“What’s the difference between you and a private Facebook group?” is a question Alejandro Lakgaxixiwa Mayoral Baños frequently encounters when he brings up his organization’s Indigenous-only app. 

The executive director of Indigenous Friends, a social enterprise focused on Indigenous digital education and autonomy, likens the app to a tipi — the traditional hide-and-wood dwellings of Indigenous communities on the Great Plains that serve as places of ceremony. Strict protocols govern conduct within a tipi. Anyone within a tipi is not allowed to repeat what was said inside when they leave. This ethos is the complete opposite of Facebook’s rules, where over a billion users can say nearly whatever they wish to anyone with a public account. 

Mayoral Banos began speaking with elders about the difficulties they were hearing from Indigenous students in Toronto in