A recent phenomenon within the Deaf Indonesian communities brings up the debate of capitalization to the forefront; here the issue is of capitalizing "Tuli", which appears to reflect Western Deaf tradition's influence, instead of using "tuli". This issue led to this study on Tuli Indonesian identity. The data is based on the triangulation of digital data, focus group interviews and autoethnography. A cognitive ecology framework is used to capture how Deaf Indonesians arrived at the decision to capitalize the T to show their Tuli identity; this framework will allow an investigation between environments and individuals in the Indonesian context. The data treatment is based on the rapid ethnography analysis for macrolevel while the grounded theory analysis for identity formation at the microlevel led to a new system and created the Tuli Indonesian ecology model to represent the Tuli Indonesian communities and their identities in Java. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]