Indigenous-led futures in Artificial Intelligence

The entanglement of technoscience and coloniality is increasingly interrogated through Indigenous critiques of science, which challenge its epistemic authority and dominance in policy, governance, and resource management. The push to integrate Indigenous knowledge into research and decision-making frameworks is often seen as a response to equity and Indigenous rights, but it also speaks to the need for more holistic, relational, and contextually grounded approaches to addressing contemporary socio-environmental challenges. However, such integration efforts are not neutral interventions; they are sites of negotiation, translation, and contestation, shaped by the enduring legacies of colonial knowledge hierarchies and Indigenous assertions of sovereignty. Indigenous researchers, communities and organizations are also engaging with AI systems in diversified ways, including collaboration, reconfiguration, and adaptation, shaping technology to align with their own knowledge systems and priorities, and enacting alternative futures. This paper explores the trajectories of nascent movements to build Indigenous algorithmic futures through Indigenous-led initiatives focused on AI and data science, building links between the past and present to imagine and shape the possibility of a more diverse and culturally responsive algorithmic future.