Where are these students learning with AI since November 2022? Frontierlands?
Could it be that they have merely created a monster for stupidity?
Or are some enhancing their own much smarter intelligence repertoire?
Where are these students learning with AI since November 2022? Frontierlands?
Could it be that they have merely created a monster for stupidity?
Or are some enhancing their own much smarter intelligence repertoire?
Notice their tools are made in the northern hemisphere, in N. America, Europe, and Mideast.
Another geographic pattern: While AI tool development clusters in traditional tech hubs—Silicon Valley, NYC, and international centers—the most innovative student applications emerged in non-coastal American classrooms. Fort Worth students used these tools to challenge critics and create literary characters that speak and multilingual content from high school to undergrad college to university grad school, while Lakota teenagers in South Dakota preserved their Indigenous language and their own AI center. The 1,500+ mile distance between creators and users demonstrates how cloud-based AI democratizes access regardless of location.
"What if you treat language like it's land? It's valuable. It's something you own. So it's data. Data is land."
— Michael Running Wolf, FLAIR Initiative, Mila Quebec AI Institute
ti?i hira ?a hira hakitata ?ekih (This ancient land, for all our relations)
— From the TCU and Paschal High School Land Acknowledgments, in Wichita language
This map tells two parallel stories of sovereignty and reclamation:
Physical Land: Both TCU and Paschal High School officially acknowledge they stand on ancestral homelands of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, Caddo, Comanche, and other displaced nations. These institutions exist where Indigenous children were forcibly removed to residential schools designed to erase their languages and cultures—even as Paschal was founded in 1885.
Digital Territory: Today, the same Silicon Valley that clusters AI development sits on Ohlone land. The tech companies extracting data for profit echo the historical extraction of resources from Indigenous territories. But when Fort Worth students at TCU and Paschal use AI tools on acknowledged Indigenous land, and when Lakota students in Black Hills reclaim these technologies to preserve their languages, they're asserting a new form of sovereignty.
The geographic pattern reveals both concentration of power (tech hubs on colonized lands) and sites of resistance (frontier classrooms on acknowledged Indigenous territories). The students learning AI at Paschal—on land their institution acknowledges was taken through "military campaigns and policies"—understand extraction differently. They're not just users; they're sovereignty reclaimers.
Reflection Questions:
How does learning AI on acknowledged Indigenous land change our responsibility to data sovereignty?
What does it mean that both the creators (Silicon Valley) and users (Fort Worth) of AI tools operate on Indigenous territories?
How can acknowledgment of physical land inform ethical approaches to digital territories?
Key Concepts and Skills:
Students will analyze the geographic concentration of AI innovation in Silicon Valley and global tech hubs versus the two locations of observed learner classroom with AI innovation. They'll use ArcGIS features to toggle layers, examine distance relationships, and understand how technology access doesn't depend on proximity to creation centers. Students will evaluate how the pair of "frontier" locations may actually advantage innovation through necessity and creativity.
Data Sources:
- Company headquarters from official websites and SEC filings
- Student innovation sites from Good Human Learning with AI (Worcester, 2025)
- Lakota AI Code Camp documentation in Spearfish, South Dakota USA (2023-2025)
- Conference presentations in Tarrant County, Texas USA (2023-2025)