Jordan Loewen-Colón
Phil Arnold
This paper investigates the historical throughline connecting the 15th-century Doctrine of Discovery (DOD) and contemporary challenges in Indigenous Data Governance (IDG) amid emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. The DOD was predicated on terra nullius, the legal fiction that lands deemed “unproductive and, thus, empty” could be claimed, justifying the extinguishment of Indigenous sovereignty and the theft of land, bodies, and knowledge. This colonial logic persists as algorithmic coloniality. Large technology companies, whose AI systems are “existentially dependent on sucking up vast amounts of data”, often treat the digital domain as “Terra Nullius 2.0,” a resource ripe for extraction. This practice replicates scientific colonialism by privileging Western thought, enabling algorithmic dispossession, and allowing the appropriation of Indigenous knowledge systems (IK). Furthermore, this system relies on the exploitation of racialized “ghost workers” who train AI models. To resist this digital enclosure and ensure Indigenous self-determination, this analysis concludes that identifying the Doctrine of Discovery’s active role in AI development provides the necessary diagnostic to move from resistance to more proactive governance. Crucially, this prescriptive approach mandates systemic interventions, such as explicitly rejecting “universalist” data sharing mandates and “common good” methodologies that replicate the logic of Res Nullius. It requires things like the re-inscription of attribution and provenance into all data metadata, and ensures that collective authority over data (cultural, physical, and biological) is upheld, fundamentally challenging power asymmetries, and grounding data futures in relational ethics, community well-being, and justice.