 Hey everybody. Thanks so much for coming. It was great to see all those raised hands. Welcome to our online event where data justice and environmental justice activists can come together in the same space and begin collaborating and talking about data for environmental justice. So this is our first online event and we're hoping that everything runs smoothly. If you have any technical problems go to the Q&A area of the Zoom and if there is something catastrophic happens and you get kicked off, feel free to reconnect through the webinar link. So I'm Lourdes Marath and I'm a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Northeastern University. My focus is on environmental justice and data analytics. So I'm right here. This is me, a moderator, and we're also joined by Michelle Murphy, Lindsay Dillon, Damien Donaldson, Sarah Wiley, Kevin Nguyen, and others. So we're part of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, EDGE for short, which is a North American network of academics, technologists, and volunteers addressing potential threats to environmental and energy policy and to the scientific research infrastructure built to investigate, inform, and enforce them. Current threats to these infrastructures for environmental research, which range from databases to satellites to models for climate and air and water, could endanger communities' rights to know, corporate accountability, and environmental protection. So our work, both critiquing and building alternative visions for how to care for environmental data within EDGE, has led us to define our values and conceptualize an environmental data justice framework. Many of us have experience in environmental justice organizing or research and have been part of conversations around the emerging data and digital justice movement. Putting these two areas in conversation with each other, we formed our environmental data justice, we call it EDGE for short, working group, in order to ensure that EDGE maintains a critical lens that informs the values guiding our work. So these values include justice, environmental and human health, intersectionality, anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-oppression, accessibility, responsivity and proactivity guiding our work, and participatory knowledge making, which we hope to focus on today through this online event. And it's difficult to summarize in a sentence or two, but as most of you know, environmental justice is primarily concerned with how marginalized populations are disproportionately affected by environmental degradation and contamination from mostly industrial military facilities. We also want to consider a broader definition of environment to include issues around housing, police violence, food accessibility, and the general built environment. Communities of color and with lower incomes often do not receive remediation or compensation for damages to their homes, health and livelihoods, as rapidly as more affluent and white communities are not even, or even at all. In addition to these injustices, environmental justice communities must often wrestle with industry and state produced data that erases environmental violence and is not created by or for communities. At the same time, environmental justice communities must often work with this data and struggle to legitimate their knowledge of environmental violence. In data justice, we look to Indigenous data sovereignty, which has built frameworks for the possession, ownership, and control of data by Indigenous communities in support of their own self-determination. We also look to the principles that Detroit Digital Justice Coalition has offered us. These include access, participation, common ownership, and healthy communities. And these respond to the data harms that people at the Data Justice Lab that have outlined. And some of these harms include technological redlining when data is used to profile us and algorithmic inequality when algorithms are used by those in power such as the police and state to discriminate. In both data justice and environmental justice, we recognize that these injustices and many forms of violence communities face are outcomes of centuries of racism, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and other forms of oppression. And recognizing these structures of oppression, Environmental Data Justice asks why, how, and for whom is environmental data collected, stored, retrieved, and to what ends. We acknowledge that this vision of environmental data justice is a work in progress and we don't claim ownership of it. We know that many activist projects already are engaging these values of environmental data justice and a few of which we'll hear from today when I'm really excited to hear from because they really inspired us and there are many more projects that you all are involved in to who might be listening. So we're hoping that together we can discuss and learn what environmental data justice means to us and envision what it could mean. Hopefully this will be the first of a series of online events and conversations where we can learn from each other and what environmental data justice might be and reflect on it and use it to imagine and build more equitable environmental data infrastructures for the future. So you know as with any online experiment there might be some bumps and thank you all so much for joining us. Now I'm going to turn it over to our moderator Michelle Murphy who will describe the format of the rest of the event. Thank you so much Lourdes and thank you to all the folks who showed up for this online experiment and coming together. My name is Michelle Murphy. I'm an edgy member. I'm also a professor at the University of Toronto and I'm Métis from Winnipeg and I run an environmental data justice lab. It's an indigenous run lab that works on questions of data, environmental violence, and colonialism in Canada's chemical valley. So I'm really excited to be learning from everyone here today. So the outline for our time together is that we're going to have two panels with three speakers each. Short kind of ignite talks to get us thinking. Short and I think probably also full of all sorts of wisdoms and lessons for us to be thinking with after each panel we'll have a larger discussion and then after the two panels we're going to have an entire group discussion. So we're going to have three wonderful speakers in the first panel who are going to be talking about general approaches to data justice. In the second panel we're going to have a set of speakers who are going to be sharing their lessons from their environmental justice projects. We'll be using jazz hands and you've probably seen us kind of embarrassing ourselves using our jazz hands as our version of clapping. So we'll be welcoming each other, thanking each other, saying yay with our jazz hands. So after the speakers present we'll be opening up to a conversation following each panel, a short conversation. So please post any comments, responses, reflections, questions that you want to bring up in our post speaker discussion in the chat and we'll be watching the chat. We're not just interested in questions directed as speakers, we know we have a lot of knowledge holders and experts in here in this space coming together so we're also interested in your thoughts and lessons from your particular communities and projects. And we'll be watching the chat, we'll be gathering comments for discussion and if you see a comment or question you feel like this has got to be asked just put a kind of plus one in and put the name of the person and we'll try to definitely make sure it's asked. Depending how much people post, how many questions they post, we'll be able to get to you know only so many comments so we might not be able to get to everyone but after the panel speak we'll be calling on people verbally and unmuting them and giving you an opportunity to verbally pose your comment. So we ask you to briefly introduce yourself and pose your comment being mindful of time and that we want to make sure lots of people are heard in the time that we've had. If you want to pose a question and you don't want to be called on just put text only in your in your comments or question and we'll know that you don't want to be called on yourself and we might pose that question for you. So that's how we're going to proceed. So let's just turn to our first panel. Oh and this is me the moderator and we can go back a second and Lindsay Dillon and another wonderful edgy member she'll be monitoring the chat and she'll chat and facilitating our conversation amongst after the panel. Okay so our first panel is on data justice and sovereignty principles and our first speaker is going to be Kristen Sonnenberg who is a UX researcher designer and front-end developer since 2016. Kristen has worked with the Detroit community technology project supporting the data justice research project which focuses on community safety over security and the equitable internet initiative through which neighborhood residents in Detroit are building community-owned internet infrastructure. So thank you so much Kristen for joining us and we're going to turn things over to you to get us started. Hi all right. So this work has a long history stemming out of allied media projects and doing media organizing and mesh network building at the allied media conference here in Detroit as well as working with the Detroit digital justice coalition to develop and work from the shared principles that were mentioned before the Detroit digital justice principles. We also rely a lot on popular education theory and one of our earliest projects which is still ongoing are discotex which stands for discovering technology and it's like an open community event where people have tables to teach and learn about technology and digital justice together and we've also put out a number of zines and handbooks some of which are displayed here that are available on our website. So next slide please. Thank you. So through all of this work, Detroit has been and is currently being poisoned environmentally with things like pet coke and incinerator, marathon oil refinery, water shutoffs, etc. And also enduring what our data justice researcher actually calls a propaganda assault that has vilified and criminalized Detroit residents for decades. So this has caused a lot of folks to pull inward rather than outward to the community so people think we need more police, more surveillance to protect us which we think of as security whereas safety might look more like community building and looking out for each other and that is where Project Greenlight comes into play which is the next slide. So Project Greenlight is a public-private partnership and they recruit right now businesses to install surveillance cameras that feed directly to the Detroit Police Department. They're currently trying to push for mandatory expansion and also collaborating with Guardian Alarm to bring residential homes online. You can see all the dots here the yellow dots are new locations projected for this year and the green are what has happened over the past few years. And since the city has been so criminalized for so long a lot of residents actually want this to happen. So we've been working with the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition to talk to Detroiters about a broader idea of safety where we do more community building and looking after one another and thinking critically about what is really going to be helpful to us and what just promotes the culture of policing. And then one of our other projects on the next slide is called the Equitable Internet Initiative. So we're working on building community-owned internet infrastructure which is building on the digital justice principles of common ownership access and participation. So we currently have three neighborhoods each with about 60 homes connected to share a gigabit wireless connection and we have Equitable Internet Initiative working principles which are based off of the Detroit Digital Justice principles and the networks are run and built by neighborhood residents who we call digital stewards. Most of them didn't have a tech background previously. So along with teaching the tech around networking and internet installations, the stewards are trained in community organizing and digital privacy and consent. So we do a lot of work around trying to make the privacy policy accessible and have the stewards like talk through everything with people when they go connect their houses to the internet. So there's also a neighborhood advisory group made up of organizers, activists, and other residents in each neighborhood. So coming back around to the safety mindset versus the security mindset, they're working with that group and with their other neighbors on community resiliency plans that can be mobilized in the case of a natural or political disaster. So this involves solar hot spots, battery backups for the network, and physical resource hubs which will be mapping and putting maps on an intranet that will hopefully still be available as the internet goes down along with some other applications to keep people connected. So the next slide is just some links and our email if you want to contact us or read more about our work. Thank you. Thank you so much, Kristin. We're so inspired by the work happening in Detroit with the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition and the Detroit Community Technology Project. So thank you so much for sharing that. Our next speaker is all the way from Hamilton, New Zealand. So get the prize for coming in from the farthest time zone and that's Desi Rodriguez-Lone-Bear and Desi's a member of the Northern Cheyenne Nation and she's committed to growing data warriors in Indigenous community. She has done amazing work as co-founder of the US Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network, an entity that helps ensure that data for and about Indigenous nations and people are utilized to advance Indigenous aspirations for collective and individual well-being. And totally impressively, Desi is a dual PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Arizona and demography at the University of Waukato in North New Zealand. So really excited to have Desi here. Thank you for joining us tonight. Great. Well, thank you, Michelle. Pivier Schiff. Good afternoon. Good evening. Thank you for that introduction. Really happy to be here. I want to share about this movement, this revolution that has been building in Indian country and across the Indigenous world called Indigenous Data Sovereignty. And with respect to Indigenous peoples, it's very important to consider the fact that data justice conversations must not only include data equity, but also data sovereignty. And so I want to make a connection before starting to the theme of this event, which is both data justice and environmental justice, and to note that Indigenous peoples and communities experience some of the most grave environmental injustices, you know, and that is due to our interconnection with all that is seen and all that is unseen and the centuries of Sundercolonial violence that have been enacted against our communities. So that's a bit depressing, but I want to talk about something that is exciting. And that's this revolution in Indian country, the data revolution that is taking root, that is absolutely happening right now across the globe. And it's really paving the future for, it's paving Indigenous futures by Indigenous peoples for Indigenous peoples. Next slide, please. Contrary to colonial narrative, oh, this is a bit, okay. So our peoples have always been data experts. Contrary to colonial narratives of savagery and unsophistication, Indigenous peoples have been relentlessly empirical. They have had advanced data practices and knowledge systems since time immemorial. And so this is the foundation of Indigenous data sovereignty is acknowledging that our people have always been data experts. Next, please. The original or the initial, the foundational state building off of that that fact that Indigenous peoples have always been data experts is this notion of data sovereignty. And I'm going to get into what that means a little bit later on, but I want to put this initial image up here to show that Indigenous peoples and communities have gone from a state of data sovereignty towards a state of data dependency, and that that has, that state has been enacted through processes of colonization. And that really, can you push the next slide? I think there's another, there we go. And that getting from data dependency back to data sovereignty, the reclamation of data sovereignty is going to take a process similarly of decolonizing data. And so this is kind of a cyclical image that I want to start out as kind of framing this conversation. Next slide, please. So data dependency in Indian country is, we can say that it's characterized by several different concepts or experiences. You can see here this notion of the paradoxity of scarcity and abundance. And so this is, you know, where there's an abundance of data collected on Indigenous peoples, sometimes with Indigenous peoples, but more often for Indigenous peoples, there's a lack of data collected by Indigenous peoples. We also have the fact that there's a tremendous degree of inconsistency and irrelevance with existing data. There's a significant amount of mistrust. The control is not localized at the level of Indigenous communities. It's often external and that we have a lack of data infrastructure and capability. So these are kind of the characterizations of data dependency. Next slide. And so what are Indigenous data? Indigenous data, as we have defined it at the U.S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network, and this is informed by the BC First Nations Data Governance Initiative, is that data information and knowledge in any form that impacts Indigenous peoples, nations, and communities at both the collective and individual levels. So this is really critical because it's really also looking at, let's get beyond the individual. Let's look at the collective. And that also applies to our lands, to our waters, our resources, the animals. Again, all that is seen and unseen. How are we advancing sovereignty with regard to all of the data that make up the Indigenous world? Next slide, please. So Indigenous Data Sovereignty, building off of that definition of what Indigenous data are, is the right of Indigenous peoples and nations to govern the collection, the ownership, and the application of their own data. And Indigenous Data Sovereignty is grounded in four main tenets. The primary one being that it's an inherent right. The second is that it's positioned, that it has genesis in these traditional roles and responsibilities of community-held information. It's positioned within a human rights framework. So we rely significantly on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And in fact, there is going to be, the UN has just codified Indigenous Data Sovereignty in some of its data language recently. So that's an exciting new outcome that we hope to be sharing soon. And the knowledge belongs to the collective. Next slide. Cognizant of Time. So I want to keep moving forward. So here we have the Data Paradigm. So this really shows us the hierarchy of Indigenous Data. And it's really working from this ground-up approach where you have a data desert where, you know, there's this vast need for data. And then it works its way up where we have, you know, buy them for them, data that's been collected, buy them for them, buy them for us, buy them with us, buy us for us, which is where we envisage Indigenous Data Sovereignty fitting in. And then there's this unique kind of fun, important top layer of buy us for them. If we are the experts, we need to be doing data buy us for others. Next, please. And so as we get into the reclamation of Indigenous Data Sovereignty moving from away from data dependency, we see that there are two main ways that this is happening. And that's through Indigenous Data Governance and Decolonizing Data. And these are interdependent processes that, you know, they're going to intersect at some points, they're going to diverge at some points. And eventually, those two processes working together are going to lead to the reclamation of Indigenous Data Sovereignty. Next slide. Again, just another visual really showing this interdependence. I want to make the point that a nation rebuilding in the wake of colonization in the midst of colonization, you know, there's nothing postcolonial about our current realities as Indigenous peoples. We are in the midst of it right now. So the nation rebuilding and data rebuilding are go hand in hand. Next slide. And so this is where we are at right now and a lot of our empirical work and a lot of our theoretical work and the Indigenous Data Sovereignty space is really looking at governance and systems of governance and power and how we can engage governance as a mechanism to achieve Indigenous Data Sovereignty to reclaim it. And so here we see the nation is positioned in the center and then the data about the nation, the resources, citizens, communities and land surround that. Next slide. I just have a couple more here. The governing of Indigenous Data is really this spectrum. And so we have on one side tribes that are governing tribal data. So this is by tribes for tribes. And then we also have on the other side is data stewards, external entities. And the hope that they will get to a place where they are managing Indigenous data by tribal standards. And that the critical link between the two is relationships. Next slide, please. So what's needed, these are some of the, this is what we envisage are needed in this space, mechanisms to facilitate data governance, tribal specific principles, common principles of data governance and also data governance mechanisms that support data sovereignty. And so I want to end with the slide here on some of the principles that we have developed. The next slide. These are draft principles that we have developed over the course of a series of stakeholder engagement sessions. They are continuing to be challenged and improved. And so I just want to leave this up there to encourage all of you to engage with them. Please give us feedback. We are going to continue to refine those principles over time and to really see them in action. So with that, I just want to say thank you, Nyayesh. And I look forward to hearing the rest of this webinar. Thank you so much, Desi. That was really inspirational. Thank you. So our next speaker is another amazing person, Nasma Ahmed, who is joining us from Toronto. And Nasma was a technologist and community organizer living in the same city as me and someone I admire tremendously. She is currently the director of the Digital Justice Lab, which is really doing important grassroots community-based work on imagining data justice. And their mission is to build towards a more just and equitable digital future. So thank you so much. Nasma for joining us. Thank you. So next slide. Yeah, I forgot that I put this here. Oh, no, you can go back there. Perfect. Hi, everybody. My name is Nasma. I'm the director of Digital Justice Lab, which is actually heavily inspired by the work out of Detroit and the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition. Part of creating the lab in coalition with others was really the inspiration of the work that was happening in Detroit and how we can move forward in not only Toronto but across Canada. So our focus at the lab is building towards a more just and equitable digital future. And it's important to know we have no idea how we're going to get there, but part of the work is creating space for the uncomfortable conversations, for the powerful conversations to get to some form of a destination. And a big chunk of our work right now has been focused on smart city conversations and really trying to navigate this new frontier within cities, especially through a project called Sidewalk Toronto. So next slide. So I provide this project example because I think we're all we've all been reckoning with data justice issues in our own lives and in our work. And Sidewalk Toronto, in the case of what's happening in Toronto, has provided a really oddly good example of what happens around private entities and city building. And so Sidewalk Toronto was a joint effort by Waterfront Toronto and Alphabet Sidewalk Labs. And the idea was to create a mixed use, complete community in Toronto's eastern waterfront. And it's important to know that community consultation did not happen with Waterfront Toronto prior to the request for proposal. And in many ways, the way that this project has been talked about outside of Toronto and within Toronto is a testbed, a testbed for urban innovation that includes talking about the environment, education, health services, you know, techno solutions around sensors. So think of all the possible things you can think of. This project has encompassed or has at least proposed ideas around it. So next slide. And so this is just a slide from Sidewalk of like the potentials of how it could look. And it's important to know that the waterfront is quite massive, at least the undeveloped land of the waterfront. It's over 800 acres. And so, you know, the whole point of this project is supposed to be a partnership with a private entity to build up this waterfront that can be the cities of our dreams. And the really interesting thing about this, at least in the data conversation, is that was the first piece of contention that came with this project is its relationship with Alphabet and the possibilities of math data collection. So next slide. And this is just an area, just a view of the area. So the original RFP talks about Keyside, which is a small 12 acres, and then also building up a project to scale, which includes the entire Portland area. And so, you know, one of the bigger issues that came up was data issues. And the solutions on Sidewalk side of things is to build up a data trust. And so what we're seeing in many cases is private institutions using kind of co-create language. And language is actually often used by communities to shape and comfort people around a project like this. And so, you know, it's been very fascinating to see in this context of Toronto where we actually don't have data governance policies. We've actually not, we haven't done anything, whether it be externally or even internal data practices. And so it's created this massive policy gap in the work. But also, we're talking about smart cities that encompass housing, you know, work, schooling, you know, how much does a person have to know to make an informed decision about this. So what we've been doing at the lab is creating space for community organizations to learn more about smart cities, redefine what smart cities look like, and really push back against this notion of innovation in relation to technology and in relation to this really this massive push for economic development that has been a driving force in Toronto, but also all across Canada in how we're thinking about federal policy making. So next slide. And there has been obviously massive concerns around this issue. And you can see that, you know, when there isn't also literacy not in just like data literacy, not just, you know, with the general public, which is one side of the thing, one side of the issue, but digital, sorry, data literacy with public officials, with public servants to talk about the nuances of this project. You know, it's been very difficult to have the conversations around race, right, and to talk about income and to talk about diverse communities and what it means to potentially participate in a conversation like this, that often feels like a project meant for the wealthy and actually in many cases is built for the wealthy. And so when we're thinking about future city building at the Digital Justice Lab, we've been trying to figure out, okay, there's this project and people care about this project, but how do we renegotiate the terms of conditions of a project like this using, you know, what we've learned through Detroit Digital Justice Principles, and also the engaging work that's been happening all around the world around technology and its impact in communities. So next slide. So one of the, one of the things that we did in Toronto actually last year was host a talk called the Alternative Urban Features Conversation, which Michelle was actually a part of, and that was actually one of those moments where most people in the room actually haven't, they know they've possibly engaged in tech conversations, but a lot of the folks in the space were community organizers or artists who were really just trying to understand is this supposed to be the next frontier of the city and how can we reimagine that? How do we think about indigenous data justice and what can we learn from that, right? How can we think about sex work and how can we think about people in, you know, community benefits? How do we learn from each other to kind of imagine what's possible in the Portland that isn't just tied to a private company and really trying to renegotiate the terms of a project like this? And it's provided a really great example as smart city conversations are happening all over the world in the context of Canada, federally, they're funding projects across the country. And so there's a huge push and in many cases, the push is tied to the massive datafication of our lives, the massive datafication of our lives, but also tied to efficiency and algorithmic inequalities that can really pop up in a project like this. And so, you know, I think we're really battling now with how do we talk about innovation in the context of these massive economic development pressures and how do we change that conversation to focus on the concepts of common ownership and fair economies and what's possible that is not tied to these, you know, these power imbalances that currently exist. And so that's what we've been working on. But also just, you know, trying to figure out the mess that we're in, as I think we all are trying to figure out. And the data conversation provides a really important piece of how we're thinking about future city building. Thank you so much. That was wonderful. So we're about to turn to our conversation part. We're hoping that this won't be like all the other webinars you've been on and that will actually be interactive. So we invite everyone to begin posting their questions, comments, maybe you have a story about your project that you want to share, and put that in the chat so we can call on you and kind of prepare yourself because at the end of our second panel, we're going to promote everyone into being part of the gallery of faces so that we can actually see each other and talk to each other as a whole group. So thank you to the three speakers. And that was amazing. It was already so much to think about. I'm going to turn it over to Lindsay Dillon to begin moderating. So thank you so much to those panelists. And just to everybody listening, we have about 20 minutes of a chance to ask questions in the chat. And I can speak your question or we can unmute you to speak a question or provide a comment. So I'm actually going to start with something that came up a bit earlier. And I see some questions coming up in the chat. That's great. Please ask questions. And this goes back to our first speaker. There was a question and some plus ones about the equitable internet initiative. And so I was personally, and it seems like a lot of people were really interested in the questions about how this infrastructure gets set up and what specific problems it's able to address. And I think this actually gets to questions I also had to Desi about how you deal with these sovereignty when you're working also with the state's infrastructure or like a company's infrastructure and thinking about data like that. So I'll turn it over to the first speaker. And I think the other thing that might be great to hear because it came up a couple of times is a little overview of the digital Detroit digital principles because that seems like to be a bedrock for some of the speakers. So and great keep asking questions. So Kristen, I'm going to turn it over to you. If you could speak a little bit more about the equitable internet initiative. Yeah. So it kind of came about because here in Detroit, there are a lot of neighborhoods where there is no real high speed internet access because companies don't see it as profitable. So downtown, there's fiber internet in most of the neighborhoods. So we actually originally, it's been a long organizing process, which I kind of joined in the middle of but I'm going to try to explain how we got there. So we originally had purchased wholesale connections from Rocket Fiber that is an internet service provider here. And we basically sent, we had a tower downtown and sent a signal down to three different neighborhoods in Detroit where we have community partners that we're working with who are already embedded in the community and doing similar work. And they were a little bit difficult to work with. And we ended up actually, I think after like a vice video was released that we were in, we were contacted by 123Net, which is a higher tier service provider here. And they have donated five gigabit internet connections. So we're now using those. And we're using the two that aren't already up yet to expand in the current neighborhoods and also possibly go into a new neighborhood. But EII, the Equitable Internet Initiative, is a partnership that we have with allied media projects and the neighborhood based organizations in Southwest Detroit is called Grayson Action, Boulevard Harambe Empowerment Center in Island View on the east side. And then the North End neighborhood in Detroit is the North End Woodward Community Coalition. So we worked with them basically to hire a group of five digital stewards in each neighborhood to learn not only how to build these wireless networks, but also how to think about consent and how to do community organizing and run community events that help people get up to speed and like brainstorm really about how they can use this new high speed internet. So we chose the households that are currently connected based on priorities around income, current internet connection, and whether they're school-aged children or seniors or people with disabilities in the home. And we do tiered pricing. It was free for the first year for everyone. And then there's tiered pricing depending on what people can pay. So it goes from no cost to low cost. And the stewards right now are working on building community resiliency plans, thinking about talking with the community about what they would need in case of a disaster and trying to create connections around that. Thank you so much. So we had a number of really interesting questions come up. And what I think I'm going to do is read some of these questions and get some of these thoughts out there. And then I'd love to turn it over to Desi and Nazma to address some of the things that are interesting to you. So we had a question from Monica, I think, and she says, how do you catalyze civic change? And what can you do if data isn't enough to move the needle? Parna says, thanks, Nazma. This is great. She would love to hear more about the strategies through which you get communities involved and which communities. Sophie says, thank you, Nazma, for your fantastic discussion. And she is curious to hear a bit more about how data governance has played a role in discussions around environmental remediation of the portlands. Vanessa says, thank you so much for the wonderful information. In light of the idea of a hierarchy of data that Desi presented, she was wondering if anyone has ideas about best practices for conducting collective research. Right now she's working on conducting research with low-income food insecure individuals. So how do you share findings with participants, ask participants what they would like to come out of the research and share research with service providers? So that's a really important question. And yeah, I think there's more questions that are coming up, but I'll leave that there. And I think maybe hand it over to Desi, anything that you'd like to respond to that came up. Okay, great. So there's quite a few that I'm happy to also take offline. I'll address the one on the conducting collective research. I think it's important to note that Indigenous data sovereignty is nation-specific. So when we talk about sovereignty, we focus on Indigenous native nations to which there is a legal obligation that is built on centuries of treaties and other instruments that have been wielded between the Central Colonial States and Indigenous nations. So this notion of collaboration is weak. What's required is partnership. And partnership on that Native nations determine how, why, and when. And so I think it's a little bit different in this context, but I think partnership is a very powerful tool that can be used. In America, we talk about consultation. Too often it's this kind of, it's a check box that the federal government uses to say, well, we consulted with tribes, we consulted with communities. So we're going to build that railroad anyway. We're going to dig that pipeline anyway, because we've consulted. And so partnership to me is reciprocal. And so instead of thinking about collaboration, I really would like to shift that conversation to one of partnership and what that looks like. I want to address another one, or a couple more, and then I'll pass the torch. But this seems to be some interest in data for governance and governance of data. And so this is something that my colleagues and I at the Native Nations Institute have been advancing conversation around. And it's really thinking about the fact that these are two different but interconnected concepts. So if we think about data for governance, if data rebuilding is critical to nation rebuilding, then tribes need data that will drive that rebuilding process. At the same time, by rebuilding, tribes are then equipping themselves with the various mechanisms that they need in order to then exert governance over other data, data collected by external entities, NGOs, corporations, other sovereigns. And so we see it as this kind of reinforcing cycle that are very much interdependent. And there are many examples of this happening now, which is very exciting, that I'm happy to get into later. But really that as tribes are rebuilding their governance institutions, they're increasing their capability to actually govern their data. Great. Thank you so much. Nazma, so much came up, but there was another question from Eric who said that he was really curious about hearing more about the data trust, and if the idea of a trust has something that has potential beyond Google's project. So you can pick up wherever you'd like to start. Yeah, I can start with strategies through which getting communities involved. So the really interesting thing about something like a smart city, which I think I put everything in quotes because I feel like nothing means anything. I'm like, quote, smart city. There's so many levels to it. So what I've noticed has been a really good strategy, as always, we should meet people where they're at. So it was mattering on what kind of organizing folks were doing. So I collaborate with housing rights organizers and environmental rights organizers. And so really trying to make sure that the connection that I was making, the meaningful connection I was trying to make was actually meeting them at where they've been thinking through things. So whether it be the lens of the environment or housing, that was one of the biggest pieces is just providing that context that connected. And then from there, the unfortunate thing around technology and these kind of projects is it makes people feel as if they won't understand anything, that they need to be a tech expert of like, you know, they have to understand artificial intelligence and they have to understand big data to be able to participate in this discourse, which is not true at all. I think everyone has their own level of expertise around how they think about their own data, but also collective. And so the big thing also was meeting people where they were at, but also slowly kind of talking about the connections between, for example, the affordable housing work that was being done and the data that was collected around that and how that ties into like a smart city conversation and the same power and balances that were existing and how does that tie into a smart city conversation. So really trying to make those connections clear. And then often when people would have like light bulb moments of like seeing those clear areas where they can provide input where they felt more of a capacity to engage, but also recognizing that not everyone needs to engage in these processes, right? Like sometimes it's like people are dealing with like city-based issues, things are popping up all the time. And then we have this like shiny thing on the side, right, that does have a potential great impact, but they have the work that they're also doing on the ground. And so a lot of it was trying to hold space for what they were thinking through and feeling through and then trying to translate things very fast as they were moving and like helping them think through, okay, when is a point of impact of like, yeah, you should talk to sidewalk labs or like, no, maybe you should talk like, let's like talk to the counselor, like what were the best engagement opportunities as well. And all of that was through partnership. It wasn't through like me shaping anything, it's just creating that space to kind of ask the questions and really learn together too, because I think I learned also a lot around the environment through this process as well, right? And so it was a constant learning, like learning opportunity through this. So I think there's that in regards to the data governance piece. We just actually had a policy that was approved recently. So they're going to be doing public consultations around data governance in Toronto. The thing, the caveat to this is they're really focusing on external data governance, so like the things that they procure. So I'm really hoping they shift the narrative and also think about internal data governance issues. And so there was this project did push people faster than they expected. And so the city is trying to figure, they're going to be going into public consultation processes soon. In regards to the trust, I don't know if the trust will move past this project. It's definitely a bold move. And right now what's being proposed is that the library plays the role of a trust, which is something that has been talked about before. And so I don't necessarily know how much of this will translate over. But I do think that it's something to consider. And I don't I don't know how people I think trust have now data trust have now become a really popular topic around the digital government space. And so it's interesting to see this conversation shift to like the best possible scenario for folks that they haven't actually engaged like they haven't engaged a lot of people of color in this project, they haven't engaged a lot of indigenous communities in this project, so I don't know what like I don't necessarily know what the solution of a data trust would be if it's not actually proposed by the people as well. And so that's something to consider in a project like this. But it is definitely a step towards some direction. And I still think that there's a lot of learnings that can come from this. I feel like there was another question, but I think for now I can pause, pause it. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I'm going to pass it over to Sarah and her team to ask a question. Hi. Oh, thank you so much for those really inspiring presentations. I thought some of the language was just so interesting. So, Desi, I loved your term relentlessly empirical. And as somebody who thinks about like embody data and embodiment, I wonder if you could expand a bit on that. You know, how, how, how would we value it like more being more relentlessly empirical? And how might that lead us to different forms of data gathering and data sovereignty? And, and Nazma, I was asked a question in the chat about the, what kind of data the smart city is, is aiming to gather and like how you would know when you're entering the smart city zone so that your data, you know, you're being gathered in this very different way of being really interested to hear how much specifics they've been required to. And I'm also wondering like if Google wants some taxes, then can we, can we get some like exchange there, like some responsibilities? Like will they become the state? Anyway, I was, thought that was really provocative. I'll just respond quickly. Thank you, Sarah. Yeah, this notion of being relentlessly empirical to me, first of all, I think it's kind of exhausting because it's, it's, it's, it's very much a verb. It's an action. It's an action that as an indigenous person, my ancestors have engaged in since time immemorial, because really data and research were critical to survival, right, thinking about how we survived, you know, pre-contact, pre-subdlers. And, and then we have this, this very real, you know, clash in, you know, as a result of colonialism, you know, colonialism and, in which our mechanisms to be relentlessly empirical, we've been removed from those, from our lands, from our waters, from our knowledge systems and our languages. And so really now in a contemporary, right now in this, in this place, in the now, it's really a reclaiming of those empirical ways of knowing and doing and being. And so as a new generation of indigenous peoples comes into leadership, you know, starts thinking about what that means. I think it's a huge challenge to both reclaim, but also then to envisage a future, an indigenous future that is data driven. And so to me, that's where that data hierarchy comes into place, because it's really the reclaiming of indigenous data sovereignty is, is a movement that is purposefully by indigenous peoples for indigenous peoples. And that's critical. And we get a lot of, a lot of flack for that, but we don't care. Because at the end of the day, that is what the indigenous data future is going to be. And so that's where I encourage non-indigenous allies to ask, how can we partner? How can we support? We, we step back, we acknowledge that, you know, this has to be led by indigenous peoples and communities. But we'd like a role. And I think that's, that partnership is, is beautiful. It's difficult, but it's necessary. Desi, thank you so much. And what I'd like to do is hold space for questions for the end of the, after the second panel. And particularly that question of consent is something I think we can think about all together. I'm going to pass it over to Michelle, I think, to introduce the next set of panelists. Thank you all.