Article by Caryn Mohr: “As co-founder of First Languages AI Reality (FLAIR), Michael Running Wolf (Lakota, Cheyenne) works on the cusp of technological innovation. FLAIR uses artificial intelligence to reclaim Indigenous languages through speech-recognition models that help communities preserve and pass on their linguistic traditions. His work is cutting edge, but Running Wolf draws from the past to characterize today’s digital transition.
“We’re in a moment now where it’s like 1998, and the Internet’s about to be big,” Running Wolf said at Sovereignty in Numbers: The 2026 Center for Indian Country Development Data Summit on June 25. “We can invest ourselves in AI, or we can let AI bypass Indian Country and not participate in the new economy. We have an opportunity here to be early.”
Tribal leaders speaking at the event explored how tribes are establishing the data governance systems needed to guide a variety of economic decision-making in a world of rapidly changing technology. They described using economic data to restore land, diversify tribal revenue streams, and finance capital projects. Across topics, they characterized the stewardship of tribal data as a sovereign obligation…
CICD Director Casey Lozar (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes) and Research Professor and American Indian Policy Institute (AIPI) Executive Director Traci Morris (Chickasaw Nation) kicked off the event with a fireside chat about an emerging topic for tribal and other forms of government: digital sovereignty. Morris, who is a scholar in this space, defined tribal digital sovereignty as “the exercise of self-determination and governance over a tribal nation’s digital presence.” The term encompasses everything from a tribe’s airwaves and broadband infrastructure to how the tribe collects, stores, uses, and shares its tribal data.
One way to think about a tribe’s data infrastructure is as digital land, Morris said. “Getting tribal data sovereignty right is as important as protecting the land. It’s the digital age, and data is our territory. It carries our people, our languages, our future generations.”..(More)”.
