Bridging the past and the future: Introducing the new Indigenous at Microsoft employee resource group

After more than a decade of partnership and contributions from members of the Indigenous community and Indigenous employees around the world, Microsoft last week announced the launch of Indigenous at Microsoft, our company’s ninth employee resource group (ERG).*

We look forward to Indigenous at Microsoft doing more of what members of the community have already been doing around the world – raising the community’s voice, fostering awareness of Indigenous cultures, traditions, and values, assisting in outreach to recruit and retain Indigenous talent, and sharing the power of perspective to help shape inclusive technologies.

The work the Indigenous community at Microsoft has done to build a self-sustaining model of empowering tribal nations through software and services initiatives has been especially important during these unprecedented times.

For example, when more than 200 schools on the Navajo Nation closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and turned to online-only education, the Microsoft Datacenter Community Development team (DCCD) partnered with the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA), NTUA Choice Wireless and school superintendents to provide 1,000 internet IDU units and free internet subscriptions for students across the Navajo Nation. This work is in addition to Microsoft’s Airband Initiative partnership with Sacred Winds Communications to deliver reliable broadband internet service to rural, underserved tribal communities in Northwest New Mexico, which opens access to online public services and digital economic opportunities.

Among the nearly 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, it is predicted that between 50% and 90% will disappear by next century. When a community loses a language, it loses its connection to the past – and part of its identity. Our Indigenous communities have helped us see how technology can help.

For example, the syllabary developed some 200 years ago by the Cherokee Nation has been supported in Microsoft Windows since 2012 and in Microsoft Office since 2015. And for the past 15 years, Microsoft has been collaborating with Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori (the Māori Language Commission) and other experts in New Zealand to weave te reo Māori – the indigenous language now spoken by only 3% of the population – into the technology that thousands of New Zealand residents use every day, with the goal of ensuring it remains a living language with a strong future. This collaboration has most recently resulted in the development of Minecraft educational resources as well as the inclusion of te reo Māori into our free Microsoft Translator app via the AI for Cultural Heritage initiative.

The engagement of Indigenous employees at Microsoft with these communities also leverages the power of technology as a bridge between generations by continuing traditions of oral and visual Indigenous storytelling. For instance, Microsoft partnered with an Indigenous entrepreneur in Australia to leverage Microsoft HoloLens as a culture-preserving and immersive storytelling platform. Similarly, in New Zealand Microsoft worked with its technology partner Datacom and the Ngāti Whātua ōrākei tribe to create a 3D version of a sacred eagle symbol that has ancestors appear virtually and speak about the past. And in Canada, Heiltsuk artist Shawn Hunt worked with The Microsoft Garage and a team of artists, designers and engineers to create Transformation Mask, an interactive art installation, evolving traditional art forms through mixed reality.

As Indigenous at Microsoft takes flight, it is the work of the employees who volunteer their time that we applaud. I’m grateful for the tireless dedication of co-chairs Willow Young and Dan Walker, and the rest of the leadership team, Adonis Trujillo, Roxanne Kenison, Tracy Monteith, Joseph Paranteau, and Dan Ludlow. I also want to acknowledge my colleagues Steven Worrall, Chris Pratley, and Stijn Nauwelaerts, who have taken on the responsibility of executive sponsors of the new Indigenous at Microsoft ERG, a commitment to learning continuously about this community, deepening their personal allyship, and using their roles to guide and support.

We center this celebration around the Indigenous community, its work and its accomplishments, especially on this International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. But the formation of the Indigenous ERG is also a celebration for all of Microsoft because our communities like Indigenous at Microsoft help us grow – as individuals, as professionals, and as an organization – toward achieving our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

*The first ERG at Microsoft was BAM (Blacks at Microsoft), established in 1989. Other ERGs at Microsoft include Asians at Microsoft, Disability at Microsoft, Families at Microsoft, GLEAM (Global LGBTQI+ Employees and Allies at Microsoft), HOLA (Hispanic and Latinx at Microsoft), Military at Microsoft, and Women at Microsoft.