Implementing Data Services for Indigenous Scholarship and Sovereignty

In response to the imperative for Indigenous data governance and sovereignty, a groundswell of activity has emerged on the ethical care and stewardship of digital Indigenous data. To date, however, there is little guidance for libraries and repositories on how to implement Indigenous data principles (such as the CARE principles or ‘data sovereignty’) within their existing research data services (RDS). Based on case studies of Indigenous scholarship by Indigenous researchers, and a strategic collaboration among a data repository, library professionals, and information researchers this paper will present initial results from a project seeking to establish guidelines for RDS with a focus on Indigenous data from the humanities and qualitative social sciences. The collaborative approach integrates data curation and infrastructure expertise from the Qualitative Data Repository (QDR) and the Information School at the University of Washington with librarianship expertise from the X̱wi7x̱wa Library at the University of British Columbia and Data Services at UW Libraries.

We focus on three key areas: 1) Collection development: how should repositories decide on whether to accept deposits of Indigenous data? Repositories must ensure that data were collected ethically and that depositors have the authority to make them available to others. 2) Metadata: what are some key considerations for ensuring that appropriate context and representation of relational accountability are included with Indigenous data? Against the backdrop of a history of racist and colonialist description of Indigenous culture in libraries and archives, it is particularly important that metadata accurately reflects Indigenous perspectives of data. 3) Governance and access: how can appropriate access to, and control of, data be managed? While many Indigenous people and scholars want to see data preserved and made available, it is important to ensure that governance mechanisms respect Indigenous sovereignty as well as contain access controls that meet the needs of Indigenous communities.