We are salmon swimming upstream against the currents of technocolonialism#
Based across ancestral Karuk, Yurok, and Hoopa territories – From Happy Camp to Hoopa, from Katamin to Kepel – we’re building community-owned tech ecosystems where the Klamath meets the keyboard.
The Klamath Tech Collective is a bioregional tech collective dedicated to shrinking the tech literacy gap and reclaiming technology as a tool for community resilience, self-determination, and regeneration. Our mission is rooted in the belief that technology should serve the people and the land, not extract from them.
Our Goals#
Tech Literacy & STEAM Education:
We offer free, hands-on workshops and learning circles for all ages, with a focus on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) content that is place-based and culturally relevant. Our programs center Indigenous knowledge and community co-design, empowering youth and elders alike to become creators-not just consumers-of technology.Repurposing & Redistribution:
We collect, repair, and repurpose tech hardware, distributing it freely to individuals and for building collective infrastructure. By keeping devices in use and out of landfills, we support local resilience and reduce reliance on extractive supply chains.Decolonial Tech & Data Ethics:
Our approach is grounded in a strong non-extractive, “data back” ethic. We promote equal access, data sovereignty & privacy, and citizen/Indigenous-owned infrastructure. We teach digital defense and privacy skills to help elders and community members protect themselves from scams, corporate/scientific surveillance, and identity theft.DIY & FOSS Culture:
We embody DIY (Do It Yourself) culture by endorsing personal hardware repair, Free & open-source software (FOSS), and community-driven solutions. Our collective is a hub for building digital autonomy, learning new digital tools and demystifying technologies such as AI by helping our bioregion move beyond hype and toward genuine empowerment.Community Debunking & Digital Defense:
We provide a safe and accessible space for critical conversations around technology, AI, digital rights, and data sovereignty. Our workshops and resources help community members spot misinformation, understand risks, and make informed choices about the tech in their lives.
Our Values#
Bioregional Stewardship:
We believe the bioregion is the natural scale for collective action and governance, aligning technology with the needs of land and people.Intergenerational Learning:
We foster relationships between youth, elders, and all community members, centering Indigenous ways of knowing and ensuring everyone has a voice in shaping our digital future.Collective Power:
We work to build local infrastructure and knowledge that liberates our communities from corporate and colonial control, nurturing a new generation of tech stewards and citizen scientists.
Some Guiding Ideas…#
We take inspiration from many places and people. One notable contribution has been the ideas presented by Marisa Elena Duarte:
Human beings are also herd animals. They are capable of organizing beyond the level of the individual. They orchestrate activity at the level of a community, and articulate their identities based on geopolitical locations and status. En masse, they become swept up in communal systems of belief.
Human beings are inherently creative. They create systems and structures in this world through the use of tools. The physical menifestation of these systems and structures reflects human beliefs over time.
The present-day use of the word technology is laden with present-day beliefs about prgress, scientific and ethical advance through computing, and the superhuman conquest of time, space, history and environment. There is a belief that being able to speak in code–that is, programming code–parallels the decoding of the human genome and the dark matter of the multiverse, and that somehow this process of coding and decoding is meaningful for all mankind. These beliefs derive from Western European Enlightenment history of ideas. Like a magic bullet, the word information can at once comprise programming code, genetic code, and the nearly immeasurable mass that one nanoparticle passes off to another when they collide in the vacuum between all other known and measurable subatomic particles.
The large-scale forces of Western European modernities have resulted in the creation of a global class of humans referred to as “natives,” “aboriginals,” or “indigenous” persons. Across modern nation-states, that nomenclature refers to a historiographical moment, when nation-state authorities were charged with classifying all resident human beings as subjects or nonsubjects, citizens or noncitizens, slaves or workers, and so on. The words Native American, Aboriginal, and Indigenous are embedded with a tension of belonging and yet not belonging to the modern nation-state. For an American Indian, it is to be called by all non-Natives an alien within one’s own territory, in the shadows of one’s own grandmother mountains.
Various fields of science are at present dominated by those who believe that techno-scientific advance must come from a Western European history of ideas and not from, for example, Tsalagi histories of ideas, Haiki histories of ideas, A:Shiwi histories of ideas, Anishinaabe histories of ideas, Chamoru histories of ideas, and the like. Only recently have a few scientists working in their universities come to agree that Native ways of knowing compose a source of scientific understanding. “Native ways of knowing,” “Indigenous knowledge,” “Native systems of knowledge”–all these phrases refer to a complexity of understanding about the nature of the human universe. As scientists–and especially as information scientists–we are only at the beginning of our understanding.
- Marisa Elena Duarte, Network Sovereignty
Are you interested in weaving together ancestral wisdom and modern tools, forging a path toward digital sovereignty and bioregional resilience-where technology flows with, not against, the river? Us to! Check out our Points of Unity and consider sharing in the journey with us!
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