Research

INDIGENIA: Generative AI for Indigenous futures and ‘digital good living’

New digital technologies have often been imagined to be anathema to Indigenous peoples and, even if such preconceptions are dispelled, these communities tend to be at a disadvantage in terms of access, literacy, criticality and sovereignty. The INDIGENIA project will explore digital inclusion for Indigenous peoples in the light of debate on digital wellbeing aligned to Indigenous principles. 

Firstly, the project will focus on digital inclusion for Indigenous peoples by engaging Indigenous participants with the newest wave of generative AI programmes. 

Secondly, the research will address digital wellbeing from an Indigenous perspective, contributing to the Digital Good Network’s aim to contextualise the digital good for different communities. It does this by exploring how Indigenous understandings of ‘good living’ (‘Tekó Porã’ in Guarani) nuance our understanding of the ‘digital good’, and, in order to do so, it uses the same generative AI programmes to encourage Indigenous participants to creatively and critically imagine Indigenous futures in the face of so much change.

Team

Professor Thea Pitman, Professor of Latin American Studies, University of Leeds. (PI)

Dr Andreas Rauh, Assistant Professor in Sound and Emerging Media, Dublin City University. 

Tadeu dos Santos Kaingang, artist and researcher, and Dr Sheilla Souza, leadership team and visiting professor, Indigenist Association of Maringá (ASSINDI – NGO) and Coletivo Kókir (artists’ collective).

Sebastián Gerlic, Director, Thydêwá (NGO).