Data Sovereignty for Indigenous Sovereignty

The project will facilitate the development of a sovereign data resource management platform for First Nation communities in BC. The collaborative network will use Attaverse to build out trees of knowledge to foster better cross-cultural understanding and communication and serve as a holder for the research.

James Delorme is an Indigenous technologist exploring how Blockchain technology can reflect traditional economic activities such as the Coast Salish gift economy. James is an active partner in the collaboration to guide authenticity and simultaneously avoid appropriation. The First Nations Technology Council is also engaged and aware of the project. The spirit of this technology provides itself well to self-organization and the interests of communities, where the concepts of personal sovereignty are reflected in traditional Indigenous sovereignty with an emphasis on interconnection responsibilities. We are committed to forming appropriate partnerships in the unique global context surrounding First Nations on the Salish Coast, to create a transferable and scalable platform, that can ultimately inform genuine reconciliation in B.C.

The project will focus on three parallel processes:

  1. To explore pathways for the development of a fisheries management tool such as http://fishtrax.net/, built on a decentralized network. West Coast Aquatic in Nuu-cha-nulth territory has agreed to partner in a pilot.
  2. Using data analytics to identify cultural bias, augment reconciliation and drive public policy through deep democracy.
  3. The long range goal will be to develop Indigenous informed Blockchain and associated technologies capable of supporting a cryptocurrency or commodity backed asset.

Project Team: Vicki Lemieux, Sushant Shrestha, Lee White

Funders / Partners


First Nations land acknowledegement

We acknowledge that the UBC Point Grey campus is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm.


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