Digitalisation: What We Owe To Indigenous People

Abstract

Digitalisation has become a global phenomenon. No country on Earth has not made at least some steps in digitalising their society or societies. The people on Earth who do not live in digitalised societies tend to be people living in remote Indigenous communities. Digitalisation has come with a wide variety of benefits, such as improvements in healthcare, education and the economy, to name just a few. Furthermore, it has given less-advanced societies opportunities to improve their quality of life and well-being. These are things Indigenous people can benefit from as well. However, the digitalisation of the Digitalised World has come with negative consequences as well, such as misinformation, dependency on digital products and services and Internet addictions. Digitalised societies, especially Western ones because this is where digitalisation originates, initially did not know what the consequences of digitalisation would be since this only became clear as they were digitalising. This means that the societies in the Digitalised World did not have a lot of autonomy in their approach to digitalisation; they were not in a position where they could make informed decisions. Non-digitalised Indigenous societies, however, are. Non-digitalised societies are in a unique position where they can look at digitalised societies and make predictions on what digitalisation may mean to their society and culture and make well-informed decisions on their approach to digitalisation (although there are significant limitations to this because not all consequences that took place in the Digitalised World will be identical for Indigenous societies as well). For this information, they depend on societies from the Digitalised World; only those from the Digitalised World have a sufficient understanding of what digitalisation is and entails to inform others about it. However, there may be risks involved in this considering that there is a long history where dominant societies would intervene with Indigenous communities in an unjustified and harmful manner and even today, many interventions alike are still imposed and attitudes triggering these interventions or resulting from it have proven hard to tackle too. It is thus reasonable to assume that the risk of falling back into the old patterns of unjustified and harmful paternalism is significant and is one to keep in mind when answering the question of what we owe to Indigenous people from non-digitalised societies in regard to their decision-making on their approach to the digitalisation of their society. The focus of this paper will be on what we owe in regard to the Indigenous decision-making only. Many Indigenous communities have not been and are not autonomous in making

decisions for their societies and lifestyles, which invites the old patterns of unjustified and harmful paternalism. Resulting from harmful and unjustified paternalism, some Indigenous communities have been forcibly excluded from digitalisation. The focus of this paper will be on what we owe in regard to the Indigenous decision-making only. Because of historic injustices, Indigenous communities are left less autonomous than others, which invites more paternalistic interventions where Indigenous autonomy is even more attacked. Indigenous people not being autonomous in their decision-making regarding their approach to digitalisation creates a risk of them being forcibly digitally excluded. That being said, a second reason why Indigenous communities are excluded from digitalisation results from their remote living areas that are difficult to reach. Once a community has decided they want to digitalise their society, a lot of actions have to be taken to actually realise their digital inclusion. While it is important to have clarity on what we owe to Indigenous people to make it possible for them to participate in digitalisation, this thesis