Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper

Workshops on IKS and AI.

Collective reviews of content and literature.

Practice-base and artistic engagements with AI.

Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper is a comprised of a collection of heterogeneous texts (design guidelines, scholarly essays, artworks, creative writing, and descriptions of technology prototypes) that articulate a multiplicity of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) in conversation with artificial intelligence practices and theories. The Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper was built through workshops and meetings with Indigenous researchers from Aotearoa (New Zealand), Australia, North America, and the Pacific and centers Indigenous concerns in designing and creating ethical engagements with artificial intelligence. Given how technology has been historically employed against Indigenous communities, this position paper offers tools and concepts to refuse humancentric approaches to artificial intelligence through thinking about it via environmental relations, sustainability, and cultural and geographical grounding.

This position paper articulates a diverse set of Indigenous Knowledge Systems without generalizing their approaches to artificial intelligence. During the production of this document, researchers were encouraged to write about the specificities of their community knowledges and approaches to the issue. Moreover, the researchers offer that the position paper as a starting point to an ongoing respectful and reciprocal conversation between many Indigenous communities.

The working paper marks the start of an ongoing and innovative conversation around IKS and AI. This text serves as a source and guide for future thinking about the topic, proving researchers with best practices and inspiration for thinking differently.

Documentation produced in workshops and meetings.

Personal and collective stories about Indigeneity, technology, and AI.

Academic articles on IKS and AI.

The Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper is the result of and encourages further knowledge mobilization on the topic. Through its diverse set of texts and research perspectives, it mobilizes different aspects of IKS into AI research, including ethics, art, and more-than human research. On top of creating new IKS, it also acknowledges the importance of the proper recuperation of traditional knowledge within technical systems and the need to protect traditional knowledge while also making (some of) it available to inform the design of these technological systems.

“Many Indigenous epistemologies refuse to centre or elevate the human. These relational paradigms based on principles and practices of social and environmental sustainability have long informed technology development in our cultures, e.g. Hawaiian land tenure, ecology, and wayfinding. Approaching new machine entities from such frameworks opens up opportunities to develop relationships with them based on mutual respect and aid.” (p. 7)

Indigenous Science and Technology Studies, Information Studies, Digital Humanities