New Commons Incubator Launches to Support Indigenous-Led Language and Cultural Data Commons in the Age of AI

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK — As artificial intelligence increasingly relies on language and cultural data, Indigenous communities face unprecedented opportunities and significant risks. While Indigenous languages and cultural knowledge can help shape more inclusive digital futures, too often communities have limited influence over how their data is collected, governed, used, or shared.

To address this challenge, The GovLab, Microsoft, and UNESCO are launching the New Commons Incubator for Indigenous Languages and Culture, a new initiative designed to support Indigenous-led efforts to develop data commons that preserve, steward, and responsibly govern language and cultural resources in the AI era.

Data commons are shared governance frameworks that enable communities to collectively decide how their data is managed, accessed, and used while ensuring that benefits flow back to the communities themselves. By supporting the development of Indigenous-led data commons, the Incubator seeks to strengthen community agency, support language revitalization, and ensure that Indigenous peoples can participate in shaping the future of AI on their own terms.

The Incubator is a capacity-building initiative that provides mentorship, training, technical guidance, and proposal development support. Participants will receive an in-person opportunity to collaborate and network with other participants, followed by six months of workshops, one-on-one clinics, expert mentorships, and peer learning opportunities. The program is designed to help teams prepare stronger proposals and will end with a final showcase where participants present these to potential funders, partners, and collaborators.

The goal is not to create data commons directly but to equip Indigenous innovators and communities with the tools, governance frameworks, partnerships, and implementation strategies needed to transform promising ideas into actionable and fundable initiatives.

 

Building on Past Success

The Incubator builds upon the success of the 2025 New Commons Challenge, a global effort to advance new models of data stewardship and collective governance.

The Challenge attracted more than 175 submissions from around the world, revealing a growing demand for approaches that enable communities to govern and benefit from their own data. A significant number of proposals focused on Indigenous languages and cultural knowledge, highlighting both the urgency of preservation and the opportunity to ensure these resources are stewarded responsibly in the age of AI.

Many proposals demonstrated tremendous promise but required additional support to become operational, sustainable, and investment-ready. The New Commons Incubator was created to address that need by helping participants refine governance models, strengthen technical and organizational foundations, and develop implementation roadmaps capable of attracting long-term support.

The initiative also contributes to the goals of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032), which seeks to preserve, revitalize, and promote Indigenous languages worldwide.

 

Calling interested communities to apply

The Incubator begins with an open call for applications running from June 18 to August 14, 2026.

Applications must be Indigenous-led, demonstrate institutional or community support, and have a clear commitment to ensuring that benefits generated through the initiative are shared with Indigenous communities.

Interested applicants will submit concept notes outlining their vision, use case, and governance approach. Submissions will be reviewed by an international panel of Indigenous experts and leaders according to four criteria:

• Opportunity: What challenge or use case does the proposal address?

• Community Relevance: How does the initiative serve Indigenous communities and priorities?

• Resources and Readiness: What assets, partnerships, and capabilities are available to support implementation?

• Team: Who will participate in and lead the work?

Five to six teams will be selected to participate in the Incubator and receive dedicated support over several months to transform their concepts into robust and actionable proposals.

A Coalition of Support

The New Commons Incubator is made possible through the support of The GovLab, Microsoft, and UNESCO, together with a global steering committee of Indigenous leaders, practitioners, and experts.

Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer of The GovLab, said:

"For too long, communities have been asked to contribute data without having meaningful influence over how that data is used, governed, or who benefits from it. The New Commons Incubator is about moving from extraction to stewardship and from participation to agency. We want Indigenous communities to help shape the future of AI, not simply be subjects of it. By supporting Indigenous-led data commons, we hope to advance new models of digital self-determination that ensure languages, cultural knowledge, and community priorities remain at the center of technological innovation."

Guilherme Canela de Souza Godoi, Director of the Division for Digital Inclusion, Policies and Transformation at UNESCO, added:

"This initiative advances the objectives of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages by co-creating tools with Indigenous communities and supporting them to steward their own linguistic and cultural resources. Ensuring that communities can govern and benefit from their own data is essential to preserving cultural diversity and fostering inclusive digital transformation."

Jennifer Hansen, Director, Data Policy & Strategy, Microsoft

"We are proud to build on the success of last year's New Commons Challenge with an initiative specifically focused on Indigenous languages and cultures. We believe communities should have meaningful opportunities to steward and benefit from the data that increasingly shapes AI systems, and we look forward to supporting innovative Indigenous-led approaches that advance those goals."

Steering Committee member Chantal Kamgne, Head of Research, EngageAfricaNLP and Managing Director, Localizzz, said: 

“For communities in indigenous, low-resourced and underserved contexts, technologies can support access to knowledge, services, safety, and opportunity. However, Indigenous languages’ place in AI should not be guided or decided by dataset builders or developers alone, but by the people who speak them and live through them. Giving those communities governance, consent, and control in how their languages enter digital spaces and technology means creating processes and protocols that listen before they collect, model, or use language data. The Indigenous Language and Culture Data Commons Incubator works toward exactly that: technology that is more inclusive without stripping languages of the cultural codes, meaning, identities and values that make them worth preserving.”

From a separate Steering Committee Member, Jenny Fewster, Director, Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Indigenous Research Data Commons, Australian Research Data Commons:

“The Commons Incubator is important because it creates a space where communities, researchers, and infrastructure providers can work together to ensure that emerging technologies strengthen, rather than diminish, Indigenous authority over language and cultural knowledge. Supporting Indigenous data commons is not just about preserving the past, it is about creating the conditions for Indigenous languages, cultures, and knowledge systems to thrive into the future."

Join the Incubator

Applications for the New Commons Incubator open on June 18, 2026.

Interested participants can find more information, including eligibility criteria, program details, and governance documentation, at newcommons.ai

For inquiries, contact contactnewcommons@opendatapolicylab.org

The New Commons Incubator seeks not only to support individual projects, but also to advance a broader vision of digital self-determination; one in which Indigenous communities collectively govern the data, knowledge, and cultural resources that increasingly shape our shared digital future.