Sovereign Roots & Relatives

Burning Cedar Sovereign Wellness

Sovereign Roots & Relatives

Sovereignty in action: A secure digital platform empowering Indigenous communities to preserve, protect, and share traditional knowledge and foodways.

Tulsa, OK, USA

United States

Nonprofit

Globally, Indigenous people are confronted with the loss of cultural knowledge at a rapid rate, especially in the domains of foodways, ethnobotany, and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). Colonization, climate change, displacement, and research methods that extract data from Indigenous populations without consent or reciprocity drive it. Without access to tools that enable Indigenous data sovereignty, communities stand to lose control over how their knowledge gets documented, stored, and disseminated. Our platform meets this challenge directly by designing a framework that prioritizes Indigenous control, protection, and governance. Our project responds to the urgent need for culturally responsive digital infrastructure that secures knowledge on Indigenous terms. In the US alone, there are over 570 federally recognized Tribes, plus numerous state-recognized and unrecognized Indigenous Nations, that have these issues to contend with. Globally, over 476 million Indigenous peoples in 90 nations face the same threats to their cultural and ecological heritage (UN, 2022). Lack of protected, community-owned space for preservation of knowledge brings about a growing intergenerational knowledge gap and erasure of culture. By reclaiming sovereignty and control over cultural knowledge, Sovereign Roots & Relatives assists Indigenous peoples in preserving, revitalizing, and transmitting their knowledge to future generations.

Sovereign Roots & Relatives is an Indigenous-owned online platform designed to preserve, protect, and provide access to cultural knowledge—like foodways, ethnobotany, and traditional ecological knowledge—in a secure and culturally appropriate way. At its most basic level, the platform employs encrypted data storage so that knowledge is only accessible by those authorized by the community. It incorporates Local Contexts notices and labels, basically conveying the cultural protocols, permissions, and provenance of each item. Interactive features such as geo-tagging and StoryMaps allow users to connect knowledge with land, language, and community, bringing to the forefront the place-based foundation of Indigenous knowledge. These technologies provide communities with the ability to document stories, teachings, and environmental knowledge using rich and engaging visual stories. This solution gives power back to Indigenous peoples by placing data sovereignty squarely in their control so that they manage how their knowledge is organized, accessed, and distributed. Sovereign Roots & Relatives safeguards against exploitation and ensures cultural knowledge is kept safe for generations to come by pairing modern technologies with Indigenous-led governance.

Sovereign Roots & Relatives would directly serve Indigenous peoples, specifically those at the forefront of food sovereignty, cultural revitalization, and environmental sustainability. These individuals usually have systemic obstacles in their way that restrict their access to culturally appropriate digital tools and are consistently left out of decision-making when it comes to the collection, storage, or usage of their data. Because of this, their valuable cultural knowledge is susceptible to erasure, misappropriation, or exploitation. Our platform offers a sovereign site where Indigenous Peoples are able to preserve and control their traditional knowledge as they choose. With the integration of encrypted storage, Local Contexts labels/notices, and geospatial narrative tools, the platform allows users to document, store, and share their knowledge in manners that are meaningful and honor the protocols and values of their communities. This allows us to promote intergenerational knowledge transfer and reinforces cultural identity. This ensures that Indigenous knowledge—closely intertwined with place, experience, and relationships—has an opportunity to flourish into the future. For communities who have long been marginalized in the digital space, this platform exemplifies protection, preservation and perseverance.