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This inventor is on a mission to bring robotic kits to Indigenous youth, in The Big Idea

Danielle Boyer, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, creates free robot kits that connect Indigenous students to their cultural past and teaches them tech skills that will shape their future.

By Leigh-Ann Jackson — October 4, 2023

Impact

This inventor is on a mission to bring robotic kits to Indigenous youth, in The Big Idea

Danielle Boyer, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, creates free robot kits that connect Indigenous students to their cultural past and teaches them tech skills that will shape their future.

By Leigh-Ann Jackson — October 4, 2023

Robotics inventor Danielle Boyer had a love of tinkering since she was a girl growing up in Michigan. But even as a youngster, she witnessed firsthand the lack of access to technology that would have enabled her to explore this passion. In high school, she was interested in joining the robotics team, but struggled to find the money required to participate in the costly club. But finances weren’t the only thing making her feel alienated.

“I found myself as the only Indigenous person and one of the few girls on the team,” she says. “I experienced severe bullying and felt like an outsider among my peers.”

It spurred her on. At 18, she created her own low-cost robot kits to help introduce kids like her to technology, the inspiration for which, she says, came from her own experience as an Anishinaabekwe (an Ojibwe woman) and enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

Today, Boyer is the founder and CEO of the tech education non-profit The STEAM Connection, which aims to bridge that divide she felt so acutely as a youth by addressing the ongoing marginalization, lack of representation, cultural barriers, and limited resources that too often hold Indigenous students back. 

The Big Idea: Indigenous Robotics, a film presented by MIT Solve and made by the award-winning Redglass Pictures with support from HP, follows Boyer’s quest to scale her robot inventions and get them into the hands of Indigenous youth and other marginalized groups of students. Indigenous Robotics is one in a trio of short documentaries spotlighting three innovators who are brilliant, bold and united by the desire to use technology, science, and engineering to create radical change. 

WATCH The Big Idea: Indigenous | MIT Solve

Danielle Boyer, member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, creates free robot kits for Indigenous students at schools across the country.

Each of the subjects featured in The Big Idea series has been selected for one of the tech world’s most prestigious opportunities — and winning one of MIT Solve's annual Global Challenges. Solve’s mission is to globally source tech-based social entrepreneurs who are tackling the most pressing challenges in their community. 

Community connections

Reports have found that households on tribal land are among the nation’s least connected to high-speed internet. Studies also show that Native Americans have the lowest rate of university enrollment in the US and represent only 0.5% of university students in STEM fields nationwide.

“Technology creates a divide and when you’re on the wrong side of that, you get left behind,” Boyer says.  

 

Learn more about HP’s digital equity partnership with MIT Solve and see the other films in The Big Idea series.

 

The STEAM Connection — based in Troy, Michigan — develops, manufactures, and distributes accessible, high-quality and culturally competent technical educational resources with an emphasis on robotics. The non-profit started with the three-wheeled EKGAR (Every Kid Gets a Robot) construction kits which Boyer designed for K-12 students. EKGAR robots come with a pre-programmed loop so that even students without internet access can learn and build. It later added SkoBots, interactive, wearable, translation robots Boyer designed to both teach and help preserve Indigenous languages. 

The STEAM Connection has manufactured and distributed 11,000 EKGAR kits and has reached more than 800,000 students with technical education, Boyer says. 

“Technology creates a divide and when you’re on the wrong side of that, you get left behind.”

— Danielle Boyer, CEO, The STEAM Connection

Solving for change, together

In 2021, Boyer was accepted to participate in MIT Solve’s Indigenous Communities Fellowship, a nine-month program supported by HP, which landed her a $10,000 start-up grant. It starts with an in-depth needs assessment and includes grants and investment opportunities, coaching, and connections — both to peers and to potential partners.

These connections can be game-changers for Indigenous founders, who receive only 0.013% of venture capital funding in the US.

“Many of our Indigenous Communities Fellows are building on remarkable ancestral technology and core Indigenous values to guide their work and address their communities’ challenges,” says Hala Hanna, executive director of MIT Solve. 

Since participating in the program, Boyer has seen her vision evolve significantly, “particularly with the integration of SkoBots alongside our existing line of affordable robots,” she says. “This expansion has allowed us to reach a much larger audience and make a more profound impact on language revitalization and education within Indigenous communities.” 

Danielle Boyer with students and their wearable SkoBots at the Anahuacalmecac International Baccalaureate World School in Los Angeles, California.

MIT Solve

Danielle Boyer with students and their wearable SkoBots at the Anahuacalmecac International Baccalaureate World School in Los Angeles, California.

She also bonded with another one of the program’s Fellows, Camille Griffith, and launched a new project as a result — a comic book series called Super Sisters centering real-life Indigenous tech heroines — which will be included in the robotics kits and in an app that was selected for the MIT Solve Gender Equity in STEM Challenge. 

This year, EKGAR got an Earth-friendly makeover with the new BioBotz, which seeks to eliminate the plastics used in their predecessors. Boyer designed a biodegradable and plant-based paste that hardens in molds into a cardboard-like material, replacing the plastic in the robots altogether. 

As Boyer says in the film, “Our people have been inventors for thousands of years.” She’s committed to keeping that tradition alive and well.

 

A pillar of HP’s Sustainable Impact goals is to accelerate equitable access to those who have been historically excluded so that they can participate, benefit from, and thrive in a digital economy. HP supports and champions those, like Seals Allers, using technology to make the world a better place. 

HP is a longtime sponsor of MIT Solve, providing focused support, prize funding, and sponsorship to social entrepreneurs advancing digital equity and sustainability solutions in their communities.

 

Watch how one woman is helping Black mothers and babies in The Big Idea: Birth Without Bias

 
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