Centering Relationality and CARE for Stewardship of Indigenous Research Data

Abstract

The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance are a seminal advance in the stewardship of Indigenous data. The Data Services for Indigenous Scholarship and Sovereignty (DSISS) project is working to guide how research libraries and data repositories can apply the CARE principles to support scholars of Indigenous culture and language. Building on a set of foundational case studies of Indigenous scholarship, this paper reports on analysis of formal engagement activities with scholars, Indigenous community members, and information and data professionals. We discuss three prominent themes—ownership, trust, and relational accountability—and their implications for concrete steps toward implementation of the CARE principles in research data services (RDS). The results show that sustaining and furthering Indigenous scholarship and data sovereignty in alignment with CARE requires infrastructure and services that attend to a mix of interrelated, and potentially divergent, interests of scholars, Indigenous communities, and institutions. RDS professionals need to build expertise in Indigenous research methods and the sensitivities and distinctiveness inherent in Indigenous ways of knowing. Stewarding institutions will need to make significant investments in restoring trust as genuine extensions of relational accountability.

Keywords

• data stewardship
• care principles
• research data services
• indigenous research methods
• data sovereignty
• qualitative data