Description

Indigenous communities have been contributing to human understanding of the world and its inhabitants for centuries—but not often with their consent or for their own benefit. Academic researchers, collectors, government representatives—even tourists—have filled libraries, museums, and storage facilities with information about Native people themselves, about their arts, agricultural, and medicinal practices, about their languages and spiritual beliefs, about their health, economic status, family structures, etc.   This information is often unknown and inaccessible to Indigenous communities. Some of it is sacred and shouldn’t be seen outside the community. Some has been used to harm Native people or to shape policies and practices that harm them. And some has produced significant financial profit for individuals and corporations.  All of this data, though, belongs to Native nations and should be managed and used with the consent of and in collaboration with these communities. The UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples affirms this principle.   The University of Arizona’s Native Nations Institute, founded in 2001, conducts research and policy analysis on Native governance and sovereignty and provides education and training to tribes. NNI has launched one its newest initiatives, the Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance, under the leadership of UA public health professor and NNI associate director Stephanie Carroll (Ahtna). Professor Carroll is a data scientist who founded and co-chairs the Global Indigenous Data Alliance (GIDA) as well the US Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network.   Professor Carroll’s Collaboratory seeks to aid collections and repositories in implementing the principles of Indigenous data sovereignty developed by the GIDA. Luce funding will enable her and her colleagues to undertake two significant projects. First, the Collaboratory will organize a consortium of repositories for which they will develop model policies and procedures—including labeling and notification protocols that aid both repositories and communities in managing access to data.   Second, as more collections implement the GIDA principles and operationalize them, the Collaboratory will develop assessment tools and metrics to determine progress and effectiveness. At present, the Collaboratory has only core funding from the University for a graduate research assistant and a webinar series. This funding will launch the Collaboratory’s efforts among repositories, a critical step if the principles of data sovereignty are to become standards of institutional behavior.