A tech startup in Michigan is using artificial intelligence in the hopes of better serving tribal nations by connecting them to a tailored set of federal technology grants they’re eligible for, with a focus on respecting each tribe's unique data protection needs.
Company leaders say their story is just the beginning, paving the way for more tech companies to serve the unique needs of tribal nations.
FROM RURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP TO TRIBAL EMPOWERMENT
The founders of the company Syncurrent, Dhruv Patel and Matthew Jaquez, first started working together on a business intelligence tool for the Innovate Marquette SmartZone, a tech hub designated by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation to help empower rural entrepreneurs.”
Then, in a twist of fate, Patel talked over coffee with a friend from college, Bazile Panek, about what he was working on. Panek is a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, and recognized the potential of Patel's technology to address challenges faced by tribal nations.
Intrigued, Patel reached out to tribal governments and discovered a strong interest, but a recurring obstacle: securing the necessary funding through federal grants. Looking further into the grants processes, Patel realized that was more complicated than it seemed.
“When it comes to federal funding, it sounds like it has a lot of attractiveness to it, but you start opening up the bag of worms and it’s compliance reporting, who is eligible, who is not eligible and timelines,” said Patel, adding that many tribes are also looking for state and philanthropic funding, further complicating the search.
This recurring theme of grant funding challenges spurred Syncurrent's transformation. Driven by a desire to connect tribal governments with grants aligned with their needs, the company shifted its focus to developing AI-powered technology to navigate the grant funding landscape. They now work with 29 communities across the nation.
“We hired a CTO to build an AI to scrape every data source off the Internet on federal funding and aggregate it,” said Patel. “We released it to all the tribal partners we were working with, and immediately tribes are going back to us, and they're like, ‘This is already solving 90 percent of our problems right off the bat.’”
The tool allows tribes to type in their name, and then it indexes federal, state and philanthropic databases to deliver best fit opportunities on one dashboard.
Panek hopes the tool will help tribal nations make more investments in technology, but he cautions vendors who want to work with them that the approach needs to be collaborative rather than extractive.
“Tribal nations across the United States and indigenous communities worldwide are underrepresented and underserved in the tech world, but they’re also untapped, not as a resource to be exploited, but collaborations to be made and done with tribal nations who are extremely advanced in the way they think about data,” said Panek.
WHAT IS DATA SOVEREIGNTY?
For tribal nations, data isn't just an asset — it's a reflection of their cultural identity, historical experiences and future aspirations. While state and local governments prioritize data protection, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of their information, tribal nations go beyond protection.
Data sovereignty grants them the authority to not just safeguard their data, but to actively govern its entire life cycle, from collection to use. Data sovereignty empowers them to control this narrative, ensuring that their data is used to benefit their communities, not exploited by external entities.
That can complicate working with vendors who primarily work with state, city and county agencies and have data protocols crafted solely with those entities in mind.
“The issue we’ve been hearing from tribal leaders is ‘We know the technology exists, we know there are different types of solutions for different problems, the issue we’re facing is this technology isn’t built for us, it’s not built for our needs,’” said Patel.
Conversely, it can also leave tribes behind when it comes to using tools like AI to better serve the people who they serve.
While AI carries the opportunity to do a lot of good, like preserving North American languages, it also comes with risks. When Open AI created Whisper, a speech recognition tool offering audio transcription and translation into English for dozens of languages, it included Māori, a language used by indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand, sparking fear that AI would bring on a new kind of digital cultural appropriation.
“Tribal nations are always looking for more opportunities to expand or better manage our tribes,” said Panek, who has created a company, Good Sky Guidance, to serve as a consulting firm dedicated to providing guidance to public institutions on engaging with tribal communities and indigenous knowledge. “With data and AI and tech, there's always this cautionary flag that I put out there. Working with tribal nations, the tribes need to lead these efforts, and (vendors) need to listen and hear what their comfort levels are — like how much data can be gathered, and then a conversation of who owns it.”
Syncurrent is looking for partners in tribal, local and state governments. The product is in beta right now, and is free for tribal governments to use at no cost.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify the relationship between the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and Innovate Marquette SmartZone.
