01
Custom Digital Tools
Open-source software for language documentation, archiving, and interactive learning.
Language lives when people can carry it forward
Knowledge, preserved on their terms.
Foundation for Indigenous and Oral Knowledge Archives builds the tools, systems, and partnerships that let Indigenous communities preserve their languages and knowledge on their own terms, and bring them fully into the digital world.
Every two weeks, an Indigenous language falls silent. FIOKA works alongside communities to make sure theirs doesn't.
Source: National Geographic, Enduring VoicesWhat we do
We build the digital infrastructure language communities need.
Not technology imposed from outside. Tools shaped alongside the people who will use, govern, and sustain them.
02
Data Empowerment
Practical systems and training so communities can collect, structure, manage, and leverage their linguistic data and digitized cultural assets.
03
Digital Inclusion
Integrating Indigenous languages into digital platforms, from AI tools to global commons like Wikimedia.
In the field
Built in the room, with the people who speak the language.
Our principles
Who controls the archive matters as much as what it holds.
Community-Led Partnership
Every project is co-designed with the community it serves.
Data Sovereignty
Communities decide what knowledge is shared, with whom, and under what terms.
The community remains in control
Open-Source Technology
Transparent, adaptable tools that can be shared and improved upon.
Sustainable Preservation
Prioritizing long-term capacity-building within communities.
In practice
Work already taking shape.
Living language tool
Dagbanli Dictionary
A community-centered digital dictionary making Dagbanli more accessible for speakers, learners, and the wider digital world.
Visit the dictionary
Oral history archive
A Drummer's Testament
A digital home for an extraordinary body of oral knowledge, preserving context, voice, and cultural memory together.
Based on A Drummer's Testament by John Miller Chernoff. This digital edition is an independent, unofficial reader; the text is reproduced unaltered from the original at adrummerstestament.com.
Read about the archiveA wider digital world
Is your community's language underrepresented online?
We'd like to hear from you.
Start a conversation