Data Sovereignty

What We Hold and Why

Minoo stores information that helps communities connect, support Elders, and keep culture alive. Everything we hold exists to serve you — not to serve us.

• Community profiles — names, locations, treaty areas, and contact information for First Nations and municipalities across northern Ontario
• People — Knowledge Keepers, Elders, language speakers, and community leaders who have chosen to be listed
• Teachings — cultural knowledge shared by community members for the benefit of the next generation
• Language entries — Anishinaabemowin words, phrases, and example sentences contributed by speakers
• Events — powwows, gatherings, ceremonies, and community programs
• Elder support requests — requests for help from Elders, handled by community coordinators

What We Never Do

These are hard commitments. They are not negotiable.

• We never sell your data. Community information is never sold, licensed, or monetized — not now, not ever.
• We never mine your data. We do not analyze community information for patterns, trends, or insights beyond what the platform needs to work.
• We never train AI on your knowledge. Teachings, language entries, Elder information, and other community knowledge are never used to train artificial intelligence models.
• We never share your data with third parties. Community data is not shared with external organizations without explicit community consent.
• We never surveil you. We do not track, profile, or monitor community members beyond what is needed for basic site functionality.

Consent Controls

Every piece of cultural content on Minoo carries explicit consent metadata:

• Public consent — whether the content may be shown on public pages. Content creators and communities decide what is visible.
• AI training consent — whether the content may be used for AI training. This defaults to no for all content. Only explicit opt-in changes this.

These settings are stored as structured fields alongside the content they govern. Community administrators can audit and change consent status at any time.

Who Decides

Minoo is built by a developer. But data governance is not a developer's decision to make alone.

The real questions — who owns community data, what can be shared publicly, how Teachings and language data are governed — belong to band councils, Knowledge Keepers, and community leadership. This page is a starting point. The communities we serve will shape what comes next.

Our job is to build the platform so it can enforce whatever communities decide. The technology should never be the bottleneck for sovereignty.

Learning from Others

We are inspired by the work of others walking this path.

The Indigenous Protocol and AI Working Group has articulated principles for Indigenous-led technology development — relationality, reciprocity, locality, and data sovereignty. We recognized these as the principles we had been building by instinct.

Te Hiku Media in Aotearoa (New Zealand) created the Kaitiakitanga License, which treats Māori language data as collectively owned taonga — treasure. Their approach says: this knowledge belongs to the people, not to whoever collects it. We carry that same understanding.

An Anishinaabe-specific data sovereignty framework may already exist or may need to be developed. That conversation belongs to our communities.

Questions or Concerns

If you are a community leader, band council member, or Knowledge Keeper with questions about how Minoo handles community data, we want to hear from you.

Call us or reach out through your band office. You can also email us at hello@minoo.live.

This is your platform. Your questions shape how it grows.