Indigenous tech innovations; a report on Indigenous Sovereignty and a new report on Indigenous language preservation
Boozhoo News River readers,
This week we are featuring stories showcasing Indigenous innovation, including:
- Manitobah, the Indigenous-rooted brand dedicated to making positive impacts in Indigenous communities, released its 2024 Social Impact Report this week. In 2024 alone, Manitobah confirmed its Indigenous Market generated $200,000 in sales.
- Report Spotlights Indigenous Sovereignty as Key to Shared Prosperity. Launched in 2022 in collaboration with Indigenous Youth Roots (IYR), a national Indigenous youth-led organization… examines the experiences of Indigenous youth leaders in asserting sovereignty and advocating for the recognition and well-being of their communities.
- QueerTech has named Virtual Gurus founder and CEO Bobbie Racette, an Indigenous, Cree-Métis, and 2SLGBTQIA+ tech entrepreneur, chair of the organization’s board of directors.
Image generation AI suffers from a serious case of pan-Indigenization
Read an excerpt from our latest ebook #DataBack Vol 2: Truth Before “Indigenous AI” Image generation AI also suffers from a serious case of pan-Indigenization: creating a kind of “global average” of what the software presumes Indigenous people to look like worldwide. Simply prompting with the word “Indigenous” will nearly always return an image that is clearly not Indigenous to anywhere. The programs don't get any better when the systems are prompted to output images of specific groups of Indigenous Peoples.
Indigenous people, by definition, are indigenous to somewhere. Thus the term. The act of generating depictions of Indigenous people that have no ties to any known place-based culture is, by definition, an act of dispossession…
We’re grateful to have our headquarters on traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lkwungen, Songhees and Esquimalt) Peoples of the Coast Salish Nation.
Animikii Inc: theDock Centre for Social Impact 100-722 Cormorant St Victoria, BC V8W 1P8
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