Data collection is nothing new for Indigenous peoples. Oral traditions and practices in Indigenous communities contain a wealth of knowledge that helped them thrive in specific environments.
Language itself is a reflection of each culture’s past and how its speakers relate to the world. Over time, much has been lost to colonization, exploitation, and conflict.
Now, many are observing how disregarding the bonds between people and the environment can be devastating to the planet as a whole. Leveraging technology alongside Indigenous wisdom is one way activists hope to preserve the past and create a sustainable future.
Canada’s Mi’kmaq First Nations people are directly involved in analyzing options to reach net zero climate goals.
According to CSRWire, IBM and the Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources are collaborating to reach net zero goals with a “two-eyed seeing” approach. This entails combining Indigenous knowledge, community engagement, and the best of Western science and technology to reach climate goals.
For example, “Net Zero Atlantic’s open source Atlantic Canada Energy System (ACES) Model is a powerful tool for analyzing and forecasting energy generation and infrastructure development scenarios.” By engaging with users in the project’s ideation and testing stages, they aim to foster informed decision-making while Indigenous knowledge shapes the process.
In the Pacific Northwest, multiple tribes are collaborating to preserve salmon, steelhead, and lamprey populations by switching to sustainable energy sources. Snake River dams are currently a major source of power for the region, but these dams are damaging to salmon and the greater ecosystem.
Led by the Nez Perce tribe, Nimiipuu Energy Cooperative is largely involved in pursuing energy independence for the region and preserving its ecology.
According to their website, the native-led Virtual Power Plant (VPP) is “utilizing advancements in alternative energy technologies and software in order to generate the required energy necessary to render the four Lower Snake River dams obsolete. That number is 5,311 Megawatts.”
The cooperative aims to install a variety of independently owned and operated energy projects that will produce a total of 500 Megawatts by 2027.
According to UNESCO data, “around 600 languages have disappeared in the last century. If current trends continue, up to 90 per cent of the world’s languages may become extinct by the end of this century.” This puts a lot of pressure on Indigenous communities to keep their languages and traditions alive as native speakers are becoming more rare.
The Language Conservancy (TLC) is an NGO aiming to preserve around 50 indigenous languages around the world. According to Phys.org, the organization regularly brings linguists together with Native American language teachers to compile Indigenous dictionaries.
TLC developed Rapid Word Collection (RWC) software to speed up the process, making it possible to accomplish in a year what often takes 20.
One group of Native American women is using RWC to compile an English-Apache dictionary. With its algorithm, they can quickly search Apache text and audio databases for lesser-known words used in everyday life that are missing. They can then record the correct pronunciations and definitions for app users.
As Indigenous communities work toward preserving both language and ecological systems, sovereignty is a key concern. Integrating Indigenous perspectives and data is important.
However, many are keenly aware of the need to safeguard data and take an active role in ensuring that it’s used ethically.
An article in MIT’s Solve outlines this need for Indigenous data sovereignty, and why it’s so important that communities both contribute to and benefit from their environmental data. “The CARE Principles elevate Indigenous communities from mere data providers to active stakeholders in climate policy, safeguarding their rights to traditional knowledge. They comprise four pillars: Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics.”
According to the Global Indigenous Data Alliance, “Existing principles within the open data movement (e.g. FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) primarily focus on characteristics of data that will facilitate increased data sharing among entities while ignoring power differentials and historical contexts.”
Data about Indigenous communities should also benefit that community for inclusive and equitable development and innovation.
This principle recognizes the individual and collective rights of Indigenous groups to free, prior, and informed consent to use of their data.
It also recognizes their right to establish governance bodies and protocols as active leaders in data stewardship, particularly regarding Indigenous Knowledge.
Those working with Indigenous data are responsible to foster positive relationships and be transparent.
They should be able to show how collected data is being used to support the self-determination, well-being, and dignity of Indigenous nations and communities.
Indigenous People’s rights and sovereignty should be considered at every stage of the data life cycle across the digital ecosystem to minimize harm and maximize benefit.
Special care needs to be taken to avoid stigmatization in data collection and use, addressing imbalances in power and resources. Ethical data processes require representation from relevant communities.