Multilingual and Multicultural AI - Workshop Recap
PLUS: Indigenous queer representation in curatorial practices.
Boozhoo News River Readers,
Hey, this is your weekly dispatch of Indigenous innovation news, curated by our friendly Thunderbird and real person - Catherine!
Members of our team were supposed to be gathering with community, cultural professionals, historians, archivists, and Survivors this week, however The Indigenous History & Heritage Gathering has been postponed. We fully support this decision that prioritizes safety and makes space for evacuees arriving in Winnipeg. Manitoba and Saskatchewan, you are in our hearts. 🧡
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This week’s stories include:
Exploring the 2025 Indigenous Summer Scholars Program at UW, with a project focusing on Indigenous queer representation in local curatorial spaces.
An Indigenous community in northeastern Ontario that says its new data centre will help secure its data sovereignty.
A health researcher shares a more holistic understanding of autism based on Indigenous knowledge: “we would have viewed autism as a gift. As something to be celebrated.”
Indigenous Innovation and AI Workshop in Tokyo
The big picture: Our CEO Jeff Ward brought Indigenous perspectives to the global stage as one of the moderators at the Tokyo Innovation Workshop 2025. Jeff has been an active member of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) expert panel since 2023. He was nominated to the position by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.
Why it matters: Jeff shared “while there’s an obvious consideration around data and small or large language models, it's also about collaboration that brings cultural and language knowledge keepers together with technologists, through a lens of responsible and ethical AI that takes a rights-based approach.” Otherwise, linguistic diversity becomes a risk of the current technological investments into mainstream LLMs, and billions globally will continue to see their cultural contexts marginalized by systems not designed by or for them.
Key points:
This gathering focused on several emerging AI policy development areas including multilingual and multicultural AI systems, a topic directly connected to Animikii’s work in Indigenous data sovereignty.
The workshop followed in the footsteps of previous workshops organized by the Centers of the GPAI expert community in 2023 in Montreal and in 2024 in Paris.
We thank and congratulate the workshop organizers (NICT, CEIMIA and Inria) for making room for these discussions and all participants for working toward more ethical AI systems to honour different perspectives.
What they’re saying: ”AI can actually accelerate the loss of languages, if we are not careful. Increasing and widespread engagement with primarily English-based LLMs globally are slowly (rapidly?) shifting its users towards ideologies and biases embedded in training datasets” Jeff Ward.
“Language is more than just a means of communication; it carries with it our identity, our history, and our knowledge. Supporting linguistic diversity in AI development is essential to ensuring equity, inclusion, and global relevance.” CEIMIA
Learn more: Policies, data and analysis for trustworthy artificial intelligence: https://oecd.ai/en/
Curated Articles:
Indigenous scholars embark on summer research projects
Indigenous students at The University of Winnipeg who are curious about graduate studies gathered for the opening ceremony of the 2025 Indigenous Summer Scholars Program (ISSP). Em Penner, an Indigiqueer Cree and Anishinaabe person who recently completed a four-year Bachelor of Arts with a Rhetoric and Communications major and a Psychology minor, is one of this year’s ISSP scholars. Penner will be mentored by Dr. Angela Failler, Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, and Dr. Heather Milne, Professor in the Department of English. Penner’s research project, entitled “Museum Queeries,” focuses on Indigenous queer representation in local curatorial spaces such as museums, galleries, and archives. “I hope to explore Indigenous queer representation at the Manitoba Museum, WAG-Qaumajuq, and UWinnipeg’s Two-Spirit Archives,” Penner said, “to highlight the necessity of centring these identities in curatorial spaces for Indigenous resurgence using a podcast to broaden the accessibility of my research.”
Researching autism with and within First Nations communities
Grant Bruno has dedicated his career to supporting children with autism by moving past western definitions of the disorder. Bruno, who recently accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Alberta, is set to become the first First Nations faculty member in pediatrics in all of Canada. As part of his research, Bruno is working to bridge the divide between traditional western approaches to diagnosing and living with autism, and a more holistic understanding of autism based on Indigenous knowledge. “The overall consensus is that we would have viewed autism as a gift. As something to be celebrated,” he explains.
$24M research project looks to improve care for Indigenous people with dementia
Bea Shawanda of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., was diagnosed with dementia and is a residential school survivor. When Elizabeth Edgar-Webkamigad's mother first showed signs of dementia, it was a long and difficult process to get a diagnosis. Even after her mother's diagnosis, her care didn't always recognize her culture and the trauma she experienced attending the Spanish Indian Residential School for Girls. Now Edgar-Webkamigad is sharing her family's experiences with a $24-million research project that spans seven universities across Canada along with several Indigenous organizations. The Indigenous Brain Health Assessment Bundle Project has received funding from the New Frontiers in Research Fund to create bundles, which are region-specific resources for health-care providers to deliver culturally appropriate care for people who are showing signs of dementia.
Rethinking Research and Data Sovereignty
University of Alberta’s Data Sovereignty Declaration and Caretaking Directives set a new standard for managing data gathered through research. The Search for Wellness Through Ancestral Languages, a national research study that initially sought to better understand the impact of knowing and speaking Indigenous languages on health and well-being, eventually grew to an entire rethinking of how researchers at the U of A could work with Indigenous communities and data sovereignty. Guided by the advisory council, the research team set to work creating the university’s first-ever Data Sovereignty Declaration and Caretaking Directives. The agreement sets a new standard for the institution, allowing research participants to actively participate in how their data is managed once it has been collected.
‘Emerging archivist’ adds to Indigenous record
December graduate Mikayah Locklear is a School of Information and Library Science (SILS) student. “I did not come into UNC knowing that information science was what I wanted to do with my life,” she said. “I knew that I wanted to work with technology, but outside of that, I was clueless.” Locklear discovered unlimited applications and numerous career paths at SILS. After she decided to minor in American studies and environmental justice, her dreams began to align. “I am a proud Lumbee woman, a SILS student, an emerging archivist, an Indigenous activist, and a lover of history and the outdoors,” she said. “Through all these parts of me, I can see how my niche perspective is needed and valued.”
Indigenous community on Manitoulin Island gets a data centre to help preserve its cultural heritage
"It wasn't cheap," said the chief of Wiikwemkoong. An Indigenous community on Manitoulin Island in northeastern Ontario says its new data centre will help it secure its data sovereignty. The Ogimaa (or chief) of Wiikwemkoong, Tim Ominika, said the community will be using the data centre to store information about programs and services, including the community's education department, health centre and services offered through the band office. It will also allow the First Nation to preserve its cultural heritage locally. "It empowers us to digitally preserve and share our Anishinaabe language because that is another thing we are looking at, our knowledge, our traditions," Ominika said.
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