Indigenous Digital Library (IDL)

The problem: The diminishing dissemination and practice of indigenous culture due to the passing of wisdom keepers, the emigration of indigenous peoples off  homelands, and the majority of the information on tribes being both incomplete and often written by non-native people. 

The solution: Create a privately managed Native communication system and information platform to preserve, grow, and share traditional knowledge. Imagine a combination of Facebook and Wikipedia. Data will be aggregated and managed to create a holistic knowledge base from which current and future generations can draw insight and inspiration.   We begin with the Blackfeet Nation, interviewing Wisdom Keepers to inform design with their needs in mind.  

Global expansion: Scaled, this would allow indigenous groups around the world to communicate privately, sharing events and cultural knowledge, including songs, healing techniques, protocols and more. What each group shares will be decided by those on the platform and protected by the software. 

Our solution is focused on supporting cultural revitalization.

The more powerful people on the planet have created a world dependent upon, and consumed by, the values of resource extraction and technology. This has left those with Indigenous Technology behind, and their wisdom often deemed inconsequential. There are an estimated 370 -500 million Indigenous Peoples worldwide, living in over 90 countries. Collectively, the pressure on them to integrate into modern life, the aging of their elders, and the emigration off native lands, puts at risk the wisdom of generations. Although much has been written about indigenous cultures, it is often written by non-native people. Now is the time to create a forum in which indigenous knowledge thrives utilizing current technology.

The technology to implement this solution already exists in many products currently on themarket, one such example is Appzocial. Developed by DevBlock, a Seattle-based privately held technology company, their software acts as a kind of private Facebook, wherein individuals within a private group can safely share sensitive data, conversations and ideas while maintaining ownership of that data. For Indigenous People to be able to privately share what is happening in their communities online in an accessible, secure and private environment is novel. Our idea is to license the Appzocial software and in partnership with design strategy firm FIVE and DevBlock, design and develop an additional information sharing component that would act like an indigenous Wikidpedia.  This would be a one stop platform offering users a means of communicating ideas and events key to their social and cultural fabric as well as a place to find resources critical to their cultural identity and ceremonies.  The information is shared, edited and owned by the group.

Our target population is the Blackfeet Nation. Our solution benefits the 7,000 Blackfeet living on the reservation, in addition to the 8,560 who live off the reservation. The Blackfeet, like many native peoples in the US and globally, have suffered tremendously under colonization and efforts to destroy their culture and lives. Our solution benefits the Blackfeet by giving them a program they can organize, manage and use to maintain and engage in their culture. The Mopistun Four Directions Board (which houses this project) is staffed by registered Blackfeet who are active in their culture.  During Covid, we have seen elders utilize technology such as online language classes and song sharing through zoom. As one elder said “The tribe is eager for this.” We will interview wisdom keepers in the design phase to create a user friendly program unique to the Blackfeet needs.

Our challenge is the Indigenous Communities Fellowship focusing on culturally grounded education and the revitalization of culture. We need a place where Blackfeet can meet, share and learn about their culture in a digital space. This program will support Native pride and give hope for a strong future as Blackfeet people, by increasing participation in traditional ways of knowing. This is about creating a modern technology that allows Indigenous technology to thrive in the 21st century and beyond.

While the technology exists to accomplish the development of the product, the stitching together of social, media and knowledge aspects, require community participation to ensure feasibility. The most important component of this concept is the people. The pilot will be designed with the Blackfeet Nation of Montana U.S.

There is no system specifically designed with and for Indigenous People toward the preservation of knowledge, which has communication capability paired with a searchable private database. Now is the time to introduce conversations within traditional communities on how Indigenous knowledge, technology and wisdom is to be protected, engaged with and revitalized for future use. This is truly groundbreaking and pioneering in its vision. Facebook is out there and many Indigenous people use it, but it is not private. There are books and other informational platforms housing Indigenous Knowledge, but they are neither private nor secure, and are often written by outsiders. Imagine a user being able to look up a plant, find its traditional use, see a photo of it, and listen to the song required to sing when collecting that plant. This idea is imaginative and far reaching in both scope as well as applicability.

The technology required to deliver this solution, in part, is already established. However it is not configured to include critical elements of this concept, nor is it being used at scale in most cases. The Mopistun Digital Library will leverage this technology as a foundation upon which to build and grow a new social-community with a very specific mission of knowledge retention and transfer.

Our solution leverages a highly customizable private social network application called Appzocial to create a space for social interaction and data sharing between tribal members.  The Proprietary software solution was funded by Venture Capital (Maveron Venture Capital, John McCaw, Scott Oki) and founded in 2013.  Native Mobile Applications was developed in Kotlin/Java for Android, and Swift / Objective C for iOS, connecting to a cloud-based backend hosted on Amazon.  Over $1.2M has been invested in the development of the software.This platform accesses a knowledge base created in SQL that will serve as the repository for tribal information. This information will be accessible through traditional search logic and presented through a user interface customizable by the tribe. The tribe will administer access to, and permissions within the site for tribal members.

AppZocial is an existing application utilized by groups such as CoHeals, Women’s Veterans Alliance and Bellevue Christian School. More information about AppZocial, the technology that powers it and the clients it serves, can be found here: https://appzocial.com/

We can do a live demo of our product, and walk through all the features and capabilities.  The product is customized and branded for each individual client (over the course of a few weeks), but we can demo the base application live at any time to show its functionality.

Risks may emerge in the form of disagreements on what can be written, recorded, photographed or in other ways shared. For generations, Native Knowledge has been transferred in person through stories, songs and the practice of ceremonies and culture.  Our solution is opening the door to the possibility of a new way of knowledge retention and transfer. We can create circles within the greater group who will maintain control over what is shared, and who has access to it. Just as it works today, access to certain levels of knowledge are transferred to those who have earned it. Also, each group can create a panel which decides on disputed content. 

Inputs: Design service. Ancient tribal knowledge that has been captured, communicated and preserved for generations.

Outcomes:

Short term- New computer skills. Increase motivation to discover Blackfeet cultural knowledge. Greater interaction between tribal members both off and on the reservation.

Medium term- Tribal Members can remain connected to their culture and traditions. Increase trust and sharing. Greater attendance at events and ceremonies. Increased knowledge of songs, protocols and healing. Connection for members to their community regardless of geography.

Long term- Better understanding of what it means to be Blackfeet.  and how to practice our culture, leading to a greater source of pride in being Native. Better health and wellness due to increased understanding of traditional healing techniques through herbs and ceremonies. Stronger families as they share and practice culture together. 

Tribal members are often dispersed across the country, but still want to remain connected to their people and culture. Digitized tribal knowledge, accessible through a private social network maintains cultural connection and preserves tribal knowledge and history. This database of Blackfeet knowledge would be an indispensable part of being Blackfeet and used to refer to all sorts of questions one might not be able to find the answers to otherwise. Wisdom keepers could share in ways they haven’t been able to before thereby increasing their audience.

Currently we are serving no one. In year one, we will serve the Blackfeet Nation of 15,560. By year five, we hope to have hundreds of tribal nations involved, serving millions.

This solution will have a transformational impact on the way participants access, create and use traditional knowledge. It will not replace oral transmission, but rather increase the ways in which knowledge transfer occurs. Like all social platforms, word of mouth is everything. Friends and family talk and they share. This technology will spread quickly amongst the target population as users find the site beneficial and applicable to their everyday life. Once we are ready to scale, it can be introduced to the other 546 tribes located within the US with a combined population of over 3 million. It does not need to stop there. Indigenous groups such as the Maori in New Zealand, the Aborigines in Australia, countless peoples in the Americas and Africa as well as SE Asia can utilize this to create a cultural database and communication system. Anywhere there are indigenous people looking for the ability to communicate amongst themselves and create a place to store and easily access their collective wisdom would benefit. Like the dendritic system of individual tree roots which facilitate the sharing of resources and support communication, collective memory and learning, tribes share resources and knowledge with each other and communicate quickly when they have something that is working for them. Word of mouth will be the fire that spreads this platform globally.

We will be able to evaluate both qualitatively and quantitatively the positive impact of this program on user communities by measuring the number of participants and groups which sign up on the platform over time, as well as conducting interviews with users.

Financial-Upscaling  from the grant funded concept phase and pilot completion to providing this technology to numerous tribes will require utilizing several different methods of financing including private equity, both federal and foundation grants, and looking at marketing.

Technical-How do we utilize existing software and merge it with a not yet existing collective knowledge base.  

Legal-How do we mitigate future issues around ownership and sharing? 

Market Barriers- There is a huge audience for this, but will they get support from all the right parties. How do we involve people who lack access to the internet or the devices needed to be a part of our solution. What about communities that cannot afford to license the software? 

Cultural- How do we instill trust? 

Financial- This is an area we would like support in assessing how to weave all the possible ways of financing this solution to provide the service at no cost or low cost. 

Technical-The research in the communities comes to play here, in regards to their willingness to adopt this new technology. Our technology and design team will be working with the information they receive from community members. 

Legal- We will rely on the expertise of our partner technology designers and their past experiences with licensees of their software.

Market Barriers-We can see partnering with B-Corp organizations or non-profits whose mission is to provide devices to underserved communities.

Cultural- Our cultural lead is a prominent member of several Blackfeet Societies on the reservation and will be working closely with them on this project to gain their trust.

Currently, we are an all-volunteer team of four for the concept phase. With funding, we will transition to two employees, two contract consulting tech and design partners and four paid interns from the Blackfeet community.

Our project lead is Christine Fox Mackay, M.Ed., a registered descendent of the Blackfeet tribe and an active member of the Crazy Dog Society, as well as a Sundancer. She has networked with indigenous groups in ten countries on community development programs and anti-human trafficking projects. She founded and directed an international non-profit for two decades as well as an international campaign to fight plastic waste in tourism. She is a Certified Diversity Practitioner.

Our cultural lead is Leon Rattler, MA., a Blackfeet elder who adheres to traditional ways of life and practices including; Okan, Crazy Dog Society, Beaver Bundle, Medicine Pipe Bundle and Sun Dance societies. He is a university instructor in traditional cultural healing through the arts and is a consultant to several tribes on cultural preservation and education.

Our technical and design team consists of Walt Brown and Carey Renn. Walt Brown is a twenty-year technology and marketing industry veteran. He is a strategic, entrepreneurial leader, with a specialized background in business development and client services who has worked with startups, SMB’s and industry giants alike.

Carey Renn was the Senior Director of Technology Development at Vulcan and worked directly with founder Paul Allen on the utilization of technology toward philanthropic impact.  As the founders and partners of FIVE, a Seattle based strategy and design firm focused on social impact, Carey and Walt have worked with organizations such as the Lonely Whale Foundation, Vulcan, Inc, The Kauffman Foundation, and USAID, entrepreneurship for marginalized communities, and greater economic inclusion.

We are not only committed to diversity and equity in our leadership team, we represent diversity   being two women, two Native Americans and one African American. In addition, the Mopistun Four Directions Board is all Native American. Five is a MWBE certified company in WA., and DevBlock is also an MBE WA. certified company. Our dream is to serve the traditionally underserved indigenous peoples by connecting them to systems of technology that can benefit them on their path to understanding and preserving their cultures.

What we would like from MIT Solve, in addition to this initial grant, is assistance in creating a strategic financial plan which encompasses all the possible funding sources we are looking at as we grow the service. Also we would like assistance in evolving and integrating technologies that will elevate the experience of learning and sharing as well as discovering ways to digitally repatriate Blackfeet artifacts housed in collections around the world.

Navigating the sea of possible business models is challenging and we could benefit from MIT Solve team and advisors as we develop our business hybrid. We are not strong in the PR arena and could use assistance in designing a long term year social media calendar and PR approach. 

FIVE and DevBlock  for design and technology, Blackfeet Tribe for research and design, Microsoft for data storage and technology. Suzanne Crawford for editing and publishing and university connections, MIT Solve winner Mariah Gladstone for advice on launch and MIT Solve members interested in our vision.

Well-being for Native peoples includes their spiritual and social health. For Blackfeet people this means accessing their Native Knowledge as shared by their wisdom keepers. By creating a software with their needs in the design, we will provide them greater access to their Native Knowledge whether they live on, or off, the reservation creating a stronger and more resilient community of people with the knowledge to rely on traditional healing techniques.  For the Blackfeet, practicing their culture saves their culture, and their culture will save them.

Digital access to Native Knowledge is practically non-existent. Our platform will allow Native students direct access to their own culture and support better understanding of what it means to be Indian and how to carry that forward in their careers and lives. 

We are creating a platform where women and girls's voices can be heard and shared and where they can listen to their elder women's voices to be stronger Native women.