One Feather Two Pens: Episode 17 - The Next Boat: Indigenous Sovereignty in the Age of AI

In this episode, we sit down with Bob Joseph, author, speaker, and longtime educator on Indigenous relations, to ask a deceptively simple question: Should Indigenous people embrace technology? Drawing on his own experiences in commercial fishing, business, and education, Bob reflects on how Indigenous cultures have always adapted to new technologies. From weirs and traps to boats, motors, and modern fishing equipment, the tools may change without making the cultures, relationships, and rights behind them any less Indigenous. That leads us to the idea at the heart of this episode: is AI simply the next boat? Together, we explore both the possibilities and risks of climbing aboard. Bob discusses how digital technologies and AI can support Indigenous education, language, cultural preservation, and economic opportunity, while our conversation also wrestles with corporate power, environmental impacts, data and knowledge, and the reality that technology is never neutral. The Next Boat is a conversation about adaptation without surrendering... how Indigenous peoples can engage with powerful new technologies while protecting culture, exercising agency, and helping determine where those technologies take them. Gila’kasla!   Follow us on X: Wtncast Follow your co-hosts: Tommy | Al | Lawrence A very special thanks to Compulsion Soundlabs for sharing their musical talent, which you are hearing as the intro and outro music in this series! Subscribe for updates Contact us at [email protected] Follow us on Apple Music and Spotify   Tommy and Al respectfully acknowledge that this show is recorded and produced on the traditional, unceded territories of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Chonnonton, and Lūnaapéewak peoples. London, Ontario, Canada is situated on their lands, a beautiful place that Tommy and Al are privileged to call home. Through this series, Tommy and Al aim to share their platform to create progressive, safe, and inclusive space to share the wisdoms, lessons, and experiences of Indigenous peoples from sea, to sea, to sea - in hopes of finding meaningful avenues to co-exist and function together online, in the spirit of love, courage, kindness, and reconciliation.