Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A national data policy explicitly recognises Indigenous Data Sovereignty as a foundational concept guiding data practice involving Indigenous Peoples.
- Is an instance
A research consortium acknowledges Indigenous Data Sovereignty when designing data governance for projects engaging Indigenous communities.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A general open-data mandate that does not recognise Indigenous Peoples' distinctive rights and interests in data is not, on its own, an expression of Indigenous Data Sovereignty.
- Not an instance
Granting external researchers unrestricted access to data about Indigenous Peoples without community participation runs counter to Indigenous Data Sovereignty.
Editorial commentary
Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) is grounded in the rights articulated in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2007) and in the long-standing assertion by Indigenous Peoples of self-determination over information about themselves, their lands, and their knowledge. It is a normative and political claim — a right — rather than a specific technical practice or checklist.
A right, not a data-management practice
IDS asserts that Indigenous Peoples have inherent authority over data concerning their peoples, territories, resources, and ways of life, independent of where that data is stored, who collected it, or what jurisdiction’s privacy law applies. It exists prior to, and is the justification for, any specific data-handling arrangement.
How this differs from Indigenous Data Governance
Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Indigenous Data Governance are related but distinct, and the distinction matters for how each is used in a research agreement. IDS names the underlying right; Indigenous Data Governance is what putting that right into practice looks like — the specific structures, mechanisms, and agreements (OCAP®, CARE, Te Mana Raraunga, Local Contexts Labels, a given community’s own protocol) through which a people exercises that right. A data management plan should cite Indigenous Data Sovereignty as the reason a particular governance framework applies, and cite the specific named framework — not “Indigenous data governance” as a generic category — for what to actually do.
National and community expression
IDS is asserted internationally through bodies such as the Global Indigenous Data Alliance (GIDA), which authored the CARE Principles, and takes distinct national and community-specific form elsewhere: Te Mana Raraunga, the Maori Data Sovereignty Network in Aotearoa New Zealand, grounds its principles in tino rangatiratanga under Te Tiriti o Waitangi; Maiam nayri Wingara, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Sovereignty Collective, articulates equivalent principles in Australia; in Canada, First Nations-specific data sovereignty is exercised through the OCAP® Principles, a trademark stewarded by the First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC); and a US Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network pursues equivalent work domestically. None of these is a generic stand-in for another — each belongs to a specific people, place, or organisation.
What this means for research administration
A data management plan, ethics application, or repository access policy should recognise Indigenous Data Sovereignty as the foundational rationale for engaging with Indigenous communities on their own terms, then name the specific governance framework and community-led body that actually applies in a given project — established through direct engagement with the relevant community, not assumed from a template.
References
- United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2007).
- Global Indigenous Data Alliance, CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (2019).
- First Nations Information Governance Centre, “The First Nations Principles of OCAP®,” fnigc.ca.
Datasets derived from TEK fall squarely within the scope of these sovereignty claims.
Also known as
IDS · Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov)
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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