AI, Indigenous Language Sovereignty, and Decolonizing Technology

Welcome and introduction. Mark introduces Natasha and how the conversation came about.

Mark Smith 0:05

The intelligence age is not coming. We're already living in it. I'm Mark Smith, and each week I speak with the people building, leading, and navigating a world being reshaped by artificial intelligence. We explore AI technology, the changing nature of work, and what it takes to build a meaningful career in the intelligence age. This is the intelligence age. Today I'm joined by Natasha, all the way from Canada. And I'm interested in having a conversation. This conversation came about because of a post of hers that popped off in my LinkedIn feed about an app she was doing that involved AI and also the indigenous language uh in uh Canada. So with that, Natasha, welcome to the show. Why don't you tell me about food, family, and fun uh so the audience can kind of get a feel of you and your place?

Food, family and fun. Natasha on Inuit culture, her mixed heritage and growing up between cultures.

Natasha MacDonald 0:57

All right. Um, first of all, uh really nice to meet you. And I'm I'm really glad that uh you've reached out. So, in terms of food, family, and fun, food uh is an important part of my culture. Uh it's it's something that brings us together that we eat communally on the floor, uh, with our hands right into it and usually fresh. Um uh family, uh my mom's side of the family are from Nunavik, uh, which is part of uh Inuit Nunangat, which is the Arctic part of Canada. So I am Inuit. Um in Canada we have three First Nations, uh three indigenous communities, so First Nations, Inuit and Metis, and I'm part of uh Inuit. And um on my father's side, he is as uh was um Scottish, English, French, heritage, that sort of thing. Um and then in terms of fun, fun, uh fun for me is travel, exploring, seeing new things, and something that I always did with my family growing up, so it's a big part of who I am, exploring other cultures because I grew up in between uh cultures, my father's and my mother's. And so it's something for me that I I love um seeing new things in uh and and travel.

Mark Smith 2:19

Nice, nice. Tell me a bit of about uh your culture in that, you know, I'm in the very bottom of the southern hemisphere, you're in the very tippy top of the northern hemisphere, and and you know, as saying before, my wife is Maori, therefore my children are Maori as

Language loss and AI. Mark shares his connection through his Māori wife and the questions AI raises.

Mark Smith 2:40

well, and uh I am not, and but I have become very interested in the crossover between um the culture she comes from and the impact on our nation that uh colonization has had. I'm very interested in the loss of language and now the resurgence that we're seeing and have seen for some years in New Zealand. But with AI entering the mix, it changes so many different things, whether it's around IP, whether it's around um

Inuit of Nunavik. Natasha describes her community, its place in Canada and her territory.

Mark Smith 3:15

uh how AI is used um to provide the language. And but before we go there, I just would like some more context of your people um and where you come from and and your experience um just to kind of set that scene so I can understand it um to set up this conversation.

Natasha MacDonald 3:36

Absolutely. And and uh I so appreciate your interest. Uh Inuit, we're such a small population in Canada. We represent probably about 60, 65,000 Inuit in total. So we are a small but mighty uh uh group. And um I speak when I speak about Inuit, I'll speak about uh my territory uh specifically because I I don't pretend to represent all indigenous communities in Canada or even all Inuit because as you can imagine, Canada is the second largest country in the world, so we span the entire Arctic, so from coast to coast and to the northern coast, we uh have such a beautiful wide variety of Inuit. So my community comes uh is in is located in uh Kujarabik, which is on the Hudson Bay of northern Quebec. Um so if anybody knows where Montreal is uh in Canaan or heard of it, it's in it's in the north of that province. So um I'm going to explain the colonization if I can uh in my region specifically to help give some context about where we are in terms of language.

Colonization across generations. Her grandmother's life on the land, then federal day schools, and the pressure of English and French.

Natasha MacDonald 4:50

My uh Ananatek, my grandmother, uh was born uh on the land uh in 1933, uh where she was still living a nomadic life with her uh parents, my great-grandparents, still uh on the land, you know, foraging for food, living in in small um groups and traveling with the seasons. Um and during that time, the only, how do I say, uh, outside exposure were a handful of missionaries uh that came to our region to spread uh their um uh beliefs. And uh that was the contact with uh outside uh the outside world. During my mother's generation, she was born in 1950. So in 1949, that was the very first year that um federal uh Um absolutely um so my day schools were introduced into my uh territory. So federal Um absolutely um so my day schools, if if you're not as familiar with that term, it's uh like the residential schools that we hear about here in Canada, uh during the time when uh indigenous people were uh forced to leave their homes and their families to attend um schools so that they can be assimilated into the greater Canadian society, but uh suffered much abuse. So in my region, we had uh federal Um absolutely um so my day schools. So you can imagine her being born in 1950 was literally at the beginning of this. So through that came uh education uh in English, where our communities were still at home speaking in Inuktitut, eating Inuit food, living uh not nomadically, because through the Canadian government we were forced to stay in one community. We were no longer allowed to be nomadic. And so my mother grew up speaking fluently in Inuktitut and then in English because she had to attend federal Um absolutely um so my day school and residential school for which she was forced to leave community. Same thing with my aunts and uncles. And then there's me who was born in the mid-70s. Um, and uh for us in Nunavik, uh, we signed our first land claim treaty agreement in 1975. So I was at that stage of the change in time where Inuit were asserting uh more uh not perfect, but more self-determination when it came to education um and other service deliveries. The only thing is um English was so strong and predominant, so was French, because uh Quebec is a French-speaking province, so we also had that colonial language forced upon us. Um but our own school board was developed, the Kadavik et les Sarnes l'Irnique, Kadavik School Board, where um education is provided in Inukituk, uh our our indigenous language, until um the early primary years, and then parents decide if they'll go off and study English or French for the rest of their time in school. Um

Language today. About 95% still speak Inuktitut, but youth are shifting to English.

Natasha MacDonald 8:06

currently in Nunavik, uh, and that's why I don't say that uh I can't paint the same brush across the four regions, because in Nunavik, um our population of about 14,000 Inuit, about 95, let's say, percent of our population still speak or use Inuktud. However, um that number is changing fast because of um the fact that we now have access, like every citizen globally, like in your wife's community, like in First Nations community across Canada and the United States, what have you, um we have access to media, social media, internet, um, technology, uh, everything, gains, all of that. And we're starting to see a strong language shift towards English in many of our communities, including mine. When I see and hear our youth speaking in English to their grandmothers who speak Inuktitut, uh, and the grandparents hardly understand their grandchildren, and the grandchildren hardly understand their grandparents, you know that a change is coming. So within that context, um, I worked for many years in corporate services, you know, usually in Inuit and other indigenous organizations, but in the last number of years, I completed my PhD in um uh

Heritage Lab. Natasha's work protecting Indigenous languages with closed-loop AI and community-vetted data.

Natasha MacDonald 9:34

in the field of education, but specifically on decolonizing um uh education in Inuit communities through traditional knowledge and technology. So this kind of uh topic for me is has just been a real passion of mine. And I was approached by a nonprofit, a very small little group of us called Heritage Lab. And that's where you probably saw me uh pop up on your feed because our nonprofit, I'm the vice president, but we don't really believe in that hierarchical stuff, so it's just a title to put on a piece of uh government paper. Um, but what we do is protect and preserve uh um uh traditional uh indigenous languages through technology, including AI, but we use closed loop systems only, and uh all data is uh vetted by the community, the indigenous community, uh, and that um the data in terms of sovereignty always belongs to the indigenous community uh with whom we're working. And so we ensure that um uh it is the indigenous community who determines what language they want to have uh captured in the technological models, whether it's a game app, it's a uh grammar translation tool, whether it's um, you know, uh, you know, online uh test your language skills kind of game. Um the language is always vetted by language committees that we have set up in with the different communities, um, and that uh nothing gets put in that is not approved first. As an example, but it's not a commentary on uh anybody's beliefs. But let's say, you know, the missionaries who came into our region in the late 18 uh late uh 1800s had uh translated the Bible into um uh inuktitut. So that was their way of you know uh coming into community. So question for our language committee would be is that something that we would want to see? And so it's not for our nonprofit to decide we are there providing the tools.

Keeping data sovereign. Mark asks how to stop the data ending up with big tech. Natasha explains decentralized servers on Indigenous land and their small footprint.

Natasha MacDonald 11:50

We own the tools and technology that we use to support communities, but our uh indigenous communities own the data with which they give us permission to use in order to provide um uh tools that they can use to protect and preserve.

Mark Smith 12:08

So, okay, so that's that's that's interesting. Like the questions that came up to mind, how do you control where the data stays? Um now in gaming I can see that there would be servers around that same with websites, etc. But what happens with AI where the model is most likely hosted in the US if it's one of the frontier labs? Um in in more recent times we're seeing that the information that you provide is being stored, is being used to to train their models or create even new products um um from that. How do you handle that that part of it that's your language, that it doesn't just become a free-for-all, that you know, let's say I want to learn and I could just go to um uh anthropic or Claude or or ChatGPT and start getting it from there because somebody in your community has uploaded a whole bunch of stuff that they were working on. How do you how do you handle those conversations?

Natasha MacDonald 13:20

Um I'm really glad you brought that up because that these are the questions that we've had to deal with um uh through Heritage Lab. Essentially, um, you know, uh we're able to do everything from uh a laptop. Uh we're able to do everything and host it uh on servers that are located only on indigenous lands. There are not there is no access uh to um the data uh by big tech, by the Canadian government, by uh the the local library. So, and you know, this is the way that we ensure uh with indigenous communities who um want to use AI or technology, but in a way that they can control. And a decentralized system like that, I think, you know, uh is so doable in our indigenous communities because we're so decentralized anyway, you know, and that when you think about the big data centers that everyone's talking about, you know, it's taking land and water, and you know, we're very cognizant of that. Our, you know, our footprint is basically one, you know, car ride across town. Whereas, you know, big data centers will take, you know, uh millions of of liters of of water in order for that to function. So uh the model that we've uh put together is um you know uh is very careful about who

Big tech and the Laval University grant. Attempts to scrape Inuit language, and why the community says no.

Natasha MacDonald 14:46

has access. We understand uh that, you know, Microsoft, uh, I'm just going to name, I'm not saying they are um uh how do I say it? They are in active mode, but many are, uh, of you know, uh trying to scrape our language and our culture so that they can trade their data. I want to share an example of something that just came up very recently here in Quebec, for which I'm not sure if that's uh how you my name came up for you, but I posted um uh a statement that we had put out because Anthropic, uh, as we're familiar with, um uh gave a $1 million grant to the University of Laval. So the University of Laval, within the context uh of Inuit, is located in Quebec in our province. Um and they are a university who have benefited from decades and decades of doing research on Inuit, most of the time not by Inuit. I'm I'm one of a very handful of uh of Inuit who do who does uh who do research. And so um big tech has been working very hard to try and have access to our language, um, not even just big tech, um, the uh American government, uh the Chinese military, uh, and other such uh systems have uh uh openly made uh request to some of our uh Inuit um uh organizations in Inuit Nunangat asking if they could train their AI on our language. And uh we've advised at every step, no, don't. Um the idea is that you know uh big tech um uh is uh you know at some point going to take our language and try and sell it back to us. And that is just another form of neocolonialism that we're seeing right now. The American government, the Chinese military, what have you. Um I know you're on the southern hemisphere, but I'm sure you're very well aware too, the geopolitics right now about the race to the Arctic when it comes to the American president, uh uh Russia, Ukraine, uh uh Trump's um discussions, if I can call it so politely, about taking Greenland, our cousins who are also Inuit, you know, so there these things are not random. And these are alerts that we have been uh sharing with our um fellow uh you know indigenous partners all across Catarina, not just Inuit, to say beware, be careful what uh what you're putting out there because it is being scraped at this moment. So this this partnership that Anthropic has uh come into with University of Laval, who has vaults of of of data uh on Inuit. I mean, they they housed it as um, you know, uh training anthropic's uh AI on low resource languages. Well, we're not worried about that. We're not worried about our language not being well represented right now on AI because we don't want it. We want to determine how it's used, how it's uh shared, how it continues from one generation to the next. So we put out a big uh statement on that, and we're supposed to be meeting with um uh this university uh soon. Um they uh replied to our our statement and uh would like to explain, so we're we're very happy to hear what they have to say, but our stance will be that uh our data uh on Inuit belongs to us. It is not for them to sell and use with Anthropic, with Meta, with Microsoft, with with the American government, with with whomever. It belongs to the indigenous peoples on whom they built their research um uh um repository. So, and these are the discussions that we are expecting them to have with each of the indigenous communities that they've done research on over the number of decades, because if they're selling out our language uh for uh uh a grant, um th there's going to be some uh challenges to that.

Mark Smith 19:12

And that that brings up the profiteering of

Research, IP and who owns knowledge. Profiting from documented culture, and the Māori concept of community-held knowledge.

Mark Smith 19:15

uh your people's uh you we would call it today intellectual property, right? It's it they might have done the research, but it was researching it, you know, does that give them the right because they um documented something to then take turn around and and give you know if we look at art, you can't just take somebody's art and then sell it to somebody else. Well, people do, but that would be considered, you know, a copyright infringement. How are you thinking about you in that university situation? It looks like in what you've described that they're going to profit off your culture and they're not necessarily even in your culture, they just happen to have collected information about your culture that they're gonna profit. How how are you thinking about that and how are you you talking about that then within your communities and the position that that one should take? And and I was you know, in my wife's situation and in some of the workshops that I've been with her on, there is this concept that inside your Hapu, which is your your your community that would have its own meeting house, it would have its own geography that it sits in inside of the wider iwi um that they belong to. That because you gain knowledge from that area doesn't mean it's yours to then turn around and profit off. It's that community's knowledge and and it doesn't become yours. And in you know, the culture that I was brought up in is very much if I if if it's my knowledge, I can sell and do what I want with it, right? And doesn't matter how I necessarily came uh across that. How do you how do you think about how do you have conversations around

Resource extraction. Furs then, language now. Natasha covers the Calls to Action, UNDRIP and the fake accounts in community groups.

Mark Smith 21:07

how inf how information, how IP is shared and profited from? Absolutely.

Natasha MacDonald 21:14

And the this is one of the most important questions to date uh at this moment, uh, because I I feel like when it comes to data sovereignty, this was the big discussion of the last six months. We're now looking at intellectual property as the next hurdle that we have to manage. And, you know, within the Canadian context, we have um what is called uh, you know, uh we had what is called um a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2016, where Canada outlined the the C a series of injustices uh and the genocide of indigenous communities and peoples across Canada, for which uh then resulted in a roadmap called the Calls to Action. Which is a roadmap for uh non-Indigenous Canadians and Indigenous peoples to walk the path together towards reconciliation. Part of that uh involves uh the the fact that uh language, culture, knowledge belong to indigenous peoples. You know, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples says the same thing. So when it comes to our language, our knowledge, basically our resources, because back in the Um absolutely um so my day it was what? Our furs, uh, which is why, you know, the Hudson Bay in the late 1600s came around to northern Canada uh to get furs uh from our peoples, take them uh back to uh England or wherever it was they were going. And so now, what is the resource extraction? It's our language and it's our culture. And uh so one of the biggest messages that we uh provide when we're uh engaging in, you know, uh AI digital literacy within our indigenous communities, because there's a lot of work to do there. At this moment, you know, people are comfortable with AI on their phone, you know, using Chat GPT to, you know, help you finish uh, you know, your homework or to uh write an email or to you know prepare some sort of document. But we're doing, we're having to do so much work because big tech has been so insidious and so um, how do I say it? Uh sneaky, if I can uh use that word, um, in in trying to access uh our language. They have created uh fake accounts uh uh to uh engage in you know um local chat uh on uh groups on uh on Facebook as an example, uh saying that, you know, how do you pronounce this or how do you say that? And you know, one by one um try to extract our language. But we're we're we're going out there and saying, you know, be careful, be this is this is um uh this is nefarious work. And so uh the way we see it, under the calls to action, under UNDRIP, under, you know, our our traditional ways as indigenous peoples or as Inuit uh that I speak more um specifically about, these things belong to our community. They profit off they profited off of us uh with decades and decades of research, and they would leave our communities never returning the results of their studies. So they're you know, Inuida are the most research indigeno researched indigenous peoples in the world. It's a fact. It's a fact. And most of the time the research was never returned to us, but as you were saying, there is such an open-eye moment right now in all of our indigenous communities to to say this, you know, um this extraction has to stop.

Urgency. Colonization is recent, and a language can be lost in one generation.

Natasha MacDonald 25:08

It will not continue because we now understand what is what you're doing. When I think about my community in Munavik, where my mom was born in a tent on the land, and then at five or six years old had to start in federal Um absolutely um so my day school. And then where, you know, I grew up uh until I was a teenager in my home community. Um our colonization is so short. It is so recent. And so right now, um, when you hear of other indigenous communities around the world who have been, you know, working very hard to reclaim and re-indigenize and to decolonize, um, we're we're just getting there now. And uh the thing is, you know, uh we don't have time to get used to it. We don't have time to, we we I've there's a sense of urgency for me uh to do uh the good work on this and right now with the Heritage Lab, for which I'm a I'm a I'm a volunteer member. Um, you know, the other work that I do as a consultant is on, you know, um uh Inuitizing uh our Inuit organizations so that they can better reflect the needs and values of our Inuit. So this the mission for Heritage Lab for me is such a is such an important one because it fits within my scope, but it also fits within uh what I believe uh is um the urgency of of you know of this decade. Um we have no time to waste when I see from not even five years ago our youth speaking inuktitut at home on the streets at the store in the hallways at school to now speaking English.

The next generation and identity. Mark on Te Reo Māori revitalization. Natasha on avoiding homogenization.

Natasha MacDonald 26:57

It takes one generation to completely lose the language and culture.

Mark Smith 27:03

So so that so how do you think about the next generation coming through and um and that there is a desire from that generation to learn um the language and as a byproduct of the language the culture, which I think you know is it's it would be hard to separate both. Um and not you know I feel that when you look at the world affairs, etc., there's a homogenization that's coming on that where it's everything's just a blend, and the risk of a blend is that we lose the uniqueness that we that we come from, and and what I have seen in New Zealand is that where individuals have learnt uh Tario Maori, they have a there's something and it's hard for me to put my finger on it, in that it is a language that seems to carry a lot of emotion outside of just the words. Like when I hear an orator speak in the language, I don't I'm not you know, don't know it, um, but I can be moved by it, and that's that's incredibly powerful. And what we've had is that my children are being taught a lot more of it because of the advancements we've made to make sure it's in the education system, um, and there is a desire uh to do it. My my daughter, she's um almost six years old, and you know, she goes, Papa, I can speak Maori because I am Maori, you know, and she identifies with that, even though she, you know, carries my skin colour. And um so what I'm saying is that this year because of the revitalization work that's happened in New Zealand, there's a desire of the generation now to really learn it much more than their parents and their parents before them, where they were disciplined if they ever spoke their language in the English schools. Um as in there would be caned and things like that if if that happened, and there was like my wife's grandmother refused to speak her language because of that so indoctrinated period of time um in her education where that was better to be white than to to to be there, you know, be identified with their their race. That's changed a lot. How are you s how are you making sure the the next generations that are coming on have that sense of identity, um, of place and community that's not just a you know uh a Western homogenization of all the tech trinkets and things that are there now, um you know, to to distract them, if you like.

Natasha MacDonald 30:00

Another important question. Um so many thoughts. So, you know, uh a big part of what we do at Heritage Lab, um if I can bring it back uh to our nonprofit again, um we we believe in uh protecting, preserving, revitalizing. Because like I said, in Nunavik, we're we're still at a preserving stage because we still have 95% uh of our population as speakers. So we haven't lost it uh as much as I uh as other indigenous communities have sadly had to lose their language because they had colonization much earlier than we did. But ours is coming fast. So with us, we ensure that the input that we're the data, the language that we're putting in, again with consent, again vetted, uh, again uh from directly from our community members,

Dialects, and youth building the tools. Reflecting every dialect and hiring Indigenous youth to build the games and models.

Natasha MacDonald 30:59

reflects all of our dialects. So it's we're not choosing ever, uh, we don't make those choices. We're not choosing one dialect over another. And uh personally, I don't believe in that. I don't believe in standardizing or homogenizing when we have the tools now to reflect each of the various different beauties of our languages and cultures, even within the same uh indigenous group, as you were speaking about um with your wife, uh wife's culture and the different groups uh that you have there in New Zealand, in Aura Terra. So, you know, in Nunavik, with our 14,000 people, we have uh at least three different dialects, and those are uh reflected in the tools that we provide. And so that um it's not lost, that it is being preserved, that it is being uh used, and that uh, you know, our youth um uh can choose, mix and match, they can uh uh you know be absorbed in it. A big part of what we do as well at Heritage Lab is ensuring that we hire uh only indigenous youth um uh to uh work on building the um the games, the tools, the models, uh, along with our um our AI uh tech guy, I call him our uh our big nerd, um, you know, uh because we want to instill um uh one, we want to instill um the value of keeping our language alive, of keeping our culture alive. And who's gonna do that? It's the youth, right? And so by creating a space where they can um, you know, see their skills or interests come alive in an area maybe where they never uh thought they would have had those kinds of skills, because we don't have, you know, uh tech many, how do I say, in my region, we don't have Inuit uh many Inuit doctors. We have one who's going to medical school right now. We don't have Inuit lawyers in my region. We may have one Inuit nurse, you know. So we have one, uh maybe a tiny handful of Inuit and HR, uh not many in finance. This is where we're at. And so a lot of those uh work has to be done from people who are outside of our from outside of our region. So by creating our own tech, our own youth who are who are developing AI and the games and the tools and all of that um uh forth then creates that sense of agency and that sense of pride. So with our youth, if it's not cool, if they're not proud, they're not gonna do it, right? So what better way then is to let them build it and let them do it and give them the tools that they need. So a big part of our model is that whichever indigenous community we work with, part of it is that they have to hire from within their own community and train and we'll help them.

Mark Smith 34:00

So, so are you resourced in that respect, like

Funding and infrastructure. The race for small grants, and the "McDonald's franchise" model for communities.

Mark Smith 34:04

from uh IT infrastructure and and and um you know, because there's obviously a hardware requirement, you know, servers, infrastructure, that type of thing, network connection, connectivity. How are you resourced in that respect um to be able to give the platform so that it that that the youth um uh and the young people can develop and produce stuff that they're proud of?

Natasha MacDonald 34:30

Right. So uh that it that's a challenge. Um if any of your listeners has uh funding that they want to provide to a nonprofit like us who are doing, you know, doing this work uh in a race against time, against big tech, before they come and uh uh you know um extract further from our communities. Um it's always it's always a race, basically. We get this little pot of funding, you know, 5,000, uh 20,000, and that pays for the salaries for a couple of youth to work on this project and then develop this. Then we get another little pot. You you get the idea, right? So with the nonprofit, we're continually looking for funding. And so a lot of the tools that we um develop, we do it with uh the different um Inuit organizations. I'll speak specifically about our Inuit partners right now, uh, for which they pay us to help them develop uh to for us to develop a tool that they could use within their organization, right? So they they may give us some funding, we develop a tool, hire you so that it then goes to them. So some of the infrastructure is within their organizations then, and that we don't have to load our servers uh with all of that um data. And like I said, we have a very decentralized model so that you know we don't host everything. We part of the work that we do, if I can, if I can almost describe it this way, it's like having a McDonald's franchise. We have a model, we'll come to your community, and this is how you set it up. So you're gonna need to get your building, you're gonna need to get your server, you're gonna, and this is how you do it, and this is how you maintain sovereignty. You gotta put on digital. So this is the way we work. And and it's um there's nothing more satisfying than seeing, you know, uh elders and youth and language educators and language users coming together and seeing the the urgency of this, but seeing the value of this, donating their time to their community to to keep the language uh alive or to bring it back.

Supporting communities with few speakers. A British Columbia community with only about ten speakers left.

Natasha MacDonald 36:40

We're going to be visiting a colloquiate community in the west coast of Canada off of British Columbia, um, north of Vancouver, to give you some context, where they have 10, 10 language speakers left, and most of them are over 70 years old.

Mark Smith 36:58

Wow.

Natasha MacDonald 36:59

So in a situation like that, and you think about it, you know, think about the value of using technology and AI. And AI is not everything, it's a part that leaves, right? The language model, but closed system that could really benefit a community like that. You know, we can do it with 10 speakers. We can do it like in our community with 95% speakers. The idea is that it's the communities who have the need, the the desire to if they want to use our model and and you know, nobody's forced to use it, but this is what we offer. And that if we can help support a community like them, whose main goal at this moment is just to be able to create some tools so that their youth in kindergarten can hear the language, what a big step that will be.

Art, culture and AI. Family artwork, artists' livelihoods, and the youth backlash against AI-generated imagery.

Natasha MacDonald 37:46

You know, so we're we're very excited to to see where this journey uh uh goes, and that if we can support them, we will.

Mark Smith 37:55

Yeah. My final um area of interest is in art. And and you know in New Zealand, um Maori culture is intrinsically connected with art, whether it's carving, whether it's um all forms, um actually, but you know, traditionally carving, but then you know uh painting, etc. How much is that a part um of the culture of your people? And then in New Zealand we've had the you know, where AI generated ripoffs or takeoffs of that, and it's and it's very frowned upon to do, but it doesn't stop people making a commercial decision. How how much is is art used as a communication tool and uh a history tool and um with your people?

Natasha MacDonald 38:57

Gosh, you know that is something that we definitely share uh with your wife's community. Um I I'll uh if you can look at my background, this is something that my grandmother created probably about 60, 65 years ago. And over here, these are more wall hangings that my mother created about 25, 30 years ago. So these are pieces that I hold and cherish because they tell the story of my grandmother's life. And these are reflections of my family, you know, of my my brother and I and my mom ice fishing, you know. Uh uh over here she's tugging my brother on a hammotik, which is uh one of those little sleds. If you can picture the dog, the dog team, it's just the sled part. So she's tugging him. It's a big part of who we are, and it's a big also, it's a big part of you know, our economic development for our com our artists as well, you know, to be able to create and to be able to sell their work so that they can make a living, considering we have such, you know, a high unemployment rate and high uh uh high poverty rate within our communities. So, you know, um protecting that is uh of uh utmost importance. I'll give an example. Uh there was one organization by mistake, inadvertently used AI to uh create um a scene for uh promotion of something. This was within our community. The uproar that came from our youth was beautiful. Yes, it was beautiful. And of course, you know, that that little organization uh completely realized the mistake and completely understood that was not something that we should be doing and that we need to hire our own artists to do work because this is a reflection of who we are. And to see the youth, you know, uh posting about it on the different social medias, on the different socials, I should say, um, it was fantastic. So I really think I I I believe in our youth because they're the ones that are going to be fighting this over the next however long it takes. And they will um they will continue on as Inuit for millennia as we have been Inuit for millennia in uh here in Canada.

Mark Smith 41:20

Natasha,

Closing thoughts. Parallels with New Zealand, the trade-off of short-term cost against long-term identity, and thank-yous.

Mark Smith 41:21

I'll leave I'll I'll close there. Thank you so much for coming on. It's I've found it so interesting and drawing the parallels. Um and and also the differences in that, as you say, uh a high degree still speak the language. Um, where the experience in New Zealand, you know, was was colonized probably a lot longer ago and then lost it and now it it's revitalized. It's it's been good to hear the parallels and that you can do the tech stuff without needing the hyperscalers to do the tech stuff um and and making that trade uh for short-term perhaps cheaper costs for long-term loss of identity.

Natasha MacDonald 42:04

Um thank you thank you for telling your story. Thank you. I appreciate you inviting me. It was uh really lovely um to speak with you and to hear about what your communities are working on. And that um I just say knuckle me, which is thank you to your listeners, and um hopefully, you know, this gives them some food for thought um on how uh they're managing AI. Whether they're indigenous or not, we all have things that we value and that we don't are resources that we don't want to see extracted. And there are ways we can do this, and we're doing it now.

Mark Smith 42:39

You'll be listening to the intelligence age on Maxwell. The intelligence age is already here. The question is, what we choose to do.