Indian taco, clan animals part of indigenous emoticons app

By Rick Garrick

Wikwemikong’s Miranda Recollet plans to launch an indigenous emoticons app at the App Store on Jan. 25.

“I kept it light and humourous,” Recollet says about the indigenous emoticons she developed with the assistance of a graphic designer. “One of the icons is an Indian taco. I have food and drinks, cultural items such as inuksuit and the medicine wheel.”

In addition to food and drinks and cultural items, Recollet has also developed five other menus of indigenous emoticons — people and expressions, weather, places, animals and humour — for First Nations people to use in messages and texts. While Recollet has included most of the clan animals among her menus of emoticons, she plans to add more in the future.

“Emoticons have become so prevalent in our day-to-day life; however there does seem to be this real lack of diversity in the conventional emoticon application,” Recollet says. “I just hope I can provide an outlet for expressions for Native Americans in North America.”

Recollet developed the idea for the indigenous emoticons last spring while working towards her education degree at the University of Alberta. Emoticons are used to add emotions and expressions into messages and texts.

“I had the idea in the spring time and I started working on it during the summer,” says Recollet, an employment counsellor for Ontario Works in Wikwemikong. “It’s finally coming to fruition and it’s great.”

Recollet initially created a list of 165 icons, which she worked with a graphic designer to develop into the indigenous emoticons.

“A couple of them were harder to get across than others,” Recollet says. “I wanted wild rice to be an icon, but to make wild rice into a cartoon is quite hard to capture. But I did it so that will be one of the icons.”

Recollet says the lack of diversity in emoticons has recently become an issue among people who use them on a regular basis.

“Miley Cyrus actually tweeted on her Twitter account that ‘We need an update in diversity for emoticons,’” Recollet says. “That’s not where I got the idea, but it really feels great that other people are thinking the same way.”

Recollet has been sharing a link about her indigenous emoticons app through social media.

“It’s slowly getting out there,” Recollet says. “My mission right now is to try to get it across Turtle Island as much as I absolutely can.”

Recollet has received some encouraging responses to her link.

“A young lady on Instagram has said, ‘Finally, I’m so supportive of this — way to go,’” Recollet says. “I’m getting a lot of great feedback on it and it feels really good. I had this idea and you don’t really know if it’s a good idea until you get some good feedback. So I’m really pleased with the feedback thus far.”

Recollet plans share a link to her indigenous emoticons app on a variety of platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, once the app is launched.

“That link will direct you to the App Store, where you can download (the indigenous emoticons app),” Recollet says, noting she has not yet determined a price for the app. “I want to keep it reasonable and I want people to purchase that app and be able to use it.”

Recollet’s next goal is to work on producing cultural resource curriculum for the classroom.

“I really want to do something entrepreneurial,” Recollet says.