What a deeply inspiring and urgent call to action. As someone working at the intersection of education, equity, and decolonial praxis, I’m moved by the work that Mason Grimshaw and the Lakota AI Code Camp are doing—not only to train the next generation of Native American technologists, but to affirm Indigenous sovereignty, knowledge systems, and community-rooted leadership in one of the most consequential arenas of our time: AI and machine learning.
The framing here—“AI should speak every human language”—is not only technically visionary but epistemically just. It demands that we shift from extractive, one-size-fits-all models toward technologies that honor the relational, place-based, and linguistic diversity of the world’s peoples. Too often, Indigenous youth are marginalized by tech sectors that see them only through the lens of “access” gaps, while ignoring the rich epistemologies they bring to the table. The Lakota AI Code Camp shows us what’s possible when young people are given tools and trusted to lead.
Grimshaw’s words resonate: the future of AI depends on whether we are brave enough to center the communities long pushed to the margins. It is not just a matter of inclusion; it’s a matter of survival, innovation, and justice.
I’m grateful to learn about this initiative—and I look forward to supporting and amplifying this movement wherever possible.
-Angela Valenzuela
Lakota Code Camp: Native American Tech Leaders Bringing Native Youth Into AI InnovationByJohn Werner, Forbes | Dec 01, 2023
Contributor. I am an MIT Senior Fellow & Lecturer, 5x-founder & VC investing in AI
How do we address issues with diversity in AI technical leadership?
A group of Native American technical leaders are amongst those who are deeply thinking about how this works, as existing models unfortunately often show how human discrimination bleeds over into AI systems.
Solving this problem must include casting a wider net in leadership and teams – the human intelligence that builds the systems that we will use.
With that in mind, Mason Grimshaw and his colleagues are taking action and welcome the tech world as a whole to join.
Grimshaw has a Master’s degree in business analytics, and works for Ode Partners, a data and design agency for the environment. He’s also a dad, as revealed by his LinkedIn bio:
“By day, I’m a data scientist for the Ode Partners, and by night, I change lots of diapers. I love all aspects of data science, but mostly I want to improve people’s lives and processes. I play guitar, 3D print stuff, chase my 4 year old and 2 year old around, and cuddle with our 1 year old. Additionally, I’m increasingly interested in preserving language for indigenous populations.”
And Grimshaw has been doing some thinking about how to make the future better for his kids, and everyone else’s. In talking about his past experience in the tech sector, he says working in tech as a Native American is hard and lonely.
Addressing questions around data inclusion as well as data sovereignty, he also notes the morphological differences in language, and how AI might master English, but have problems with other world languages.
“AI should speak every human language,” he says.
He also notes the problem of data model bias, and says that companies and engineering teams in the past have often interacted with tribes in non-respectful and non-reciprocal ways. He wants to change that.
“I've been very fortunate in the people that I've been able to meet, and the opportunities that I've had,” he says, showing his desire to provide these kinds of experiences for others.
There are some efforts, he says, underway to get young Native American people closer to the coding world, a welcoming coding world where they can lead.
Grimshaw mentions a Lakota AI code camp that he co-created and helps lead, where high school students in Black Hills took a three-week course learning about AI applications and much more.
Noting that the program was a smashing success, he first sets the stage for why these kinds of opportunities are so important for Native American youth. He says many members of Native American communities are all too familiar with tech deserts, where there are many innovations but little access to tech, and notes that the “abysmal” Internet access on many reservations can be a real stumbling block to their further education and community.
Through the coding camp program, equipped with modern laptops, young Native Americans were able to do big things with technology, Grimshaw says.
“Our students blew us away,” he says, noting that the curriculum included building random forest models, mastering image recognition, and feeding augmented reality apps.
Students built models, he says, to understand the medicinal purposes of plants, and to build Lakota dictionaries.
Now, some of the students are moving toward computer science undergraduate programs, and they’re coming away with better understandings of modern technologies and their uses.
“We've built a community that supports each other,” he says. ‘We are confident that our students are going to be leaders and experts in AI/ML, and within their communities, as they continue to wrestle with the questions around data sovereignty and local applications of AI/ML… They’re all learning … an understanding of the power of these methods, and the value of their community’s data.”
Too often, he says, Native American youth are “overlooked and under-valued” in tech spaces.
“When we put them in our indigenous technical space, they excelled. I know that’s possible for all (of their peers), join us in making that a reality, because frankly, the future of our communities, and of AI for each and every one of us, depends on it.”
Those who are interested can find more information at Services 4 — LAKOTA AI CODE CAMP.
