In the last few years, data sovereignty has become a buzzword. But Indigenous nations have been at the forefront of the fight for sovereignty over stories, culture, traditions, and language, for far longer. That deep-rooted familiarity has helped put them at the forefront of adapting and adopting new tech in Canada.
The news: BC-based Animikii recently inked a pilot partnership with Manitoba’s Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation to secure stewardship of data about the community’s history. The tech company has been a leader in the #DataBack movement, which brings Indigenous data under Indigenous ownership; Animikii’s platform Niiwin provides Indigenous orgs with secure systems to care for their data, including local hosting, flexible governance, and no-code solutions for mapping knowledge.
From the source: “Sovereignty supports nationhood: the community gets to author its own story, to manage its own data, and it gets to bring control over things that were extracted from communities in the past. It’s a sense of pride and ownership, control, access, possession, all of that continuity and stewardship over these stories, memories,” Jeff Ward, founder and CEO of Animikii, told BetaKit.
The context: Data sovereignty isn’t the only area Indigenous tech is setting the pace. A new study from Toronto Metropolitan University shows that Indigenous workers are adopting AI faster than their counterparts; research from Be Giant shows that Indigenous founders are growing their businesses faster than their peers; and the First Nations Technology Council is offering free intro-to-AI courses for Indigenous people and organizations to ensure they stay at the forefront of digital literacy.
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On the move
This week’s hires, fires, and exec shakeups:
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Want to feature a hiring announcement in our list? Email partnerships@betakit.com with the subject line JOBS.
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Contributors: Alex Riehl (Ottawa staff writer), Douglas Soltys (editor in chief), Sarah Rieger (managing editor), Trevor Nichols (web editor).
Feature image courtesy ALL IN.