New Tech, Old Colonies: AI and Indigenous Futures

By: Marissa Heard
Marissa Heard is a birthworker, writer, and community advocate trained by Black American and Indigenous midwives, committed to uplifting their voices and carrying forward the traditions that shape her work.

The AI revolution looks new, but its roots reach deep into old colonial soil. Behind the flashy branding of artificial intelligence lies a familiar pattern of control, extraction, and dispossession. For Indigenous Peoples, AI is not a neutral tool, it’s the newest face of an old colonial story and, unless challenged, these systems will not liberate. Instead, they risk colonizing by carrying centuries of inequity into a digital future. Technology has long been tied to systems of power; however, it also carries potential when wielded with sovereignty. The question isn’t whether AI will transform our world, but whether that transformation repeats history or creates liberation.

Across the globe, Indigenous communities are pushing back against the idea that AI is neutral. Facial recognition, predictive policing, and biased algorithms reinforce inequities that Black, Indigenous, and people of color already live with (Walter & Kukutai, 2018). Even language and cultural knowledge are at risk of being scraped into AI databases without consent, packaged as innovation while repeating centuries of theft (Cultural Survival, 2023). These are not accidents. They are symptoms of a colonial mindset that treats knowledge as another resource to be mined. Algorithms reflect the worldview of their designers, who overwhelmingly are not Indigenous, and therefore embed the same systemic inequities into digital systems (Walter & Kukutai, 2018).

Still, Indigenous-led projects show what it looks like to disrupt this cycle. Te Hiku Media, a Māori-led initiative in Aotearoa, has used AI for language revitalization on their own terms, protecting cultural data from exploitation (Pulitzer Center, 2023). In addition, Aboriginal technologists in Australia are developing digital storytelling tools rooted in cultural protocols, challenging dominant narratives of innovation as extraction (Walter & Kukutai, 2018). These efforts demonstrate that AI can be reclaimed as a tool of sovereignty rather than surveillance. Frameworks like CARE (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) and OCAP (Ownership, Control, Access, Possession) provide blueprints for ethical data practices rooted in Indigenous governance (Carroll et al., 2020). They remind us that knowledge, like land, hav to be governed with respect, consent, and accountability. Indigenous Data Sovereignty (ID-SOV) movements such as Maiam nayri Wingara in Australia and Te Mana Raraunga in Aotearoa are advancing this vision by demanding that Indigenous peoples be the decision-makers over how their data is created, stored, and used (Walter & Kukutai, 2018). These principles disrupt the myth of AI as neutral and push back against the notion that data is a free resource for corporate or state exploitation.
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Imagining Indigenous futures with AI means centering sovereignty, not sidelining it. Imagine AI tools that track illegal logging under the authority of Indigenous rangers, or digital archives that return stories and songs to their communities instead of locking them in corporate databases. AI can be a tool of liberation or a weapon of oppression; the difference lies in whose hands shape its purpose. Indigenous communities are already leading the way toward futures where AI strengthens, rather than erases, culture and survival. Whether the world will join them in building that future or repeat the mistakes of colonial history in digital form, remains the true test of this technological revolution.


References:

• Carroll, S. R., Garba, I., Figueroa-Rodríguez, O. L., Holbrook, J., Lovett, R., Materechera, S., Hudson, M. (2020). The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. Data Science Journal, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-043
• Cultural Survival. (2023). Artificial Intelligence and Indigenous Peoples’ Realities. https://www.culturalsurvival.org
• Pulitzer Center. (2023). A New Vision of Artificial Intelligence for the People.https://pulitzercenter.org
• Walter, M., & Kukutai, T. (2018). Artificial Intelligence and Indigenous Data Sovereignty. Australian Council of Learned Academies. https://acola.org