The First Nations community using tech to preserve culture

Tim Omanika (0:01)

You're listening to SBS.

SPEAKER_2 (0:05)

SBS is Australia's most trusted multilingual broadcaster. Our listeners are loyal, highly engaged, and have supported countless local businesses. We offer advertising packages for businesses of all sizes. Our experienced sales team will guide you through the process of owning a great campaign. Bring your own ad or have our production team make you something in one of our 68 languages. Start the conversation with your new audience today.

Mirko Bibic (0:37)

You're listening to SBS News.

Deborah Grohk (0:48)

For artist James Mishibu-Najima, the Wukwemkong Reserve in Ontario, Canada will always be his home.

James Mishibu-Najima (0:55)

As a younger artist, I tried moving into Toronto for the first week. I couldn't paint nothing, nothing at all. I couldn't feel the earth, I guess. But I know it was that second week, nothing was being produced. I decided to come home, and everything started again.

Deborah Grohk (1:13)

The Wukwemkong is on the eastern end of Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron, an area that attracts visitors with its rugged wilderness, extensive waterways, and Anishinaabe cultural offerings. James is one of around 4,000 or so residents in the territory that First Nations historian Stephen George says prides itself as being Canada's only unceded territory because it never signed a treaty surrendering its land to the government.

Michael McCormick (1:42)

All those leaders, now, their ancestors did sign this treaty from 1862, but our leadership on this side of the, on this side of the Wikomakong side, said no, no. And they kept trying to convince them, and it was still no all the way through.

Deborah Grohk (2:00)

The people of the territory still observe the traditional ways of their First Nation heritage, like the practice of smudging, which involves burning plants that are considered to be medicinal and sacred in order to create a smoke bath. Hope Asawamak has found memories.

Hope Asawamak (2:17)

My mom, we had always smudged before I go to school. I smudge after. I smudge whenever I'm feeling that negativity in me, because it's a reminder that this is where our spirit is and that we carry ourselves in those good ways and to have those good thoughts.

Deborah Grohk (2:38)

Hope says music is also an important cultural practice.

Hope Asawamak (2:42)

We have water songs, we have fire songs, we have men's songs, we have women's songs, we have morning songs and lunch songs, all different songs that represent for what you're doing at that time.

Deborah Grohk (2:54)

For thousands of years, these traditions have been passed down through oral storytelling.

But now this community is using a data center to help preserve its heritage. From the outside, it looks almost like a shipping container. But on the inside, it holds digital files that include video recordings of native speakers of the Anishinaabe language for others to learn, community documents and health records of the locals. Michael McCormick is the territory's Chief Technology Officer.

Michael McCormick (3:24)

Once we amalgamated everything and put it into a cloud and modernized everything, we then realized we need a safe place to store this. Where are we going to store this data? You know, we have climate change effect in our community. We have forest fires encroaching on our territory.

Where can we keep this that will be safe for future generations? And so that's why we decided to go with a micro data center.

Deborah Grohk (3:47)

The data center is believed to be one of the first for Canada's indigenous groups, inspired by the 1998 Accord signed by the country's first nations tribes to govern how their own data should be managed. Known as the OCAP principles, they were driven by concerns that indigenous Canadians were often the focus of research by outsiders that didn't benefit them.

As part of the upgrade, the tribe has been gradually transferring its information that had been held in a Microsoft data center in Toronto, about 300 kilometers away. The move to modernize has the support of Chief Tim Omanika.

Tim Omanika (4:25)

Our language is one of the biggest things that most First Nations across the country are losing. We, Kwan Mkongansida territory here, are one of the top speaking fluency language speakers across the country.

I'm very proud to say that of our First Nation community members. A lot of our members do go out to the United States to go teach or across the country.

Deborah Grohk (4:48)

The idea of digital sovereignty has gained momentum in places like Europe, where leaders are wary of the widespread influence of American big tech. For the We Kwan Mkong First Nation and other Indigenous communities, it's also about asserting authority over their own information after historically being excluded from its collection and use. But they're still confronting situations where they say decisions are being made largely without them.