Daniel Herrera Carbajal
ICT
A new standard developed in partnership with Indigenous data sovereignty experts at the University of Arizona, New York University, Harvard University and multiple international universities outlines how scientists and technology professionals should record the origin and history of use for data about and relating to Indigenous people.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers recently approved the first-ever international standard regarding the “appropriate disclosure of Indigenous peoples’ relationships and/or links to all data.”
Stephanie Russo Carroll, citizen of the Native Village of Kluti-Kaah in Alaska and associate professor in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health in Tucson, Arizona, works in the Indigenous data sovereignty movement, which asserts that Indigenous people have the right to control the collection, application and use of data about their citizens, lands and cultures.
“Provenance details the history of a particular set of data,” said Carroll. “It tells you where it originated from. It should also tell you how it’s moved over time and how it’s potentially changed over time.”
Carroll said the publication of a standardized process for documenting the ownership record for Indigenous people’s data is a critical first step in ensuring scholars engage in ethical research.
“Not only is such background information important for sharing the potential benefits of research with Indigenous communities,” Carroll said, “it’s also crucial to creating possibilities for Native communities to benefit from data and research relationships.”
Jane Anderson, vice chair of the U.S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network’s Indigenous Data Working Group, said laws have failed Indigenous communities by allowing non-Indigenous people to become the copyright owners of photographs, films, sound recordings, language materials, and ethnographic texts of Indigenous people.
“When the copyright holder is the name that is in the record and the one that is remembered, then we are also able to see more clearly the role of the law in furthering non-Indigenous authorship, rights fields, and projects of erasure,” Anderson said.
But giving credit to Indigenous people who contribute to a project isn’t the only reason for standardizing Indigenous data ownership records – it’s also about making sure that data is being interpreted correctly, which is a matter of cultural literacy, said Camille Callison, a Tahltan Nation member and Indigenous caucus chair for the working group.
“Essentially, we’re trying to direct people back to the communities who own the knowledge to be able to work with them,” said Callison, chair of the National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance.
Randy Akee, who is of Native Hawaiian descent and director of the Harvard Project on Indigenous Governance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, said the new standard benefits Indigenous people and researchers.
“Ultimately, the hope is that Indigenous data is used in a respectful, ethical manner,” Akee said.
The new standard includes the definition of “data actors” to include non-human entities like devices, applications, systems and organizations as well as humans. Currently, that data is increasingly being used to train non-human entities like generative artificial intelligence engines. The standard is the first to ascribe responsibility to the humans in charge of AI for how those entities steward that data.
“This is where we started to use the term ‘data actors’ to acknowledge that it’s not just people,” Carroll said. “Some data actors are obviously machines and algorithms today, but ultimately people are responsible.”