Indigenous-led AI for the classroom.
A community-governed platform that bridges local knowledge with AI literacy — built on sovereign infrastructure, under community control.
Assistant
Tutoring
Creation
Courses
What our education platform offers
Portage is an AI platform for educators, built on sovereign infrastructure under community control. Our adaptive teaching tools are anchored by a community-governed data layer, so every interaction respects local protocol and stays within your jurisdiction.
We start with K–12 because that’s where the need is most urgent — and because it mirrors the priority set by Canada’s new National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, AI for All, released in June 2026. But nothing in the design is limited to youth: the same governed infrastructure extends to adult and community learning whenever a community chooses to bring it there.
What this means
What this means
What this means
What this means
The need for Indigenous AI literacy
AI literacy empowers students and teachers to understand how AI systems work, critically evaluate their opportunities and risks, and use them responsibly. To fully realize this potential, we must address the barriers preventing our schools from taking control of their own technological future:
- No shared understanding of AI literacy, or how to teach it, within our communities.
- Inconsistent adoption across schools and systems that fail to respect our governance.
- Anxiety fueled by models that do not understand our people or our stories.
- Limited understanding of how to use AI on our own terms.
Who is this framework for?
Nothing runs on Portage until the community that owns the data has signed off — at every step.
New clients receive out-of-the-box Indigenous Data Governance frameworks — OCAP, OCAS, and CARE — with an optional bespoke Governance Policy Consultation: an AI-assisted process that asks the right questions so your community can think through what matters most. Whatever you land on becomes the rulebook every other part of the system has to obey.
Grounded in global frameworks.
Rooted in Indigenous sovereignty.
Portage is grounded in internationally recognized approaches to AI literacy — including the public frameworks of the European Commission and the OECD — and extends them with the layer missing everywhere else: Indigenous self-determination. We're an independent initiative, unaffiliated with these bodies, building a future where young people gain the AI literacy they need without ever leaving behind who they are.
“AI is coming to our classrooms whether we're ready or not — and right now, neither our kids nor our teachers are. My worry was never that we'd fall behind; it was that we'd catch up by trading away who we are. Portage is the first thing I've seen that could give our students the AI literacy they urgently need while protecting the cultures that literacy is meant to serve.”
No AI in Portage can read an unapproved contribution or publish anything — not because we ask it nicely, but because it doesn’t hold the keys.
Technical Overview →We haven't partnered with a community yet — we're building this so we can.
If you lead a Nation, school, or organization and want a hand in shaping what this becomes — from governance to curriculum — we'd welcome the conversation.
Start a Conversation →
We acknowledge Portage operates on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk).