FirstCiv is an archive built on a simple rule: communities own what they share. The reference editions on this site — 22 cultures, built from openly-licensed sources — are our demonstration of care, not a claim of endorsement. They remain clearly labelled as reference material until the communities they describe choose to claim, govern, correct, or remove them. The tools for that are now live: communities can contribute language, knowledge, and story under documented, revocable consent; every contribution is reviewed by a human before publication; and consent can be withdrawn at any time, with removal honoured.
We are outsiders to the cultures presented here. We mark this day not by speaking for anyone, but by keeping the door open: if this heritage is yours, this page is yours to govern. — The FirstCiv team
From a village to forever
Five steps turn one afternoon’s recording into permanent, community-owned memory.
Pack your kit
Anyone can offer a recording: a student, a traveller or a community elder. What gets published is decided by human review and by the keepers' consent.
Visit & record
Sit with a community. Record a song, a dance, a craft, a dialect, a story — phone footage is enough. Consent of the keepers is logged with every upload.
Human review
A person reviews every recording — language, meaning and provenance — before anything is published. No contribution is verified or published without a human decision.
Keep a Heritage Tablet
An approved contribution becomes a Heritage Tablet — a provenance record naming the community as origin and co-owner. Every decision about it is written to a tamper-evident ledger anyone can check.
Share the benefit
FirstCiv has no revenue today. If it ever earns any, 70% goes to the communities whose material generated it — a commitment on record before any money exists.
Built for the keepers
A clay tablet for the digital age
When a community approves a recording, it becomes a Heritage Tablet: a provenance record that names the community as origin, with every decision about it written to the lineage ledger. The tablets below preview the format. Nothing here is for sale.
The source comes first
Extraction is the old story of heritage. FirstCiv is built the other way around: consent is required, ownership stays with the community, and any value that follows flows back to the people whose memory it is.
Consent first
Nothing is published without the documented consent of the community keepers. Consent is itself stored in the archive, and it can be withdrawn.
Community-owned
The originating community is named as origin and primary beneficiary of every Heritage Tablet — and can veto or withdraw a record.
Benefit-sharing
FirstCiv has no revenue today. If it ever earns any, 70% goes to the communities whose material generated it.
Accountable
Every moderation decision is written to a tamper-evident ledger anyone can check, and a withdrawal of consent is always honoured.
Somewhere, an elder is the last who remembers
A song, a story, a way of weaving. You don’t need to be a scholar — only present, and respectful. Record it before it is gone, and let it belong to the people it came from.