The new knowledge politics of digital colonialism

While the impacts of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on society have been extensively studied, the most nuanced research approaches continue to focus on urban geographies in the Global North. There remains a paucity of critical work that focuses on ICT use in Indigenous, rural, and Global South communities. This paper responds to that gap by critically examining how the introduction of ICTs within Indigenous communities can exert epistemic violence against local knowledge systems. It does so through a case study of ICT usage within an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic. I use a combination of participant observation, archival research, and semi-structured interviews to ask how the introduction of ICTs is transforming knowledge politics that impact Inuit Qaujimaningit (IQ; Inuit knowledge). I find that digital engagement erodes key components of the IQ system, including social practices within Inuit communities, travel outside of the community, and experiential learning while outside of the community. These findings have implications for the study of global digital geographies, applied research within the area of ICT for development, and Indigenous engagements with emerging technologies.