Indigenous youth connect on social network
Imagine being thousands of kilometres from home, in a place where few people understand who you are or where you come from.
You turn to social media, hoping to find a community, and instead you’re inundated with ignorant or hateful comments about your people and your home. What do you do?
If you’re York University grad student Alejandro Mayoral Baños, who hails from Oaxaca, Mexico, you build the Indigenous Friends app.
“There is no space in cyberspace for aboriginal people,” Baños said, “so we decided to create this space.”
The online world can be inhospitable for many indigenous people, especially youth, he said, where even well-meaning Facebook posts can draw out vicious, racist comments.
Indigenous Friends is free of that.
