SOAS Research Online

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Abstract

This chapter consists of my autoethnographic narrative, including diary entries, which delineates what it feels like to live as an Indigenous person whose community is under ongoing cultural assimilation, followed by its analysis. The main issues identified in the narrative were emotional insecurity and its coping mechanism – to pretend to be someone else. By applying Peirce’s Theory of Signs to motifs identified in the narrative, I examined relations between individual and groups to discuss solutions. I argue the importance of having an awareness in one’s own roots or Indigenous knowledge system, recognising historical context or power relations that one is involved in, and negotiating one’s contingent pluralistic identity to resolve constant fear of ostracism and establish agency in one’s life.