The Earth Codes Observatory’s pilot program called Data Warriors provides grants to indigenous youth around the world who are leaders in the data sovereignty movement.

For centuries, colonial powers have extracted natural resources and knowledge largely without recognition or compensation to indigenous communities. In modern times, the pharmaceutical industry alone is estimated to owe billions of USD to indigenous knowledge keepers around the world. This has largely been possible due to lack of data sovereignty: without being able to “prove” ownership of knowledge, bio- (and other) piracy has run rampant. Even when archives in universities, churches and other locations show original ownership, enforcement is near impossible.

By registering data on the Web 3.0/blockchain, foundation steps can be made to establish original stewardship of specific knowledge: e.g. land management, geographic knowledge, botanicals, architecture, governance, nation-building, community resilience, parenting, health, etc.

Grants from Earth Codes will go to designated indigenous organizations that will partner to ensure remuneration to youth data warriors, secure data management, coding, tagging, etc. Participating communities have the opportunity to meet each other online and in person to share best practices.

As far as we know, there is no other program like this. The hope is that a large quantity of quality data will be made to AI tools that will benefit indigenous communities, humanity and the planet at large.

In a later phase of Earth Codes Observatory’s timeline (2024), indigenous communities which would like to grant permission for their knowledge to join the Earth Codes Data Commons can do so. Then, toolmakers around the world who are already building AI tools, will have access, likely for a fee, to the rich data.

“For millennia, we humans have been part of nature and have co-evolved with it. Over time, people have adapted to their local environment while drawing material and spiritual sustenance from it. Through this mutual adaptation, human communities have developed thousands of different cultures and languages: distinctive ways of seeing, knowing, doing, and speaking that have been shaped by the interactions between people and the natural world.”

“This, then, is the “true” web of life: the interlinked diversity of nature and culture — or “biocultural diversity” …..”

—Terralingua