You can't have technology without culture
Exploring models of AI governance, readiness, and literacy - with promise and caution.
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This week’s stories include:
Indigitech Summit is coming back to Calgary this September.
We share Insights from our most clicked news item last week.
AI readiness program prepares students to “critically evaluate the impact of AI on a societal and human-centric level.”
Feature:
Cherokee Nation Shows How AI Governance Can Be Sovereign
The big picture: When most enterprises and governments evaluate artificial intelligence, their primary lens is return on investment such as how many processes can be automated, how many jobs restructured, and how much efficiency squeezed from the system. At the Ai4 2025 conference in Las Vegas, Paula Starr, Chief Information Officer of the Cherokee Nation, offers a very different perspective. For sovereign tribal governments like the Cherokee, ROI isn’t purely financial. It is cultural, legal, and existential.
Why it matters: “AI must serve the collective good and uphold Cherokee values,” Starr told the audience. “If a tool compromises that, it doesn’t belong in our Nation’s systems.” This perspective positions the Cherokee Nation at the forefront of a movement redefining what artificial intelligence governance means. While big tech and large governments experiment with guardrails, the Cherokee Nation is constructing a model rooted in centuries of tradition and sovereignty.
Key points:
The question of AI adoption is not simply “how much faster can a form be processed” or “what percentage of staff hours can be reduced.” It is about protecting Cherokee data sovereignty, ensuring cultural preservation, and reinforcing treaty rights in the digital era.
That shift in framing, away from efficiency and toward sovereignty, has profound implications for how AI is selected, tested, and deployed. In most enterprises, procurement is measured in business outcomes. For the Cherokee Nation, the baseline metric is trust.
AI is not replacing people, it is extending tradition and sovereignty into the digital domain. The framework is not just technical. It is cultural.
What they’re saying: “AI is a tool. But it’s our people, our values, and our policy that give it direction” says Starr. Principles such as “detsadasinasdi itsehesdi”, translated as live skillfully and resourcefully, aims to engage with new technologies to augment talents and skills. “Detsadageyusesdi” which is to protect each other as a mother with child, aims to protect the data of our citizens as we would protect their existence…
Learn more: Discover the concrete ways Cherokee Nation has adopted AI tools in the full article by Ron Schmelzer.
Curated Articles:
Language experts praise AI, but offer warnings as well
Kirt Ejesiak developed his own Inuktut AI application called AingAI that provides instant translations, interpretations and is able to convert text, audio and video. The platform only offers translations in South Baffin Inuktitut, with the goal of expanding to offer other Inuktut dialects. Ejesiak was a presenter at Waves 2025, a week-long conference in Ottawa hosted by the Office of the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages. Michael Running Wolf is a presenter as well. He’s also the co-founder of the First Languages AI reality, which aims to revitalize Indigenous languages using artificial intelligence. While this can be a positive in the efforts to revitalize Indigenous languages, both acknowledge there could be harms.
For Indigenous communities, AI brings peril — and promise
The boom in AI and data centers is driving Indigenous communities to defend their land, resources, and cultural knowledge from new forms of extraction. When the United Nations marked the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples last week, it signaled a growing recognition of a new kind of extraction. Artificial intelligence, or AI, systems are being trained on massive troves of online data, much of it collected without the consent of the communities involved. For Indigenous peoples, this new form of extraction has raised questions about who controls their histories, languages, and cultural knowledge and whether the technology will erase or distort them entirely. With this in mind, tribes and nations have been pushing to assert “data sovereignty” — the right to control how information is collected and used — and claim a seat at the table as tech companies and governments set the rules for AI oversight.
Grants power AI readiness in WA’s rural and Indigenous communities
A national nonprofit called the AI Education Project is on a mission to make sure schools in rural and Indigenous communities across the country don’t get left behind when it comes to artificial intelligence literacy and readiness. “The goal here is not to get students to use AI, but to give students the tools to critically evaluate the impact of AI on a societal and human-centric level,” Pinedo said. Among other lesson plan ideas, aiEDU offers a Socratic debate format for teachers to engage their students’ critical thinking skills as they explore questions about the ethical implications of AI. While aiEDU aims to provide comprehensive resources to K-12 educators nationwide, the nonprofit is also aware that different communities have different needs. That’s why it also offers grants directly to local groups — including museums, school districts or Indigenous tribes — so trusted educators and community members can take aiEDU’s training and apply what they learn to the people they serve.
Eureka Fellowship fuels safe space for Indigenous queer youth in Surrey
Surrey resident Samantha Jack is working to create a safe space for Indigenous queer youth in Surrey, and the funding she received for a fellowship will help that dream become a reality. Jack is one of two women from Surrey who have been selected for the 2025 Eureka Fellowship for Youth Changemakers. Ten people from across Canada, aged 18 to 30, were selected from a hundred applicants for the fellowship. The 2025 fellows have been selected for their positive impact in several key areas, including health equity, biodiversity conservation, and climate action. The fellows will receive $10,000 in funding to advance their initiatives, have access to networking opportunities, and participate in virtual leadership-based training over the next 18 months. They will also participate in a summit in person in 2026. For Jack, the funding will go towards launching the Indigiqueer Wellness Collective, a "culturally rooted" program that supports 2SLGBTQ+ Indigenous youth in Surrey. It will help facilitate around eight sessions for queer Indigenous youth, which will include guest speakers, cultural activities, harm reduction education, and intergenerational support.
Indigitech Summit is coming back to Calgary this September
The Indigitech Summit has been meeting for the past four years to highlight and showcase Indigenous leaders on both sides of the border in the world of technology. This year, the summit will be held on September 24 at Telus Spark in Calgary, Alberta, as part of Calgary’s Truth and Reconciliation week as a way to show how reconciliation is playing an important role in one of the fastest-growing job sectors in Canada. CEO and founder of Indigitech Destiny, Art Proctor, who has been a part of the industry for the past 15 years, said he started the summit to highlight leaders making an impact as diverse people.
