Love Data Week 25 Opening Remarks & Keynote: Centering Relationality: Maintaining Connections with Data

Speakers: Elisabeth M. Long (Opening Remarks) and Dr. Stephanie Russo Carroll (Keynote)

The Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov) movement focuses on the protection of Indigenous rights and interests in the control and governance of Indigenous data. To better support and realize internally identified goals, Indigenous Peoples require data to inform assessment and planning processes. Indigenous Data Governance (IDGov), the mechanisms by which Indigenous Peoples’ values and principles are applied to the management and use of Indigenous data, is central to realizing IDSov. The CARE Principles for IDGov set high-level, minimum standards for non-Tribal data actors engaging with Indigenous Peoples to whom data relate.

Historical and contemporary Indigenous data have been collected largely through colonial exploits and extractive processes with scant oversight by Indigenous Peoples. Moreover, emerging data technologies pose new risks to IDSov, and threaten to deepen power imbalances and escalate time frames of extraction if regulations fail to reflect Indigenous Peoples’ data rights and interests. 

IDSov emerged as a weaving together of Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights with Indigenous research ethics and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Efforts to operationalize IDSov include, but are not limited to, anti-colonial actions such as (1) positioning Indigenous Peoples as data-rights holders with recognition and governance over Indigenous data; and (2) requiring increased access by Indigenous Peoples to relevant data that supports decision-making. Any tools and mechanisms for IDSov must span disciplines, fields, and industries implicated in the ongoing collections, collation, and production of Indigenous data, and must reflect the values, worldviews, and relational ethical frameworks of Indigenous Peoples and communities to whom the data belong. Indigenous innovations in data relations and tools inform mainstream policies, ethics, and infrastructure to identify and attribute existing data. 

Registration link: https://bit.ly/JH_lovedataweek

** This session is part of Love Data Week 2025. To attend this session, first register here: https://bit.ly/JH_lovedataweek and then follow the instruction under "Registration and Creating an Itinerary" in the description to add this session to your itinerary. **