Honouring Indigenous Data Sovereignty In Ceremony and Practice: The Silr Data Sovereignty Declaration and Care Taking Directives

Post-secondary institutions and researchers have a role and responsibility to work in partnership with Indigenous communities in supporting Indigenous Data Sovereignty. This presentation shares how a collaboration between the Sustaining Indigenous Language Revitalization (SILR) project, Ancestral Language Speakers, and the University of Alberta Library (UAL) came to imagine one way in which Indigenous Data Sovereignty can be practiced and honoured, with a focus on caretaking, rather than ownership, and centering responsibilities rather than rights. Rather than researchers owning the data, the project ensures speakers, not researchers, own and manage their data. In this model, the library and the research team are both considered helpers. The collaboration resulted in the development and implementation of a Data Sovereignty Declaration and Care Taking Directives, held in a traditional preservation format (birch bark satchels), with data managed within a video archive (Aviary). This presentation shares how the birch bark satchels braid together: (1) the interconnected caretaking roles and responsibilities of a researcher, Ancestral Language Speakers, and the university, (2) one way that archival practices can move beyond colonial law into ceremonial protocols, and (3) how Ancestral Language Speakers and future generations can maintain ownership, control, access, possession in perpetuity. Ongoing work focused on ensuring the care taking directives are supported across future generations will additionally be discussed.