Industries · First Nations

AI for First Nations communities and administrations

Band administration carries a lot of paperwork and a duty to keep community information under community control. Digby is built to make the first easier without weakening the second.

Start chatting Sovereign AI

Data sovereignty comes first

Many First Nations have made a clear decision that community data belongs under community control — who holds it, where it sits, who may use it and what happens to it afterwards. Any tool that touches community information should be able to answer those questions before it is adopted.

Digby’s answer has two parts. Hosted, the data is stored in Canada and processed by models served on Canadian hardware, with visible and deletable memory and revocable sharing. Self-hosted, the whole stack runs on infrastructure the Nation operates, and nothing reaches digby.ai unless it is configured to.

OCAP® and community control

The First Nations principles of OCAP® — ownership, control, access and possession — are the standard reference for how First Nations information should be governed. OCAP® is a registered trademark of the First Nations Information Governance Centre, and the principles are theirs to define and steward; we name them here with respect and claim no relationship with, or endorsement from, the Centre.

In practice, OCAP® points toward exactly the choices this page describes: the community decides whether a tool is used, where the data lives, who can reach it and how it is removed. A self-hosted deployment puts the infrastructure decision in the same hands as the data decision.

Self-hosted Digby What sovereign AI means

What administration staff actually use it for

01
Policy and program Q&A
the funding agreement, the personnel policy, the housing policy, the reporting calendar: ask, get the clause.
02
Reporting
turn program notes into the narrative section a funder expects, with a person reviewing before it is submitted.
03
Community communication
a plain-language notice about a water advisory, a program deadline or a closure, drafted in the tone the community expects.
04
Meeting support
agendas, minutes summaries and action lists from material staff already produce.
05
Onboarding
a new band-office employee learns the procedures from the documents rather than from whoever has time that week.

Two honest limits

Digby is a general-purpose assistant, not a specialist in Indigenous law, treaty rights or community history — it will not replace the knowledge keepers, the lands office or legal counsel, and it should not be treated as an authority on any of them. And it does not decide what a community may share: that is a governance decision the community makes, and the tool should follow it.

Keeping community information in the community

If the requirement is that information never leaves infrastructure the Nation controls, self-hosted Digby is the path: the full stack on a server you operate, pointed at your own model endpoints. It is a real, documented deployment — the same Docker Compose stack described on the self-hosting page — not a promise for a future release.

If hosted is acceptable, the controls are concrete: Canadian storage in Montréal, models on Canadian hardware, no training on your content, memory that can be read and deleted, and share links that only exist when someone creates one.

How self-hosting works Controls in plain language

A sensible first month

01
Decide the governance question first
council or administration decides what may go in, and it is written down before anyone uploads a thing.
02
Start with public documents
policies, program guidelines and published funding agreements, where sensitivity is lowest.
03
Pick one workflow
a reporting draft or a community notice, with a named reviewer.
04
Revisit the hosting decision
hosted first for speed, self-hosted when the infrastructure decision catches up.

The AI-at-work checklist

Frequently asked questions

Does Digby support Indigenous data sovereignty?

The controls point that way: Canadian storage by default, visible and deletable data, revocable sharing, no training on your content, and a self-hosted option where the Nation operates the infrastructure. Data governance decisions remain with the community.

Can we run it on our own infrastructure?

Yes. Self-hosted Digby runs the full stack on your servers with your own model endpoints, so documents and inference stay on infrastructure the Nation controls.

Is Digby affiliated with the First Nations Information Governance Centre?

No. OCAP® is a registered trademark of the First Nations Information Governance Centre, which defines and stewards those principles. We reference them with respect and claim no affiliation or endorsement.

Where is our data stored if we use hosted Digby?

In Canada — the Canada Central region in Montréal — with inference on Canadian-located GPU hardware. A web search sends the query to a search service, and a connected app talks to that app.

How much does private Canadian AI cost?

Free to start, billed in Canadian dollars: the entry point is CAD $0 and no account is needed to begin. For larger engagements — more seats, more volume or a dedicated deployment — pricing is set with you rather than listed here, so contact us and a person replies with a written number. Heavier features such as deep research have daily limits.

Should we put membership or treaty information into it?

That is a community governance decision, not a product default. Many administrations start with public policies and program guidelines and keep membership and rights-related records in their existing systems.