First Nations data sovereignty in Canada

Abstract

Drawing on historical and contemporary sources, this paper provides an overview of First Nations perspectives on efforts within the Canadian context to identify First Nations individuals, communities, and Nations in official statistics and other data and ongoing First Nations assertion of data sovereignty. Topics covered include: an overview of pre-and post-contact First Nations history and experiences with the Canadian government and researchers; an overview of the socio-demographic characteristics of the First Nations population in Canada; a description of the data and information contexts within which First Nations operate in Canada; an overview of the current definition(s) and understanding of First Nations data sovereignty; and an overview of efforts to assert First Nations Data Sovereignty in Canada, including the current work to advance these issues.

Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Data Governance in Health Research: A Systematic Review

“…Two ID-GOV frameworks stated they were underpinned by ID-SOV principles (the CONSIDER statement and the CARE principles) [9,23]. Twenty-five articles describe ID-SOV [2,9,[16][17][18][22][23][24][25][27][28][29][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]. These articles define ID-SOV as affirming the right for Indigenous peoples to control the ownership, access, collection, management and/or use/reuse of Indigenous data as first defined in Kukutai and Taylor's 2016 publication [2].…”

“…Descriptions of ID-SOV mention the aim to 'protect collective interests' [37] and support "collective benefit" as described in the CARE principles and referred to in Walter and Carroll's articles [9,21,22]. ID-SOV protects and develops "cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions" and Indigenous peoples' "right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over these" [39]. The demand for transparency of research practices was also described [23], which is also noted in the data governance frameworks.…”

“…Human rights underpin the discourse of enacting ID-SOV and ID-GOV. A number of publications discuss or mention the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN-DRIP) [2,17,18,[21][22][23][24][25][26]29,31,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42]51,59,68,70,71,73,84] as a foundational document in the development of research and also as a tool to support ID-SOV. For example, "ID-SOV is supported by Indigenous peoples' inherent rights of self-determination and governance over their peoples, country (including lands, waters and sky) and resources as described in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples" [36].…”

“…OCAP ®[2,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21]24,26,30,37,39,49,52,56,61,66,67,72,73,77] Establish how First Nations' data, information, and cultural knowledge should be collected, accessed, used, and shared.Ownership: The notion of ownership refers to the relationship of a First Nations community to its cultural knowledge/data/information. The principle states that a community or group owns information collectively in the same way that an individual owns their personal information.…”

Bridging the geospatial gap: Data about space and indigenous knowledge of place

“…Indigenous communities must struggle to assert ownership not only as new data is created, but also in the context of historical and ongoing non-indigenous misappropriation of First Nations' data. Thus, the struggle for data sovereignty occurs not only at the technical level, to protect ownership and use of data; but also at the social, political and economic level to assert ownership over data (Dewar, 2019;Tuhiwai Smith, 2015).…”