Geospatial Indigensous Data Governance: Implications for Indigenous Sovereignty and Self-Determination

Data collected over tribal lands can support many applications, including flood risk management, natural resources conservation, agriculture and precision farming, aviation safety, geologic mapping, and energy development. However, American Indian Tribes have long been concerned about ownership, control, and access to data about their lands, resources, communities, and families. The development of sophisticated technologies for data collection and analysis, such as high-resolution remote sensing, GIS and machine learning, have heightened these concerns. Tribal concerns about the potential misuse of data include, but are not limited to: infringement on individual and group privacy; misappropriation of intellectual property and its use for commercial gain; misinterpretation or discrediting of cultural practices; abrogation of treaty rights; and the impact on the Federal-Tribal Trust relationship. However, such geospatial data offers tremendous value to the Tribes and are often critical to understanding regional topographic, hydrographic, or other environmental processes. Providing these benefits to tribes while protecting tribal data from potential misuse, all while ensuring access for tribes and their members, requires a creative combination of technical, legal, policy, and organizational research and solutions. Several initiatives have begun to tackle these issues head on, including the development of the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, the launch of IEEE P2890: Recommended Practice for Provenance of Indigenous Peoples Data, the international growth of the Indigenous Data Sovereignty networks including the Global Indigenous Data Alliance, and the rise of Indigenous data repositories, such as the Native BioData Consortium. Tribal governments also will strengthen their sovereignty by building capacity to understand and use these emerging technologies to their own advantage. Data science is the new frontier in Self-Determination. References: Shanley, L. A. (2015). Spatial Data Sovereignty and Privacy in Indian Country. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin-Madison. UMI Number 3707906. DOI: 10.5281/Zenodo.4085173 https://zenodo.org/record/4085173#.X4XBaC2ZPxo See also https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3710844 Robertson, J. (2018). The Impact of Data Sovereignty on American Indian Self-Determination: A Framework Proof of Concept Using Data Science. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/215604526.pdf Carrol et al. (2019). Indigenous Data Governance: Strategies from United States Native Nations. Data Science Journal.https://datascience.codata.org/articles/10.5334/dsj-2019-031/ Carroll et al. (2020). The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. Data Science Journal. http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-043 Jennings, L. (2021). Indigenous Data Sovereignty: How Scientists and Researchers Can Empower Data Governance. (video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjolET69Z8c