Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, is leading the design of a new initiative called Solid. The project aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy.
Solid could have positive benefits for Indigenous Peoples of the world. The World Wide Web and the governors of the Internet, both internationally and here in New Zealand have colonised Indigenous Peoples knowledge and assimilated Indigenous representation.
The so called Dark Web offered many solutions for Indigenous online issues, but as it is not mainstream, technically difficult to use and has an unfair reputation as a criminal Internet, it is not suitable to combat digital colonisation and data ownership issues.
Current issues with the world wide web facing Indigenous People today include:
- Data Sovereignty
- Data Ownership
- Domain Identity Issues
- Cultural appropriation and Traditional Knowledge
- Online Self governance.
Specific issues that Māori have fought for include:
- Lack of representation with Internet governance in New Zealand
- Māori had to fight to be recognised with the DNS in .nz and then only partially recognised.
- Data sovereignty issues
- Usage of language in domains
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