Overview
IndigiData is a one-week (4-6 days) Indigenous data science education workshop held each summer to introduce data science and informatics skills to undergraduate and graduate students. We offer an Indigenous-centered curriculum that is led by a community of Indigenous data scientists and guest faculty. All of our workshop activities will center Indigenous data sovereignty and data ethics while also providing students valuable insight into the emerging data and technology career fields.
We believe in advancing excellence in science education to inspire the next generation of innovators and to strengthen Indigenous communities through compelling hands-on and virtual experiences.
As data science and informatics continue to require these skillsets of incoming field leaders, we want to ensure that tribal communities are not left even further behind in the technology gap.
We aim to provide a space for teaching data science and ethics intersected with Indigenous culture, provide hands-on opportunities for students to learn command-line programming and analytic skills, and leverage expertise from Indigenous mentors
Topics
Our first workshop last year (summer 2021) was conducted virtually due to the current and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The workshop topic focused on environmental microbiomes and we walked participants through a guided demonstration of how to use computational skills to analyze sequencing data from soil microbiota.
For summer 2022, we conducted the workshop in-person in Mobridge, South Dakota, adjacent to the Standing Rock Reservation. That year’s topic was “Data of the Dakotas”, to address more specifically the types of data that can be taken from tribal lands.
In 2023, offered 2 workshops:
- Gene editing and modification – Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Nation of Prior Lake, MN, just south of Minneapolis-St.Paul
- Metabarcoding and qPCR – Lummi Nation in Bellingham, WA, between Seattle and Vancouver
FOR 2024, our theme is “Our Data Relations: Kinship, Stewardship, Sovereignty in Biocollections” and will take place on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Scottsdale, AZ, with other tours around Central Arizona.
