The Impact of Data Sovereignty on American Indian Self-Determination: Using Machine Learning to Create GIS Infrastructure Point Patters for Census

The Data Sovereignty Initiative is a collection of ideas that was designed to create SMART solutions for tribal communities. This concept was to develop a horizontal governance framework to create a strategic act of sovereignty using data science. The core concept of this idea was to present data sovereignty as a way for tribal communities to take ownership of data in order to affect policy and strategic decisions that are data driven in nature. The data sovereignty framework is a flexible way to create data domains, around developed key indicators to integrate appropriate cultural capital when working with Native nations. This design is intended to put scientific theory into practice to affect everyday outcomes using data driven decision making. This framework is a proof concept and represents both applied and theoretical metrics in design strength. One case study in Dr. Robertson’s PhD dissertation was developed around creating a data domain called a GIS Infrastructure Point Pattern to obtain tribal infrastructure using machine learning and artificial intelligence. This outcome is obtained through the use of a support vector machine for image classification using satellite and drone imagery. Further discussion will address the power of GEO AI to map tribal infrastructure.