Boozhoo News River Readers,

With the equinox coming next Tuesday, this is our last News River of the summer. 

This week's Big Picture is about the Canadian funder of “big pictures”, movies and TV! The Canada Media Fund released strong commitments to Indigenous Data Sovereignty this past week, and we take a look at the implications. 

As always there are curated articles after our main article, and we’ve begun to highlight a few “resources and opportunities” at the bottom of the newsletter as well. (If you want to share a link in this section, send it on over to news@animikii.com) 

The Big Picture: Lights, Camera and real Action on Indigenous Data Sovereignty at the CMF

The Big Picture: The Canada Media Fund released an ambitious Indigenous Action Plan for 2026 to 2029. It was developed with consultant Marcia Nickerson, staff at the Indigenous Screen Office, APTN, the Nunavut Independent Television Network, The Shine Network Institute, and an Indigenous focus group. The impressive plan is organized around four pillars: Modernize, Mobilize, Maximize, and Monetize. One of them puts Indigenous data sovereignty in writing as a funder's commitment, which is still rare in Canada's non-profit and entertainment sectors.

Signals we saw this week:  Under the Modernize section, the CMF commits to embedding Indigenous rights, narrative sovereignty, culturally responsive practices, and Indigenous data sovereignty across its policies, funding approaches, and decision-making. It makes three specific commitments on Indigenous data sovereignty. It will define clear success metrics and key performance indicators to track progress, impact, and accountability specific to Indigenous participation across CMF programs. It will establish ethical and reciprocal data-sharing protocols with partners such as the ISO, Telefilm, and other funders. And it will contribute to collective efforts to aggregate data, conduct joint research, and measure the impact of programs aligned with Indigenous priorities.

The full report is here: https://cmf-fmc.ca/document/indigenous-action-plan-2026-2029/

Why we think it matters: When we read these commitments through the CARE framework lens (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics) we see some positive movement. 

"Ethical and reciprocal" data sharing speaks directly to the “Ethics” principle, and reciprocity is the right instinct: data about Indigenous creators should flow back to Indigenous creators, not just between funders. The third commitment, measuring impact "aligned with Indigenous priorities," points toward “Collective Benefit”. Data collected to serve community-defined outcomes is a different thing than data collected to fill a funder's annual report.

The area where the Canada Media Fund might focus next is “Authority to Control”. All three commitments describe what the CMF will do with data about Indigenous participation. None yet says who owns the data, or who decides how it gets used. Specifically, whether Indigenous organizations like the ISO hold decision-making power over the protocols. Defining KPIs "specific to Indigenous participation" is a very good first step. Letting the Indigenous artists decide what counts as success and how the aggregate data is used would go along way to putting even stronger Indigenous Data Sovereignty policies in place. 

“Responsibility” is another principle to be watched. A funder responsible for aggregating data across the ISO, Telefilm, and others takes on a duty to show how the data is being used to improve 

The Big Question: How might organizations like the Canada Media Fund use frameworks like CARE to move from measuring Indigenous participation to sharing authority over what gets measured, and who decides?

More curated reads

Collective interests, health research ethics and data governance for Indigenous Sámi populations — The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides a robust framework for regulating individual data collection, use, reuse, and storage across Europe, but offers limited safeguards for collective rights, such as those of Indigenous peoples. Here, we examine specific ethical guidelines and governance principles relevant to the Sámi population, and those general for Indigenous peoples, and offer recommendations for best practices in health research. 

The hardest part of Canada’s health data space won’t be the technology — As Canada builds new health data infrastructure for AI, it must decide who it will serve, how it will be governed and what public value it should create. The Canadian government announced funding for a national health-sector data space in June 2026. The details are still to come, but data spaces typically consist of a shared set of rules, standards and infrastructures that enable data to be used across organizations and borders. Canada is not the first to try this. The European Union spent years negotiating its own health data space, which covers 17 categories of health data and 27 EU member states.Infrastructure of this scale is never neutral. Decisions about how data spaces are built are consequential; they determine whose interests are served and who does or does not benefit from them. The EU’s experience developing the European Health Data Space, or EHDS, offers a preview of the choices Canada will face, as well as some important lessons to consider.

Under the Stars: How Nuxalk Nation is Following Salmon Beneath the Surface — Nuxalk Nation are using sonar acoustic surveys to better understand the effects overfishing, climate change, and competition have on their returning salmon populations and to support the Nation’s Indigenous data sovereignty. 2026 marks the team’s second year on the lakes in their four-year rotation. This year isn’t about finding all the answers, but about building a long-term, data-supported picture of the state of salmon in Nuxalk’s territory. “We’re trying to understand the population shift by combining existing research with sonar acoustic data to give Nuxalk Fisheries an understanding on climate struggles, fisheries pressure, and genetic changes,” says Rainwater. After generations of research conducted on Indigenous territories without Indigenous control or consent, First Nations across Canada are increasingly leading their own monitoring programs and determining how their knowledge is collected, studied, and applied.

‘The theft is blatant’: Nunavut AI ‘correspondent’ regurgitates northern stories — Leah Qammaniq, an Inuk journalist raised in the North, understands first-hand the issues that she reports on in Nunavut. She covers Inuit self-governance, food security and, generally, daily life in the territory. According to her publisher, her writing is “warm, precise, and deeply local.” She also isn’t real. Qammaniq is an “AI correspondent” for We-News.com, a website that presents itself as a news outlet but uses 121 AI “journalists” to repackage and republish work from real media, across the world. If Qammaniq’s reporting comes across as deeply local, it’s because it is. The reporting belongs to northern media such as CBC North, Nunavut News and Nunatsiaq News. “As a journalist, it frankly disgusts me to see the public’s right to know being manipulated by algorithms and artificial intelligence,” said Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, in an interview. “It frustrates me to no end that this is something that the public doesn’t seem to realize, and that we’re not asking more questions about what’s happening and how we can address this.”

Serving the city through its Indigenous past, present and future — The Marquette University Indigeneity Lab offers experiential learning opportunities to engage with the city and the Native American communities that have called the city home. Students are encouraged to find landmarks in the city they are familiar with and compare them with sites important to Native American tribes through digital maps such as the Indigenize Milwaukee Digital Mapping Project. The Indigenize Milwaukee Digital Mapping Project is a resource that memorializes landmarks throughout the city that were integral to the people who lived there. Rindfleisch also encourages students to explore the natural environment shaped by Native people centuries ago through self-guided experiences like the Indigenous Milwaukee walking tour organized through Historic Milwaukee.

Resources and opportunities

• Watch it: AI generated Inuk journalist and digital Indigenous identity fraud — APTN National News, Truth & Politics: Nunatsiaq News reported this week about a fake, AI-generated Inuk journalist reporting on issues in Nunavut. Jennifer Laewetz says it’s a step into the realm of digital Indigenous identity fraud. 

• Deeper read: Always a Part of the Land: The Federal Commemoration of Indigenous Histories — The commemoration of a nation’s past is a highly contested process that is shaped by competing, and often diverging, interests. In this talk, Cody Groat will discuss his new book, Always a Part of the Land: the Federal Commemoration of Indigenous Histories, which calls for a critical reinterpretation not only of Canada's history but also of how we think about the past and how this shapes ongoing relationships between Indigenous peoples and the state. Cody Groat, Western University professor discusses his new book, virtually Oct 1.