When Thea Arthurson found herself with a lot of time at the start of the pandemic, like many others, she dove into the world of TikTok. At first, she was exploring the facets of the platform, but soon started sharing content herself.

As a Cree woman, she was inspired by other Indigenous creators on TikTok who added to the representation on the platform, and helped her feel connected to a larger community.

“I moved away from my home so that was a way to reconnect with my people without being in my comfort zone in my area because I didn’t know a lot of people here before the lockdown happened,” said Arthurson.

Arthurson moved to Oliver in 2018 with her family from Kinosao Sipi (Norway House Cree Nation), Manitoba with her family. The next year was a particularly difficult time for her personally as her mother passed away, and she was diagnosed with mental illness and an auto-immune disease.

One of the entry points for her was finding this platform where Indigenous people can have an unfiltered voice about the topics they bring to the table. “I liked a lot of [the content about] Indigenous people speaking on Indigenous issues and just speaking from our point of view because there’s a lot of misconceptions out there,” she said.

“I post my own stories, recipes and everything, but it’s just like my representation of who I am as an Indigenous woman because when people think of what an Indigenous woman is they might think of someone who dances, someone who beads but I don’t do any of that; so this is me,” said Arthurson.

When Arthurson started making TikToks earlier this year, it wasn’t strictly focused on one topic or area of interest, but spread out in a web that showcased different parts of her life. She shares vulnerable aspects of her day-to-day experiences like mental health struggles, facing racism, and her auto-immune disease. A lot of it is also just engaging, funny videos. A main focus, though, is definitely on making bannock recipes to share with followers.

Arthurson explained that her mom had a bannock recipe which she said was the “best bannock ever,” but could never recreate herself. Jump back to 2015 when she had her first child and was on maternity leave, she started to experiment with different recipes to see what worked for her and fine tuned it until she found her own perfect recipe.

When she started to go live on TikTok, her first session was making this recipe which got a lot of attention. The week after she made bannock pizza and bannock dogs (things she makes regularly anyways) but her followers kept coming back for more.

“People kept saying, ‘oh what are you going to do next week?’ And that’s how the ‘bannock bus’ was created—that’s what I call it,” said Arthurson. “We just make new recipes, I ask people to tag me in recipes, I’ll get inspired by other creators, or I’ll just make it up off the top of my head. It’s not a real, solid thing, but we just keep going and growing.”

Arthurson heard about TikTok’s Accelerator for Indigenous Creators through another Indigneous content creator, Sherry Mckay. Some of her followers started tagging her and encouraging her to apply, and so she did.

The program itself is presented by the National Screen Institute and is a new online training program to help Indigenous creators grow their presence on the platform and learn skills and tools to help them create engaging content. It’s a six-week program that started on Nov. 8, and has 30 participants which were selected from across the country.

When she checked her email on a busy Friday and saw that she had been selected for the program, Arthurson said she burst into tears. After a difficult period of time in 2019, she said, “That was the first time I felt like something good was happening to me.”

“It made me feel very empowered and like I had a lot of value that I didn’t see before this whole journey on TikTok. It was very reassuring that I’m on a good path,” she said.

In the two weeks Arthurson has been participating in the program, she said the experience so far has been very positive and inspiring for her. She’s been experimenting with new genres, learning more about the industry itself, as well as more technical elements like how to work behind and in front of a camera.

On top of that, she also mentions how reassuring being in a program with other Indigenous creators has been for her.

“Because you really don’t see a lot of Indigenous-led programs, and in this whole program, there’s a lot of Indigenous representation. And we get to work with these creators so it makes you feel like, even someone like me, who is in the middle of my little house making bannock in my kitchen, can feel seen and heard,” said Arthurson.

As for now, Arthurson is starting to think bigger than she usually does after only making content on the platform for nine months. She’s looking ahead to see what she’ll be able to accomplish and grow into as she continues to gain new skills and connections.

More than that, she wants to continue providing people with good energy and empowering Indigenous representation through her content. “When people come to my page I want them to see a powerful, positive version of myself as an Indigenous woman.”