CEIMIA and Animikii Indigenous Technology announce a first-of-its-kind partnership with Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation

CEIMIA (the International Centre of Expertise in Montréal on Artificial Intelligence) and Animikii Indigenous Technology are happy to announce on the margins of ALL IN, a new innovative partnership with Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation. This collaboration marks a first-of-its-kind pilot, testing innovative and responsible methods for the secure stewardship and exchange of Indigenous data. 

CEIMIA has developed, under the auspices of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), a Data Sharing Roadmap, a step-by-step guide for organisations to be able to responsibly share data, in order to be able to deliver better data-driven services to their users. The Roadmap does this by guiding individuals and teams responsible for the data sharing initiative through the considerations they need to make before they can share data responsibly. It takes the form of a checklist an organization can follow, either in whole or in part, breaking the assessment to make data available down into decision stages, each with a number of decision dimensions. Under GPAI, the roadmap was piloted with three governments  who covered a range of economic development and level of AI and digital adoption.  

Animikii has launched Niiwin, a data management and governance platform built specifically to support Indigenous Data Sovereignty. The platform provides Indigenous governments, non-profits, and organizations with a secure system to collect, manage, ownership-protect, and analyze their data according to cultural values and strict governance standards (such as OCAP® principles—Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession). 

Under this new partnership, Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation, an Anishinaabe (Ojibway) community located in Manitoba, will trial CEIMIA’s Roadmap in preparing data about the history of the Community to be made available through digital means, for the benefit of the current Community and for posterity, through technology solutions to be codesigned between Animikii and the Sandy Bay Community.

“Responsible AI and digital innovation cannot exist without trust, sovereignty, and ethical stewardship at their core. By pairing GPAI’s Data Sharing Roadmap with the expertise of Animikii and the leadership of Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation, this partnership moves frameworks into real-world action. It demonstrates how global data governance tools can be adapted to serve local community needs. Moreover, this partnership serves as a crucial first step in empowering First Nation Communities to develop AI models that are truly representative of their language and culture – giving this visibility provides a meaningful avenue to share their heritage with the world.“
— Sophie Fallaha, Executive Director of CEIMIA

“Sandy Bay Ojibway First Nation is deciding for themselves how our history gets recorded, who can access it, and what future generations will inherit. For me, this is what Indigenous Data Sovereignty looks like in practice and it is exactly why we are building Niiwin. We’re grateful to the Community for trusting us to co-design this work with them, and to CEIMIA for bringing a data sharing roadmap that has been tested with governments and is now being improved and tested by a First Nation on its own terms.”
— Jeff Ward, CEO of Animikii Indigenous Technology