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In 2022, a flood hit the offices of the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, an Indigenous community on Manitoulin Island, in Ontario, Canada. Part of its digital records, which were spread across different buildings, was lost.
That loss pushed the community to come up with a solution few Indigenous nations had tried before. That’s how they built their own data center, where they now store everything from official documents to video recordings of elders speaking Anishinaabe, their native language.
How did the new technologies help them save their own language?
For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples have passed down their culture through oral storytelling. Today, many of those languages are at risk.
“Our language is one of the biggest things that most First Nations across the country are losing,” Chief Tim Ominika told The Associated Press. He said the recordings will protect the legacy of language speakers even after they pass away.
How do they control the information they store
The data center is about the size of a single-car garage and also stores residents’ health data and security camera footage. The community has been moving all its information there from a Microsoft data center in Toronto, about 190 miles away.
“The purpose of all of this is having the ownership, access, control, and possession of our information,” Ominika said.
Those are the main values behind OCAP principles, a set of rules created by First Nations in Canada back in 1998 to make sure their communities decide how their information is collected and used.
Will they use AI to build up their culture?
Ominika said leaders will be careful before using artificial intelligence: if they see any risk of harm, “we would put a stop there.”
The project also opened the door to about 700 security cameras and a fleet of drones used to find missing people, watch for crime, and spot forest fires.