Boozhoo News River Readers,

The Animikii team is connecting with community this week in a few different places and spaces! 

COO David Pereira is in Las Vegas for RES 2026, the largest and longest-running national American Indian business event. We’re also hosting the second virtual learning session with participants in our Niiwin #DataBack Fellowship. 

And CEO and founder Jeff Ward has opened his calendar to offer 20 minute calls giving a live demo of the Community Archive on our Niiwin platform! Interested? Book a call!

This week’s stories include: 

• Study explores frameworks for improved indigenous data sovereignty

• Preserving U.S. Indigenous Government Websites: From Directory to Digital Archive

• Taking history into your own hands; trauma-informed oral history and archival research.

Community Archives demo offer from our CEO  

The big picture: Our keystone product Niiwin is ready and our CEO has booked time each week to show people concerned with Indigenous data sovereignty what it can do! We’re looking to connect with organizations who are asking: where does your data live right now, and who controls it? 

Our News River readers can book a 20 minute demo call directly with Jeff today!

Curated Articles:

Study explores frameworks for improved indigenous data sovereignty

In Canada, current approaches to managing health data do not always reflect principles of Indigenous data sovereignty, which emphasize Indigenous peoples’ rights to control how data about their communities are collected, used, and shared. This study examined how practice-based research and learning networks (PBRLNs) currently approach data governance and explored how Indigenous data sovereignty frameworks could apply. Researchers conducted a cross-sectional survey of leaders from Canadian PBRLNs and reviewed published frameworks describing Indigenous data sovereignty principles. Although several networks reported having organizational or data governance policies, only one reported applying Indigenous data sovereignty principles. Most respondents were unsure whether their network did so. Respondents identified the importance of building knowledge of Indigenous data sovereignty within PBRLNs, having resources specifically dedicated to advance Indigenous data sovereignty, and understanding ways to do this. Common framework ideas included relational, collective benefits and action, respect for Indigenous ways of knowing and space for co-learning, relevance to communities and places, access to data, building capacity, and ethical sustainment. 

Taking history into your own hands 

A series of public events celebrating Montreal’s Queer and BIPOC community archives. On Feb. 26, Concordia University’s 4TH SPACE hosted a discussion on queer, BIPOC community-based archives and the work that has gone into making them flourish. The event was streamed on both Zoom and YouTube, and is available in two parts. Featuring five presenters and one moderator, the event covered a wide range of topics. Panelists discussed the process of selecting which materials to preserve and the importance of trauma-informed oral history and archival research. The event opened with a keynote presentation by Scott Berwick, manager of the Arts and Archives Department at the Kanien’kehá:ka Onkwawén:na Raotitióhkwa Language and Cultural Centre. His presentation focused on archiving Indigenous visual, audio and material history; with a background in the Fine Arts, Berwick began documenting his relationships with those in Kahnawà:ke through photography. He began working at the Language and Cultural Centre in 2019 and quickly moved to increase the photography collection, much of which had been sitting untouched in residents' homes.

New Oklahoma Civil Rights Trail app is available for download

A mobile app that shares the locations and stories behind many of the landmark cases, movements and other historic events connected to civil rights in Oklahoma has officially been launched and a tribal leader praised the timing, predicting that it will help combat the "whitewashing of history." Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, recently spoke about the Oklahoma Civil Rights Trail App, which makes its debut as historic markers, exhibits and online elements focusing on people and places tied to minorities and marginalized groups are being dismantled or scrapped across the country as part of the Trump administration's ongoing efforts aimed at reining in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, programs and history related to race, gender, sexual orientation. Activists and scholars across the country have asserted that these efforts by the federal government have been particularly aimed at rooting out non-white history. In 2025, stories about the Navajo Code Talkers in World War II, lauded for creating an unbreakable unwritten code based on their native language to transmit secret military messages, were removed from a Department of Defense (currently called the Department of War) website. After an outcry from the Navajo Nation and the public, government officials said the information was erroneously removed, and it was restored.

New report finds technology harming wellbeing of Native youth in Minnesota

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community has released findings from the first-of-its-kind report examining how technology and digital media use affect the wellbeing of Native youth in Minnesota. According to the study, about 90 percent of respondents said addressing technology use is more important than other issues facing Native youth and reported that its impact — particularly on physical and mental health — is overwhelmingly negative. "Digital technology can be a powerful tool for connection, learning and sharing our culture, but it can also create real problems for young people," said Ashley Cornforth, SMSC Secretary/Treasurer and co-chair of IndigeFit Kids. "This research is an important first step in developing culturally meaningful strategies that help Native youth build healthy relationships with the digital world." The research was conducted by LiveMore ScreenLess, a Minnesota-based nonprofit, and funded through IndigeFit Kids, the SMSC's three-year, $6 million campaign to improve the physical fitness and mental wellness of Native youth across the state.

Preserving U.S. Indigenous Government Websites: From Directory to Digital Archive

As a 2025 Junior Fellow, Maggie Jones helped build the United States Indigenous Government Websites Web Archive with the guidance of her mentor, Giselle Aviles. In this interview, they describe how the collection developed from a list of over 500 tribes and what that process taught them about web archiving. They also share examples of how government websites often extend beyond administrative functions to document culture, history, language, and community life. We began the project with the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs: Tribal Leadership Directory, which is available as a downloadable Excel spreadsheet. This resource lists the leaders of each of the federally recognized tribes, along with their contact information and website, if applicable. Yvette Ramirez, a former USSGD volunteer and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan’s School of Information, updated and added notes to the spreadsheet for the project. Using the spreadsheet as a roadmap, we added websites to the collection of state-recognized Indigenous governments, including those of tribes that are not federally recognized.