"It's How You Do Things That Matters": Attending to Process to Better Serve Indigenous Communities with Language Technologies

Indigenous languages are historically under-served by Natural LanguageProcessing (NLP) technologies, but this is changing for some languages with therecent scaling of large multilingual models and an increased focus by the NLPcommunity on endangered languages. This position paper explores ethicalconsiderations in building NLP technologies for Indigenous languages, based onthe premise that such projects should primarily serve Indigenous communities.We report on interviews with 17 researchers working in or with Aboriginaland/or Torres Strait Islander communities on language technology projects inAustralia. Drawing on insights from the interviews, we recommend practices forNLP researchers to increase attention to the process of engagements withIndigenous communities, rather than focusing only on decontextualisedartefacts.