Technology can power the continuation of our oldest civilisations, as it has been doing for some time, Indigenous leaders have told a summit.
But a new economic model is needed that includes and values Indigenous knowledge systems and data gathering, New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta said at the Sydney Dialogue on Monday.
"Many governments around the world do not know the untapped potential of what sits within Indigenous groups," she said.
"They may not have asked and neither have they bothered to find ways to help Indigenous people to not just be sitting at the table but to be co-designing the way in which they're participating."
Ms Mahuta, New Zealand's first Maori foreign minister, said Indigenous knowledge systems have always used technology to survive - to navigate the whole Pacific or to live in harsh climates.
Academic, activist and Australian government adviser Marcia Langton said officials trying to introduce technology to communities don't understand that Indigenous people are already using many of them, including virtual technology.
Indigenous rangers, for example, are traditional knowledge holders of high status and two decades ago adopted various forms of technology to assist them, particularly for mapping and measuring, she said.
There are also many community run data bases, including local history projects and online records of agreements and treaties.
"What goes missing in these debates is that external agencies think that we don't have anything - we're always tabula rasa, an empty space," Professor Langton said.
"And so they want to give us access to government data but what we want to do is preserve for the future our own data."
She said it was important to understand that Indigenous knowledge systems and technologies were simply written out of existence, but are now starting to be recognised.
The largest Indigenous engineered landscape in the world, the Budj Bim ancient aquaculture site, was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019 for its Aboriginal cultural importance.
Ms Mahuta said New Zealand government agencies had data governance arrangements with Maori groups that should protect and conserve knowledge, similar to governance models for the natural environment.
"It may not be perfect but it's a starting point," she said.
"It will advance domestic economies."
Professor Langton said regions and communities in Australia will need to make decisions about their own technologies and priorities.
The main challenge is policy and politics, not the rise of the metaverse, decentralised finance or algorithms, she said.
"Our knowledge systems, privacy, and cyber security are all at risk," she said.
"We have very practical issues to solve like cloud storage, but this is about Indigenous governance."
Ms Mahuta agreed a better protection regime is needed for traditional knowledge, to ensure that information isn't misappropriated by others.
Whether it's pharmaceutical companies or others seeking individual gains from traditional knowledge, there has to be ways that the value and capital of that knowledge can be held for the community, she said.
The Sydney Dialogue is a summit for emerging, critical and cyber technologies, hosted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
