Digital territory, digital flesh

Decoding the indigenous body

Abstract

Western Indigenous cultures have been colonized, dehumanized and silenced. As AI grows and learns from colonial pre-existing biases, it also reinforces the notion that Natives no longer are but were. And since machine learning requires the input of categorical data, from which AI develops knowledge and understanding, compartmentalization is a natural behavior AI undertakes. As AI classifies Indigenous communities into a marginalized and historicized digital data set, the asterisk, the code, we fall into a cultural trap of recolonization. This necessitates an interference. A non-violent break. A different kind of rupture. One which fractures colonization and codification and opens a space for colonial recovery and survival. If we have not yet
contemporized the colonized Western Indigenous experience, how can we utilize tools of artificial intelligence such as the interface and digitality to create a space that de-codes colonial corporeality resulting in a sense of boundlessness, contemporization and survival?