RDM
Issue 1 2026 – Chiefs of Ontario Advocate magazine 
16  l
When COVID-19 arrived, those 
agreements allowed reports on infec-
tion and vaccination rates to reach First 
Nations quickly. “[After] the pandemic 
started in March, I think those reports 
started flowing In May,” Walker says. 
“All this groundwork that people are 
doing right now to get things in place is 
going to enable quick action when action 
is needed.”
Barriers remain – particularly in 
health care, where First Nations collec-
tive authority must be balanced with 
laws protecting individual privacy. 
Walker argues for building First Nations 
capacity to hold and use sensitive infor-
mation while protecting confidentiality. 
“There has to be a whole plan to build 
the capacity for us to be able to use the 
data and hold the data that we aren’t able 
to hold yet,” she says.
Institutional change, she says, begins 
with governments recognizing First 
Nations sovereignty as the starting point. 
“The very first answer is always just no. 
‘No, we can’t do that. No, it’s not part of 
the legislation.’ […] If you acknowledge 
First Nations sovereignty and self-deter-
mination, then you’re solidly on a path 
to not just say no, but to say, ‘That seems 
like 25 years out, but let’s figure out a 
path to get there together.” 
The next stage will require more 
complex questions about values, storage, 
use and emerging technologies. Artificial 
intelligence, for example, was among the 
most prominent issues at the conference. 
“We can’t pretend that there’s only one 
view on it,” Walker says. “There’s lots  
of nuance.”
During her keynote, she invited the 
audience to sit with that complexity. “So 
I asked the audience, ‘Do you believe 
and think that everything is sacred?’ 
And people were nodding. And then I 
said, ‘Does that mean AI is sacred? Like, 
should we be seeing it as something 
that has a sacredness that we need to be 
honouring in our conversations about 
it?’ And then people paused a little bit.”
She stresses that she was posing a 
question, not declaring a conclusion. 
“These are the conversations we have to 
be thinking about. We can’t just have 
broad-brush conversations about it. It 
has to have nuance and depth.”
The path towards First Nations data 
sovereignty has been shaped by genera-
tions of First Nations leaders, scholars, 
technicians, community advocates and 
Knowledge Keepers who understood that 
information is never just information – it 
is relationship. It is responsibility. It is a 
tool for decision-making, self-determina-
tion and the future.
“We just have to pick up where those 
paths finished,” Walker says. “We have to 
keep going and keep ploughing.”
That is the work ahead – not one 
person pushing forward alone, but a 
growing movement learning how to 
carry the work together. One step, 
one community, one decision and one 
generation at a time.  
 
Dr. Jennifer Walker.

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