In a digital world where AI giants like Google and Microsoft race to dominate artificial intelligence and language technologies, Indigenous languages have largely been misrepresented. In our second episode of the Hello-Kwey podcast, Daphna Leibovici and I met with Ali Mendi, the Senior Director at Heritage Lab, who revealed how a grassroots initiative from Nunavik is approaching Indigenous language revitalization with remarkable success.
When AI tools were introduced in Nunavik, teachers, students, and community members began asking AI systems questions to learn about Inuit culture and the Inuktitut language. The results they received were typically inaccurate, not representative of Nunavik, and in some cases, culturally insensitive. The situation worsened when major tech companies released Indigenous language translators that performed abysmally—in one notable example, translating “children” into “pizza” with less than 10% accuracy overall. Yet, these tools were marketed as reliable solutions for preserving Indigenous languages.
What makes this story extraordinary is what happened next. Ali, with his background in AI, worked alongside community members to build an Inuktitut translator that achieved over 70% accuracy in just two weeks, with no budget, in both dialects that are spoken in the Nunavik region. This stark contrast highlighted a fundamental truth: technology built without community involvement often fails to meet the needs of communities. As Ali explains, “These companies have been pouring millions into this, but they didn’t build it with communities”.
Heritage Lab emerged from this realization—a nonprofit organization founded on principles of Indigenous leadership and data sovereignty. With an Indigenous-majority board of directors, the organization has digitized over 6,000 pages of cultural material and has engaged youth in creating interactive avatars that share community history from an Inuit perspective. Unlike commercial AI systems that extract data and sell it back to communities, Heritage Lab’s tools remain community-owned and community-controlled.
Perhaps most significant is the issue of data sovereignty. When Indigenous communities share language data with tech giants, that information typically ends up on servers outside of their communities, representing what Ali calls “the next stages of colonization.” Heritage Lab takes a different approach, hosting all data locally in Kuujuaq at Kativik Ilisarniliriniq School Board, ensuring that “digital data is held to the same standards as physical data.”
The impact has been global. Heritage Lab has presented at UNESCO in Paris and been mentioned at the United Nations General Assembly as an example of cultural and language preservation. Communities from across Canada and South America have reached out, seeking similar tools for their languages. And remarkably, the organization has already achieved milestones that were initially planned for years into the future, demonstrating how technology can accelerate positive change when properly aligned with community needs.
What makes this initiative particularly powerful is its focus on youth involvement. So far, young people from six communities have been hired to help build and maintain the Heritage Lab systems, creating technology career pathways that allow them to remain in their communities while contributing to language revitalization. One youth who contributed hundreds of hours curating community data is now learning programming and will attend college for formal training—a testament to how technology can create opportunities within Indigenous communities.
As AI technologies continue to evolve, the Heritage Lab model offers a powerful alternative to corporate approaches. By centering community control, respecting data sovereignty, and investing in local talent, they demonstrate how technology can serve rather than extract from Indigenous communities. Their upcoming grammar tools, voice technology platforms, and educational systems promise to further revolutionize how Indigenous languages are preserved, taught, and revitalized in the digital age. They plan to expand and allow other Indigenous communities to create their own artificial intelligence language tools, free of charge, using their existing structure.
If you want to learn more about Heritage Lab and their work, visit heritagelab.ca/ or follow AI Inuktitut on Facebook. Look out for their full resource launch this November -December.
Tune in to the full episode below. You’ll also find it on more popular podcast platforms.
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