Reflections on the Indigenous Protocol & Artificial Intelligence Position Paper

In “Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence,” Prof. Jason Edward Lewis led the Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Working Group in providing a starting place for those who want to design and create AI from an ethical position that centres Indigenous perspectives.

Please join the Kule Institute for Advanced Study, the Situated Knowledges, Indigenous Peoples and Place (SKIPP) signature area and AI4Society signature area to hear Dr. Lewis reflect on his work editing the position paper.

Dr. Maggie Spivey-Faulkner will provide a response based on her own work with Indigenous communities.

Jason Edward Lewis

Jason Edward Lewis is a digital media theorist, artist, and software designer. He founded Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media, where he directs research/creation projects exploring computation as a creative and cultural material. He directs the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, and co-directs the Indigenous Protocol and AI Workshops, the Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace research network, and the Skins Workshops on Aboriginal Storytelling and Video Game Design. Lewis is deeply committed to developing intriguing new forms of expression by working on conceptual, critical, creative and technical levels simultaneously.

He is the University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary as well as Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University, Montreal. Born and raised in northern California, Lewis is Hawaiian and Samoan.

Lewis’ creative and production work has been featured at Ars Electronica, Mobilefest, Elektra, Urban Screens, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, and FILE, among other venues, and has been recognized with the inaugural Robert Coover Award for Best Work of Electronic Literature, two Prix Ars Electronica Honorable Mentions, several imagineNATIVE Best New Media awards and six solo exhibitions. His research interests include emergent media theory and history, and methodologies for conducting art-led technology research. In addition to being lead author on the award-winning “Making Kin with the Machines” essay, he has contributed to chapters in collected editions covering mobile media, video game design, machinima and experimental pedagogy with Indigenous communities, as well as numerous journal articles and conference papers.

Lewis has worked in a range of industrial research settings, including Interval Research, US West's Advanced Technology Group, and the Institute for Research on Learning, and, at the turn of the century, he founded and ran a research studio for the venture capital firm Arts Alliance.

Lewis is a former Trudeau Fellow and a former Carnegie Fellow. He received a B.S. in Symbolic Systems (Cognitive Science) and B.A. in German Studies (Philosophy) from Stanford University, and an M.Phil. in Design from the Royal College of Art.

Dr. Maggie Spivey- Faulkner

Maggie Spivey-Faulkner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta and a citizen of the Pee Dee Indian Nation of Beaver Creek, a state-recognized Native American group in South Carolina. Her primary work focuses on people who subsisted through hunting, gathering, and fishing in the southeastern United States, looking specifically at examples of peoples who defy popular characterizations of "hunter-gatherer societal complexity." She also works on a variety of secondary projects, including archaeological applications in United States Federal Indian Law and Native American philosophy.