Just lately, my DATAVERSITY colleague Mark Horseman shared that he’d been getting much more questions on Indigenous information sovereignty. We each agreed it will make an important subject for this month’s column.
What’s Indigenous information sovereignty, why does it matter, and the way can we be taught extra about it?
To reply these questions, it helps to contextualize the concept of knowledge sovereignty within the historic context of knowledge colonialism. Information sovereignty is sensible in gentle of a previous historical past that has been oppressive to sure teams, similar to Indigenous peoples.
Earlier than transferring additional into this subject, I believe it’s vital for me, as an non-Indigenous individual, with no direct lived expertise, to acknowledge that my understanding of this subject is knowledgeable by the work of these with lived expertise. It’s by programs like OCAP® supplied by the First Nations Data Governance Centre, books, talks, and different assets that I’ve come to know this subject. I’ll embody references to all of those assets in order that you may additionally profit straight from them.
“Analysis Is a Soiled Phrase”
A number of years in the past, whereas I used to be doing analysis about information ethics, a professor urged a ebook to me, “Decolonizing Methodologies: Analysis and Indigenous Peoples” by Linda Tuhiwai Smith. It was an eye-opening learn on many ranges and a superb primer for understanding the background and historic context for information sovereignty. Smith writes:
“From the vantage level of the colonized, a place from which I write, and select to privilege, the time period ‘analysis’ is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism. The phrase itself, ‘analysis’, might be one of many dirtiest phrases within the indigenous world’s vocabulary. When talked about in lots of indigenous contexts, it stirs up silence, it conjures up unhealthy recollections, it raises a smile that’s figuring out and distrustful.”
This attitude may be very totally different from Euro-centric western notions of analysis. We are likely to fetishize analysis as a optimistic factor. It’s how we are going to advance our scientific data. We don’t have a tendency to think about the downsides or impacts of analysis as a result of a lot of the time, we’re not the direct topics of analysis. The analysis can be being performed within the context of our western cultural and authorized context.
We are able to consider the method of analysis as inextricably linked to gathering information. The ebook goes on to stipulate quite a few cases the place the analysis course of of knowledge assortment and information processing have resulted in hurt to varied Indigenous communities.
The Havasupai Tribe vs. College of Arizona
One story that stands out for me is that of the Havasupai tribe in Arizona. Members of the tribe had consented to permit researchers from the College of Arizona to gather genetic information (DNA) for analysis functions associated to Kind 2 diabetes. Consent was given as a result of Kind 2 diabetes was an issue that the neighborhood was experiencing and so granting this information assortment and use made sense on this context. Nonetheless, the college researchers took this as blanket consent to then go on to make use of the info for a variety of different analysis initiatives, together with some that started to problem the tribe’s historic understanding of itself and had been deeply in battle with the tribe’s values. Shockingly, tribal members discovered about this purely by chance!
This discuss from Carletta Tilousi and Dianna Sue Uqualla of the Havasupai neighborhood goes into way more element and is useful in understanding the fuller context of this case. There have been vital non secular and cultural the explanation why the blood samples collected from tribal members wanted to be returned, that reach properly past the concept of those being merely information for analysis.
It’s vital to know it is a pretty current case. The analysis befell within the Nineteen Nineties, the lawsuit was filed in 2004 and it was settled in 2010. That is current historical past, however it’s additionally emblematic of the larger sample of analysis like this that has been happening for a really very long time. Different nations, similar to Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, have comparable tales.
What Is Information Sovereignty?
Put merely, information sovereignty pertains to who has the facility to control information. It determines who’s legally empowered to make choices concerning the assortment and use of knowledge. We are able to take into consideration this within the context of two governments negotiating between one another, every having sovereign powers of self-determination. Indigenous governments are claiming their sovereign rights to their folks’s information.
On the one hand, it is a response to the atrocities which have taken place with respect to information gathered and brought past the management of Indigenous communities by researchers, governments, and different non-Indigenous events. But, as information turns into more and more vital, many nations are searching for to set regulatory requirements for information. It is sensible the Indigenous governments would assert comparable rights with respect to their folks’s information.
Possession, Entry, Management, Possession
In Canada, the First Nations Data Governance Centre (FGNIC) is an impartial not-for-profit group whose early roots harken again to well being analysis. The FGNIC has developed a framework for information governance known as OCAP® – which stands for possession, entry, management, and possession. They supply coaching within the OCAP® framework (it’s an important course!), which takes an expansive and holistic method to information. As their web site explains:
“Information on this context encompasses information from First Nations, together with languages, cultures, data, tales, songs, and ceremonies, information about First Nations similar to demographics, housing, well being, economies, labor, schooling, and information on or about First Nations lands and assets, which incorporates waters, medicines, and animals.”
Information sovereignty is a vital a part of Canada’s Reality and Reconciliation calls to motion. The FNIGC governs the related processes for these searching for to work with First Nations in Canada to appropriately entry information.
The United States Indigenous Information Community and different worldwide organizations serving Australia, New Zealand, and sure European nations present comparable varieties of coaching, data sharing, and information governance protocols.
Extra Sources
Along with already famous web sites and organizations, there’s a wealth of books, articles, movies, podcasts, and different content material out there. Listed below are a few of my favorites:
Ship Me Your Questions!
I’d love to listen to about your information dilemmas or AI ethics questions and quandaries. You possibly can ship me a word at hiya@ethicallyalignedai.com or join with me on LinkedIn. I’ll preserve all inquiries confidential and take away any doubtlessly delicate info – so please be at liberty to maintain issues excessive degree and nameless as properly.
This column is just not authorized recommendation. The knowledge supplied is strictly for academic functions. AI and information regulation is an evolving space and anybody with particular questions ought to search recommendation from a authorized skilled.
