Indigenous tech firm Animikii and the International Centre of Expertise in Montréal on Artificial Intelligence (CEIMIA) are partnering with a Manitoba First Nation to explore Indigenous data sovereignty.
The news: Animikii Indigenous Technology, alongside the International Centre of Expertise in Montréal on Artificial Intelligence (CEIMIA), announced the creation of what it’s calling a “first-of-its-kind” partnership between Animikii, CEIMIA, and the Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation (SBOFN). The partnership will bring the three parties together for a pilot project exploring methods of “securing stewardship and exchange of Indigenous data.”
From the source: Founded in 2003, Animikii is a British Columbia-based Indigenous tech services company that serves primarily Indigenous-focused organizations in Canada. The company was Canada’s first Indigenous-certified B Corp, was backed in 2019 by Raven Indigenous Capital Partners and BDC, and has boasted ex-Shopify executives among its employees.
The context: Animikii’s Niiwin platform is built to support Indigenous data sovereignty. The platform provides Indigenous governments, non-profits, and other organizations with a secure system to collect, manage, protect, and analyze data according to “cultural values and strict governance standards.” The platform allows for community-controlled access, the ability to choose where data is hosted, and custom data structure design. It has been used by Indigenous organizations like The Survivors Secretariat, an organization established to address the impacts of residential schools, to build a Truth and Reconciliation database.
Niiwin is also an answer to Animakii’s broader #DataBack initiative, which positions data sovereignty as essential to respecting Indigenous sovereignty.
Final thought: In collaboration with the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), an international initiative to develop responsible AI rooted in “human rights and democratic values,” CEIMIA developed a data sharing roadmap in 2024. That roadmap acts as a guide for organizations to responsibly share data. Under the newly announced partnership, SBOFN will work with CEIMIA in trialling the roadmap’s use in preparing data on the history of the First Nation community. Likewise, working with Animikii, SBOFN will use the company’s new data management platform, Niiwin, to collect, centralize, and design the cultural and historic data “for the benefit of the current community and for posterity.”
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.
Image courtesy CEIMIA on LinkedIn.