LONG READ: What is #DataBack? Indigenous-owned software company makes data exciting

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The Aamjiwnaang First Nation sits on Anishinaabeg land, in what is colonially known as Sarnia, Ont.. Colloquially referred to as Chemical Valley, the land that Aamjiwnaang sits on is surrounded by chemical and petrochemical production plants, which a new report says has had tangible effects on public health, food sources and relationships to land within the community. 

“Community members know the creek should not be touched, there are fewer wild strawberries, and the fish are not safe to eat,” reads a new report from the Yellowhead Institute, an Indigenous-led policy research centre at Toronto Metropolitan University. 

The federal government’s ‘permission-to-pollute’ ethos – whereby it gives companies ‘license’ to pollute without much regulation or accountability frameworks – is to blame, the report continues. These economic policies are also insidious “in the lack of information that companies provide to Indigenous communities about the true extent of their polluting activities.”

This information scarcity is by design, the report adds. Notifications about pollutant levels in the local air and water are controlled mainly by the polluting companies, and are deliberately vague. 

“Phrases such as ‘Process Upset’ and ‘Operational Disruption’ provide little to no information about potential dangers or exposures,” the report says. “Community members of all ages could be sleeping during an incident or be outside on the land, completely exposed and unaware of what they are exposed to.”

This is data colonialism in action, according to researchers at the Yellowhead Institute and members of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, who collaborated on the report. It’s an example of how data can be used to feign transparency, and as a mode to silence the true experiences of the community affected by the pollutants.

Since 2004, members of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation have been collecting their own data on polluting activity in the area – data which shows a vastly different story from the notifications they have received from local chemical and petroleum companies.

Practical approaches to Indigenous data sovereignty

Data sovereignty for Indigenous communities means they own the data and information and how that data is managed, used, analyzed, stored and governed. “Indigenous data sovereignty is a rights movement as much as it is an academic concept, as much as it is an actual practice,” says Jeff Doctor, an impact strategist at Animikii, an Indigenous-owned technology company. 

“Many institutions and governments continue to hold data about Indigenous Peoples and communities and have no intention to transfer rightful ownership, control and possession to them,” adds Jeff Ward, CEO at Animikii. 

“Other groups seek to profit or further extract from this data.” 

For Doctor and Ward, they say it’s important communities understand the tangible effects of data colonialism and mis/disinformation, to be able to better advocate for their rights, especially as tech companies look to build custom solutions for Indigenous communities. 

“We need to take our data back from the countless spaces that hold them hostage, but we also have to know what to do with them once we have them back,” Doctor says.

Last year, Animikii released #DataBack, an eBook intended to be a resource for Indigenous communities. “We wanted to provide a community resource that regular day-to-day Indigenous people (aunties and uncles, Elders and youth, parents and their children) could point to when talking about what it means to get their collective data back,” Doctor says. 

“I hope to see #DataBack being taken just as seriously as #LandBack or even #Cashback.”

#DataBack contains seven lines of enquiry that people within Indigenous communities can start to ask one another when looking to assert jurisdiction over Indigenous data. It also suggests data sources that communities can consult. 

For example, when learning about land rights and usage, the #DataBack book suggests looking at “geographical data, maps, place-based stories, oral histories, legends [and] children’s stories” as data sources. Similarly, data sources on health and wellbeing include “social determinants of health, medicines, teaching, sports [and] ceremonies.”

“For me, it’s about getting people excited to think about data in the same terms that they think about land defence, water protection, or (re)developing healthy economies,” Doctor says. 

“What does data sovereignty have to do with having clean drinking water? Having a safe and cozy place to live? Having healthy food, sacred medicines, loving relationships?

“Data is such an essential part of governance, and good governance is key to (re)building our nations and communities in ways that don’t replicate the very harms we are fighting against,” he adds. 

#DataBack came before the launch of Niiwin, a no-code tool that allows Indigenous organizations and governments to design custom data structures, manage data securely, develop a content management system , and host data in a location that most suits them. It’s currently being used in Animikii’s own software development, and the team intends to bring the technology to communities themselves. 

“By reducing the need for a software developer, we can train communities and organizations to create and manage data and data structures, with wise practices we’ve baked into the software through 20 years of Indigenous-focused tech development,” Doctor says. 

Building Niiwin as a piece of software that can be customized is not only a requirement for Indigenous self-determination, but also to ensure that the technology doesn’t “entrap users into a cycle of dependence,” Doctor adds. “[This] is the standard operating model of a Silicon Valley tech firm, [which] lures users in with ‘features’, then strips them of their rights in the name of ‘convenience’.”

Already, Indigenous-led organizations are using Niiwin to manage their data on their own terms. Witness Blanket is an online artwork that takes inspiration from a woven blanket and aims to tell stories of residential schools in Canada through digital artifacts. The Survivor’s Secretariat documents the specific history of the Mohawk Institute Residential School. 

“To honour the truth shared by Survivors and our search for more than 140 years of information gathered through records and documents, we needed to work with people who could build a data platform that honours and respects our people, our stories and voices, because this is what our data are about,” says the Survivors’ Secretariat team in a testimonial on Niiwin’s website. 

“We’re working with Animikii to leverage Niiwin’s core Indigenous Data Sovereignty technology to protect and manage the memories held in the records, the data.” 

Sovereignty means rethinking the concept of “data”

In Aamjiwnaang, the community couldn’t rely on data and notifications they were receiving from industrial companies about pollution in the local area. Instead, community member Ada Lockridge recorded residents’ pollution experiences from 2004 to 2023 on handwritten calendars. 

“If you write it all down, you remember it, but you have to write it down right away. And that’s what I did. I wrote down every phone call, what time they called and everything. What their concerns were – I’m glad people trust me in that,” Lockridge said. “But I’m not the one that they’re supposed to be calling. You know? I’ll do it, but they shouldn’t have to call all over to find out anything.”

Land defenders and community researchers Vanessa and Beze Gray then compared these to the notifications provided by the industry. 

“Companies purposefully provide data in ways that hide and obscure their harmful activities, telling the community very little about what is actually happening,” they said.

In this case study, Western forms of data collection and dissemination are considered superior to Indigenous methods. Tech-based notifications of pollution are considered more robust than handwritten notes. 

Doctor adds that what is labelled as ‘data’ drastically differs from the West in Indigenous communities.“Every time we speak our languages, from a simple introduction to a full-on conversation, we’re exercising our data sovereignty. Every piece of art we create, every ceremony we hold sacred, every story, teaching, lesson, or joke we pass on is an exercise in our data sovereignty.”

The #DataBack eBook also touches on the dominance of paper-based or written forms of knowledge and data sharing. It invites the reader instead to consider a wampum belt as a data source. “A proper reading of a wampum belt can take days, if not an entire week, depending on the complexity of the belt and its meanings,” the book says. 

“Wampum belts are not an alternative to paper; they embody a different way of thinking about data.” 

In 1924, many wampum belts were stolen and destroyed by the government. 

Applying Indigenous worldviews to data means reimagining what constitutes a piece of data and how that piece of information is governed and analyzed. 

“Instead of the Western approach of segmenting, isolating, categorizing and reducing everything to the sum of its parts – and doing so as some sort of god-like neutral observer – Indigenous sciences, and thus data collection methodologies, tend to be far more holistic, relational and responsible in their approaches. Humility and respect are fundamental to everything,” says Doctor.    

Since data is fast becoming a global lingua franca, Doctor encourages people to consider what sorts of data and information is missing. He points to a lack of information around missing and murdered Indigenous women, those who were taken in the Sixties Scoop, or what took place in residential schools. 

As an example, in the Aamjiwnaang First Nation case study, the Yellowhead Institute report  points out that companies often send out notifications about heightened noise levels, but with little supplementary information about “what caused the noise, how long it will last, and which processes, chemicals, risks and releases are involved with or related to it. Without specificity, Aamjiwnaang residents are left wondering what the generic notification of ‘noise’ might mean.”

Missing or concealed information is part of ongoing erasure, Doctor says, “whether it’s a drop-down menu that forces Indigenous people to say they are “Canadian,” or a text field that doesn’t allow for Indigenous names because the system doesn’t recognize the characters as “valid.” We’re dealing with the relationship between power and information, and data are fundamental to this.”

Holding the tech and data industry accountable

In Aamjiwnaang First Nation, community members received a notification in February, 2021. 

“A CAER Information Code 8 has been issued by Imperial. There was an equipment malfunction during the startup of a process unit. Downwind air monitoring so far has not detected elevated readings.” This notification is unclear and inaccessible: it’s not clear what Code 8 is, what sorts of chemicals have been released into the air, and what community members should do in response, the report adds. Here, a lack of usable and actionable information puts the community at risk of harm. 

The technology industry – those who fund new technology companies – often aren’t held accountable for their impact, particularly not to Indigenous communities, Doctor highlights. “Cultural appropriation and colonial ideologies are very much at the heart of mainstream tech culture. The tech sector gives lip service to serving the needs of Indigenous Peoples but they rarely even consider our existence,” he says. “It’s mind-boggling how quickly Indigenous Peoples are excluded once something has a price tag associated with it.”

Niiwin aims to reduce the barriers that Indigenous communities and organizations often face when accessing and financing robust technology, says the Animikii team. Users can customize the software in a way that works for their own data management practices without knowing complex code. 

But the team at Animikii also wants to ensure they are building trust with communities in the long run, and continuing to iterate the technology based on users’ needs. 

“We need to proceed carefully to find a balance between affordability and profitability,” Doctor says. “Software needs maintenance, and we need to survive as a company. If we’re too profitable, our partners won’t trust us. If we go broke, who’s going to replace us in building safe and appropriate software for Indigenous Peoples?”

The Animikii team recognizes they are working in an industry with few product safety standards or regulations and that that can perpetuate more harm in the long term. “We don’t build based on whatever techno-hype that venture capitalists are throwing money at; we build based on what people tell us they need and tell us they hope to have,” Doctor adds. “That requires an ongoing working relationship and takes a lot of time. We don’t ‘build fast and break things’, we ‘move slow and empower people.’”

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