Tech With Respect: AI And Indigenous Community Power

Forbes

17-04-2025

Two Teenage Native American Indian Navajo Sister in Traditional Clothing Enjoying the Vast Desert ... More and Red Rock Landscape in the Famous Navajo Tribal Park in Monument Valley Arizona at Dawn
Artificial Intelligence is everywhere—from search engines and supply chains to climate forecasts and school curriculums. But amid the buzz about what AI can do for us, an equally important question often gets overlooked: what is it doing to us, particularly those usually left out from mainstream design and decision-making processes, such as Indigenous communities?
The answer is complex. AI carries tremendous potential to support Indigenous self-determination, language preservation, and climate stewardship. But it also risks deepening long-standing patterns of erasure, exploitation, and exclusion — unless it is carefully aligned with the values, rights, and realities of Indigenous peoples.
One framework that helps unpack these dynamics is the ABCD of silent AI issues: agency decay, bond erosion, climate conundrum, and divided society. These issues aren't always visible in headlines or policy briefs — but they shape how AI shows up in everyday life. And for communities historically sidelined in technological revolutions, these risks can carry outsized consequences.
Who controls the narrative when technology speaks for us?
As AI systems become more embedded in daily decision-making, there's a growing concern that personal and collective autonomy may erode — especially for groups with little say in how those systems are trained or deployed. When AI is built on biased or incomplete data, it often defaults to dominant worldviews, misrepresenting or ignoring others altogether.
This isn't just a design flaw. It's a continuation of colonial patterns in a new digital form.
Yet some efforts flip the script. The Wasigen Kisawatsuin platform, for example, is being designed to recognize harmful or biased language about Indigenous peoples, flag it, and offer respectful alternatives. The tool serves as a digital ally to reduce emotional labor and as a mechanism to ensure Indigenous knowledge and experiences are not overwritten by default AI norms.
Can AI protect culture, or will it strip it of meaning?
Cultural appropriation has found new fuel in generative AI. Without guardrails, these systems scrape, remix, and reproduce sacred imagery, ceremonial language, and ancestral designs — usually without consent or context. This commodification not only disrespects Indigenous cultures but also risks severing the very bonds that sustain them.
Some organizations are working to turn that around. Natives Rising supports digital upskilling and AI literacy so that Indigenous communities can use the tools and shape them. This includes exploring AI's role in emotional wellness and creating community-aligned content that strengthens identity and intergenerational connection rather than diluting it.
How can AI serve the planet without sacrificing the communities that protect it?
The environmental cost of AI is staggering. Data centers require immense electricity and water — resources often sourced from or near Indigenous lands. Ironically, the very populations stewarding biodiversity hotspots are those most at risk from the tech industry's growing footprint.
A better path is possible. The First Languages AI Reality Initiative uses AI to revitalize endangered Indigenous languages while advocating for carbon-neutral infrastructure. By powering language preservation tools with renewable energy, the initiative models how AI can be deployed in ways that honor both people and planet.
This kind of alignment isn't just ethical — it's strategic. Indigenous communities have centuries of ecological knowledge and a track record of protecting 80% of the world's remaining biodiversity. A climate-smart AI future must include — not displace — these contributions.
Will AI bridge or widen the digital divide?
Access to AI isn't just about software but also power, infrastructure, and inclusion. Many Indigenous communities still lack stable internet or electricity, let alone the training and legal tools to engage with AI on equal footing. Meanwhile, large AI developers race ahead, sometimes using data sourced from these communities without consent.
The result? A lopsided tech economy where some benefit from AI and others are mined for it.
That's why platforms like Corral matter. It consolidates tribal consultation opportunities from U.S. federal agencies, allowing Indigenous leaders to engage with policy more efficiently. By automating time-consuming administrative work, Corral frees up capacity for governance, cultural preservation, and community programming — areas that too often get sidelined due to bandwidth constraints.
The promise of AI lies not in its novelty but in how it's directed. Prosocial AI — AI systems that are tailored, trained, tested, and targeted to bring out the best in and for people and the planet — is possible. It requires intent and inclusivity from design to deployment. Here's how:
Design with, not for
AI systems must be co-developed with Indigenous communities, drawing on their knowledge systems and lived realities. This ensures technologies are accurate and aligned with cultural values and legal rights.
Invest in ethical infrastructure
Renewable-powered data centers, governed by local communities, can mitigate environmental harm while creating jobs and digital sovereignty.
Strengthen data sovereignty
Community-owned data cooperatives and legal protections must be established to prevent extractive practices. Consent isn't just polite—it's essential.
Bridge the skills-to-systems gap
Coding camps, fellowships, and open-access AI education should be scaled to ensure Indigenous youth and leaders are not only users but creators of AI.
AI doesn't have to repeat the extractive logic of past innovations. It can help restore language, uplift knowledge, and accelerate justice — but only if we approach it as a tool in service of community-defined goals.
The choice is ours. Let's not just ask what AI can do. To reconfigure it with a holistic mindset, let's ask who it serves, why, and at what cost. What is outlined here, with a focus on Indigenous communities, applies to other minorities as well. AI can be a force of social good that serves everyone. But to unlock that potential, we must design our expanding artificial treasure chest with awareness of the differences that distinguish us and attention to the needs that we have in common. We are all different, but we all share the aspiration for happiness and the desire to be heard and respected. Prosocial AI can serve that purpose.
This article is part of a broader series exploring AI's impact on equity, sustainability, and society, including changemakers from MIT Solve.