Who decides what, and how that stays accountable

Communities decide about their own heritage

• A community objection is decisive

  Live

  The operator never overrules a community about its own cultural material. If a community asks us to correct, restrict or remove something about its culture, we do — including openly-licensed material.

• The operator runs the platform

  Live

  Technical and operational decisions — hosting, security, code — sit with the founder.

• Claiming a page

  Live

  Communities can ask to take over their culture's page, correct it, or retire it through For communities.

People review; software assists

• Human review before publication

  Live

  Every contribution is reviewed by a person before it is published. Nothing is published automatically.

• AI only with separate consent

  Live

  An optional drafting assistant can suggest a transcription for a reviewer, and only when the contributor has granted the separate AI-processing consent. Its raw drafts are never shown publicly; only human-edited text can be published.

A record anyone can check

Each moderation decision — review, publication, consent withdrawal — is appended to a hash-chained ledger. Every entry carries the fingerprint of the one before it, so a silent edit to the history breaks the chain. The ledger records decisions and holds no cultural material. Anyone can read it at /api/ledger.

Indigenous advice before scale

• A compensated advisory circle

  Planned

  Before the contribution pipeline is scaled, or FirstCiv joins any partner-led funding application, we will engage Indigenous advisors and pay for their time. FNIGC's OCAP® training is our first port of call for First Nations data governance.

• Partner-led applications stay partner-led

  Live

  Where a fund prioritises or requires Indigenous leadership, FirstCiv takes part only as a technical partner, with the lead applicant holding the grant, the authority and the data.

Benefit-sharing, on record before any money exists

FirstCiv has no revenue today. If it ever earns any, we commit to a 70 / 20 / 10 split: 70% to the communities whose material generated it, 20% to running the platform, 10% to a reserve. This will be written into every partnership agreement.

No NFTs, no tokens, no sale of cultural data — under any future model. A Heritage Tablet is a provenance record for an item in the archive; it cannot be bought or sold.

Where the project stands

INNOVA CONSULT LTD. — federal corporation number (CBCA)

1522612-1

Grants or investment received

0

Community partnerships in place

0

Founder's base, Canada

Ottawa

FirstCiv is operated by INNOVA CONSULT LTD., a federal Canadian corporation based in Ottawa. Where a fund requires a non-profit or Indigenous-led applicant, FirstCiv takes part as a partner and the lead organisation holds the grant. Questions about this are welcome through the contact page.