NSF Award
2427641
For many rural and indigenous locales, the conditions for technical innovation in university and industry labs are often unavailable or are out-of-step with everyday life. Nevertheless, despite the obstacles, technologists working for sovereign Native Nations and Indigenous communities worldwide apply meaningful and responsive design methods to sustain innovation. The challenge is that many of these technologists are far removed from each other, working across diverse urban, rural, and remote locales as field practitioners, artists, entrepreneurs, and lone scientists with small teams. Through a series of convenings over one year, Indigenous Approaches to Computational Futures will bring these local experts together to: 1) characterize common conditions for responsive innovation; 2) identify helpful institutions; and 3) publish insights and findings that have been otherwise sustained through small group conversations and niche conferences. The goal is to create trusted networks of senior scientists, entrepreneurs, policy-makers, and community-centered creatives to amplify scientific understanding of how to effectively leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, advanced computational hardware and software, and telecommunications and immersive technologies toward compelling people-centered, environmentally-conscious futures, futures centered in the lived experiences of highly creative Indigenous peoples.<br/><br/>These convenings are guided by a set of questions: What are the conditions for infrastructural augmentation and innovation across Indigenous geographies? How do technologists ideate, pilot, and advance systems through such circumstances? How do experienced researchers, entrepreneurs, and seasoned tech practitioners frame productive and meaningful community-centered design in these contexts? What can infrastructures built on Indigenous community strengths teach us about new modalities for innovation and incubation in comparable contexts? Over the course of one hybrid four-day convening and two online convenings, over a hundred notable experts in indigenous technologies will contribute to a set of white papers, publications in high-ranking ACM journals, a directory of experts, and working lists of theoretical frameworks, recommended readings, and noteworthy labs and institutions. The practical goals are three-fold: 1) to generate a trustworthy network of support for junior technologists in the field; 2) to encourage collaboration between researchers and practitioners across many domains; and 3) to advance the state-of-knowledge in community-centered computational systems design fields, including from law and policy vantage points.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
