When we talk about the term indigenous data sovereignty, you can't use that term if your server is not on your INA.

If your computer hardware isn't on your land and you don't control it and you're not in full understanding of its relation to the amount of heat that it's producing,

what the environmental consequences are, then it's not indigenous data sovereignty. Now that we're

dealing with this new digital medium, which is data itself, if we're not in control of that

resource, then we can't make value from it. We can't commodify it.

We can't buy our land back from people who stole it from us.

We can't create these opportunities for cultural revitalization if you're in league with

or in bed with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Seattle's own, Microsoft.

Actually, in a lot of ways, sovereign indigenous communities in America have a lot of

existing infrastructure that they could use.

Whether you're watching like the appropriation of art or the commodification of our

ancestors' genomes or the conversion of our ancestors

remains into genetic information that's stored on a cloud and the restrictions around

that information and how people get access.

Maybe it's images that people are taking from MRI data or, you know, there's just so many different directions

to take an observation and digitize it. And once it becomes a digital asset and it can be

commodified, it becomes part of extractive capitalism, like in this new way, with this new resource.

If we don't participate in it,

we can't reap the fruits of our own labor. But if we're not in control of that data,

we're not going to answer an approach and provide solutions for specific questions that our

communities prioritize. So it's complicated. The way we all arrive at understanding

the value of data is quite, for me it was like quite personal. And I think it had to do with

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