Indigenous Data Sovereignty & Indigenous Futures
Big Data at the Margins Presents:
Indigenous Data Sovereignty & Indigenous Futures
Featuring: Jonathan Dewar, Sofia Locklear, and Jason Lewis
Hosted by Joanna Redden
27 January, 7:00PM
How do Indigenous peoples claim sovereignty over their data and information, and work to transform the very means, methods and values through which “data” is defined and disseminated? How can the exercise of Indigenous data sovereignty and broader computational empowerment enhance and inspire Indigenous identities, representations and futures? Why should settler scholars, organizations, and individuals support Indigenous data sovereignty? How can “data” be Indigenized?
The fifth event in our series examines the growing movement of Indigenous scholars and activists working to challenge the ethical, legal, and cultural impacts of the colonial forms of data collection. Indigenous peoples know all too well the potential harms to well-being that can come from the imposition of settler-colonial data-informed policies. But even while nation-states around the world “commit” to enact the provisions in The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, implementation of these provisions continues to rely on data collection by statistical agencies of nation states, NGOs and commercial interests. Uninformed by Indigenous priorities and values, these ‘scientific’ data practices inevitably reinforce the treatment of Indigenous groups as “populations,” not as sovereign “peoples” with legitimate claims to their lands, cultures, and resources. In addition to demanding control over their data, advocates for Indigenous data sovereignty call for the re-design, collection, dissemination and use of “data” itself, and for the empowerment of Indigenous peoples to imagine their own futures.
Big Data at the Margins is funded with the generous assistance of the Faculty of Information & Media Studies, Western Research, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
For more on the series, visit bdam.fims.uwo.ca
