another one of my most popular was a video of my grandma making a traditional island dish.”
However, while the algorithm gives creators unprecedented exposure, it can also expose them.
“The downside is your videos are not only being seen by people who would support you. You’re also exposing yourself to internet trolls,” Thaiday says.
“You just exist and someone will leave a racial slur on a video … If they just see you’re Indigenous they go ‘oh, let me say something bad’.”
Richie agrees the bullying can be relentless.
“I think I was traumatised from my own Black Lives Matter post ... I got thousands of comments of people saying that they would run me over with a car if they ever saw me. People saying that they would take me out back with a gun.”
At one point they were forced to temporarily shut down their TikTok and Instagram accounts after making a video drawing attention to comments made by controversial Australian political commentator Jordan Shanks – known online as Friendlyjordies – about the felling of sacred Djab Wurrung trees in western Victoria.
“It was Naidoc Week last year, actually. In my original video, I didn’t even say anything. I just put it there for everyone to see, and once again, with the virality of the platform, it didn’t take long for that to spread everywhere,” they say.
Richie went on to make several TikToks about the situation, including calling for Shanks’ Patreon supporters to stop financially backing him.
“I had to lock my accounts down because I started getting death threats [from fans of Shanks on TikTok] … Up to a month later, I was just getting horrible, horrible comments, all saying horrific things no matter what I would post.”
However, there was also a groundswell of support around Richie, led by other prominent Indigenous creators on the app.
“When we see something going wrong, we all come together. We all support each other,” they say.
“If that was an attempt to, like, ‘cancel me’, that whole thing actually made me significantly more popular,” they laugh.
Both Richie and Thaiday agree that the platform has been responsive to the feedback from the community, with common Indigenous slurs added to lists of words that breach community guidelines and comments now auto-filtered for abuse.
“Indigenous Australians are a critical and vibrant part of this and we care deeply about the experience of First Nations people on our platform,” the company says in a statement.
“In Australia, we continue to engage directly with Indigenous creators through a range of programs, to elevate First Nations voices, understand their experience on TikTok and refine our local policies to ensure TikTok is a safe and welcoming place for the community.”
The app has also been highlighting First Nations video creators during their Naidoc Week program, which has included promoting the accounts of Blak-run businesses.
One of Richie’s close friends on the app is the Wiradjuri woman and astrophysicist Kirsten Banks, a popular science communicator who has been educating her 140,000 followers about Indigenous astronomy.
“It’s had a really good response,” Banks says. “I posted this [week] about how the Yolngu people up in the Northern Territory knew about the synoptic period of Venus … how they knew this intimate knowledge of the night sky … One person left a comment saying that they love learning all this new stuff and unlearning the very white-centric version of history they learned in school.”
“It’s fantastic just how many of us are active and vocal on the platform, and we’ve got our different niches as well.”
Banks says when she is making content about First Nations astronomy she’s aiming to reach and educate non-Indigenous audiences.
But others on the platform, like Joseph Althouse, say they are primarily trying to connect with their mob back home.
“I do a lot of theatre here in Sydney … but when I look out into the audience it’s predominantly upper-middle-class white faces looking back at me, so that’s quite isolating as an Aboriginal performer,” Althouse says.
“I found TikTok was a platform that I could get a direct line of connection to my community up in Darwin, because a lot of the kids out there really love TikTok and they’re on it all day, every day.”
For Althouse, who belongs to the Arrernte and Tiwi tribes, making content on the app is all about “blak pride”, “blak power” and representation.
“My great-grandmother was part of the stolen generations. She was taken when she was five years old and put on a mission where she stayed until she was 18. In that time she internalised a lot of hatred towards herself and her Aboriginality … of course that gets passed down to my grandmother, and then my grandmother teaches that to my mother and then my mother teaches it to me. You lose a bit along the way, but it’s still there inside,” he says.
“Growing up we get told to contort ourselves in society and fit the mould of a ‘good, decent blakfella’ … I just want to show other blak queer kids that they don’t have to be ashamed of their identity.”
Althouse, Banks, Thaiday and Richie all say that they have faced ignorance and racism on the app, but universally they agree that it’s worth it to be able to create the representation and community for the next generation of Indigenous Australians.
“TikTok can be an absolutely horrendous platform, with comments and all that,” Richie says.
“But there’s also the positive side. I found my identity. I found my community, and I’ve found friends and family through all of this. It’s changed my life.”
