First Nations Education Foundation Brings Community-Controlled Language Technology to IndigiTech Destiny Summit 2026

FNEF will showcase LanguageCloud and share its approach to building sustainable, community-governed digital infrastructure for Indigenous language revitalization.

VANCOUVER, BC – September 22, 2026 – The First Nations Education Foundation (FNEF) will showcase its work in Indigenous language revitalization and digital sovereignty at IndigiTech 2026 in Calgary, demonstrating how technology can support Indigenous languages while keeping ownership and control where it belongs: with communities.

FNEF works in partnership with First Nation governments and communities to gather, organize and share language resources, while building the local skills and capacity needed to sustain that work over the long term. Communities retain control of decision-making, their data, and the resources created from it.

At the centre of this approach is a living, community-governed language corpus, bringing together words and meanings, stories, recordings, images, translations, cultural knowledge and permissions. The corpus is designed for longevity using open, software-independent formats, providing a foundation from which communities can create and evolve language resources over time.

LanguageCloud, developed by FNEF, provides a way to share approved material from that corpus through web, mobile and print resources. It can bring together dictionaries, phrases, grammar, stories, audio, images and learning activities, with communities determining what is shared, with whom and when.

“Language is living. Language carries knowledge. Communities control their language and data. Technology can help carry language forward.”

At IndigiTech, Larry Hayashi, Linguistics Team Leader with FNEF and Assistant Professor at the Canada Institute of Linguistics, and Will Stacey, Chief Technology Officer for FNEF including LanguageCloud, will present FNEF's approach and demonstrate LanguageCloud.

Their session, “Digital Sovereignty in Practice: Building Community-Owned AI and Language Infrastructure,” will explore practical lessons from FNEF's work with Indigenous communities, including language documentation, community-owned digital infrastructure, the responsible use of emerging technologies and the importance of building capacity within communities.

FNEF's approach puts community decisions ahead of technology. Each community determines how its language resources can be accessed, including whether material remains local, is shared with an approved group or is made publicly available. Permissions can also be changed or withdrawn. AI use involving language data is subject to the permissions given by the community.

For FNEF, sustainability therefore means more than maintaining a piece of software. Its work includes hands-on training, mentorship, knowledge transfer, employment and professional development, language and technical skills and helping communities reduce their dependence on outside specialists.

IndigiTech attendees will also be able to meet the FNEF team and see LanguageCloud demonstrated at the FNEF table during the Summit.

About First Nations Education Foundation

The First Nations Education Foundation (FNEF) is a registered Canadian charity that has worked with First Nations communities since 2018. FNEF partners with communities on Indigenous language revitalization, supporting the development of community-owned language collections, technology, learning resources and local capacity.

Its work is relationship-centred and designed around a straightforward principle: communities lead, and the language data, decisions and resources remain theirs.

LanguageCloud is FNEF's platform for turning approved content from community-governed language collections into accessible learning and engagement resources across web, mobile and print.

Media enquiries:
​Scott Jeary
​Director and CEO
​First Nations Education Foundation
​scott.jeary@fnef.ca
​+1 604 340 5170