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Wokini Challenge Grant Event

The Impact of Data Sovereignty on American Indian Self-Determination: Bridging Federal Indian Law, Data Sovereignty and the Challenges of Developing Community AI Principles

Dr. Joseph Robertson

Lecture Series on Data Sovereignty

Dr. Robertson, a SDSU alumnus and Wokini Scholar, is an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation and founder/Chief Data Scientist of Mato Ohitika Analytics LLC. This online event was part of the Wokini Initiative’s Challenge Grant Project: Preserving the Past, Protecting the Future: A Collaborative Approach to Data Sovereignty, Dr. Nicole Lounsbery, PI. You can view the three-part lecture series presented by Dr. Joseph Robertson at the links below.

This first lecture explores tribal sovereignty in the context of Federal Indian Law with a discussion of the concepts of land acknowledgement and land-grant university status.

The second lecture focuses on Dr. Robertson’s Data Sovereignty Initiative and the current landscape in understanding the key role data sovereignty has in developing shared governance strategies, data driven decision-making and exploring the ethics of bridging science and culture through the use of applied data science techniques.

The third evening features an introduction to the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the ethical implications of designing AI systems in Indigenous communities. Part one will discuss how to develop community AI principles, followed by a demonstration of natural language processing using cosine similarity with the Dakota Language.

Dignity