Culture’s saving grace For ‘Indigenous Baddie,’ reconnection with her Cree traditions and its creative endeavours was a true lifeline, and one she wants to share with others The Creators
By: AV Kitching Posted: 6:00 AM CDT Saturday, Mar. 16, 2024

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/03/2024 (587 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Take a quick scroll through Michelle Chubb’s social media platform and you’ll encounter everything from the trivial to the significant.

Chubb, who goes by the moniker Indigenous Baddie, posts diary-style entries about what she’s wearing, her earring collection, her nightly self-care routine.

There are unboxing videos of products she is sent, next to a story about cooking hamburger soup and bannock for her family, beside a clip highlighting Indigenous-made products from Indigenous-owned businesses.

Interspersed are more provocative posts where Chubb, staring straight into the camera lens, talks unflinchingly about the systemic oppression of First Nations people, eloquently recounting the travesty of residential schools, the failure of government, the impact of environmental racism on Indigenous communities.

Her content is thought-provoking and she means for it to be so. It’s unvarnished, real and very much like the woman herself.

There’s no meticulously crafted schedule, no rota of subject matter, no grand plan.

In fact, the only rule she holds herself to is the number of posts per week; she tries to do at least four although she’s not really strict with herself about days and times.

“When I present my culture online, I am presenting myself as who I am. I don’t want to change that. I want people to see real content from me,” she says. “I create what I love. I go with the flow.”

The Winnipegger, from Bunibonibee Cree Nation, started posting on TikTok in January 2020. She now has now nearly 900,00 followers across Instagram and TikTok.

Not all who view her posts are supportive. Chubb has had her share of racist comments that were “scary at first” but she says the longer she’s been doing it, the more support she receives from her viewers.

She’s also had to navigate questions from those in her own community who wonder why she’s posting aspects of their culture online.

“Not everyone has the luxury of knowing their culture and being a part of it. I thought of reconnecting Natives who may need some guidance. To be honest, there are a lot of people who are lost, a lot of people who are still reconnecting and that’s who I thought of when I started posting,” she says.

Chubb was once lost. Her beloved grandfather, who she says was the “rock of the family,” died when she was in Grade 7. His passing broke something in her.

Chubb, who had started learning about her Cree culture, tradition and beliefs from her family when she turned six and was an active powwow dancer, stopped engaging after his death.

“My mushum was the one who pushed us to participate in our Indigenous culture. Once he passed, that stopped. I fell into the party scene after high school. I was getting addicted to alcohol and drugs,” she shares.

It could have all gone terribly wrong but Chubb was determined to find her way back.

“I went back into the culture and my culture saved me from a different path,” she says.

Recently, Chubb has been posting another kind of video, one where she tenderly brushes and braids the hair of her partner Cyril Pierre, the man whom she credits, in part, to guiding her back to her Indigenous roots.

“During that time I had just met my partner, and he was also into the culture. It’s hard to find another person who is like that because not many people are connected to it. He asked me if I wanted to go into a sweat lodge and I said ‘yeah’ and that was my first time in a very long time, in seven, eight years and I was very happy,” she says.

Since then Chubb has become a mother and is currently pregnant with their second child. She says she will bring her children up to be rooted in their Indigeneity.

“I feel like a lot of what I learned shaped me into who I am today and how I think. I want them to be like that also.”

Her social media presence has opened up a slew of opportunities in the real world. She’s done work with a number of high-profile brands, including Sephora Canada, she presented a Ted X talk last May at Queen’s University, in November she gave a keynote speech at a conference in Arizona about Indigenous voices needing to be amplified in conversations about climate change and this summer she’ll be heading to the U.S. again for a content-creators focused event.

It’s a very different life to the one she imagined for herself.

“As a child I was very quiet” she grins. “I was nervous, I was scared to mess up. I used to make mistakes.

“Being Indigenous Baddie, this persona, gives me more confidence. Indigenous Baddie makes me more unapologetic, more badass. I am proud of how my life is now, of how I am as a person. Being a content creator has helped me grow a lot. It has help me grow my career as well as my personal life.”

av.kitching@freepress.mb.ca