Indigenous Peoples' Rights in Data: a contribution toward Indigenous Research Sovereignty

Good data relations key to Indigenous research sovereignty: A case study from Nunatsiavut

Although researchers are committed to Indigenous data sovereignty in principle, they fall short in returning data and results to communities in which or with whom they conduct their research. This results in a misalignment in benefits of research toward researchers and settler institutions and away from Indigenous communities. To explore this, we conducted a case study analyzing the rate researchers returned data to Nunatsiavut, an autonomous area claimed by Inuit of Labrador, Canada. We assessed the data return rate for all research approved by the Nunatsiavut Government Research Advisory Committee between 2011 and 2021. In two-thirds of projects, researchers did not return the data they had collected. Based on our results and their contextualization with researchers and Nunatsiavut Research Centre staff members, we compiled recommendations for researchers, academia, government bodies, funding bodies, and Indigenous research governance boards. These recommendations aim to facilitate data return, thus putting data sovereignty into practice.

New horizons in criminal legal data: creating a comprehensive archive

While criminal legal involvement is a structural determinant of health, both administrative and national longitudinal cohort data are collected and made available in a way that prevents a full understanding of this relationship. Administrative data are both collected and overseen by the same entity and are incomplete, delayed, and/or uninterpretable. Cohort data often only ask these questions to the most vulnerable, and do not include all types of criminal legal involvement, when this involvement occurs in someone's life, or family and community involvement. To achieve a more optimized data landscape and to facilitate population-level research on criminal legal involvement and health, (1) individual administrative level data must be made available and able to be linked across carceral systems, (2) a national data archive must be made to maintain and make criminal legal data available to researchers, and (3) a nationally representative, longitudinal study focused on those with criminal legal involvement is necessary. By beginning to critically think about how future data could be collated and collected, we can begin to provide more robust evidence around how the criminal legal system impacts the health of our society and, in turn, create policy reform.

Competing interests: digital health and indigenous data sovereignty

Digital health is increasingly promoting open health data. Although this open approach promises a number of benefits, it also leads to tensions with Indigenous data sovereignty movements led by Indigenous peoples around the world who are asserting control over the use of health data as a part of self-determination. Digital health has a role in improving access to services and delivering improved health outcomes for Indigenous communities. However, we argue that in order to be effective and ethical, it is essential that the field engages more with Indigenous peoples´ rights and interests. We discuss challenges and possible improvements for data acquisition, management, analysis, and integration as they pertain to the health of Indigenous communities around the world.

Best practices for genetic and genomic data archiving

Genetic and genomic data are collected for a vast array of scientific and applied purposes. Despite mandates for public archiving, data are typically used only by the generating authors. The reuse of genetic and genomic datasets remains uncommon because it is difficult, if not impossible, due to non-standard archiving practices and lack of contextual metadata. But as the new field of macrogenetics is demonstrating, if genetic data and their metadata were more accessible and FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) compliant, they could be reused for many additional purposes. We discuss the main challenges with existing genetic and genomic data archives, and suggest best practices for archiving genetic and genomic data. Recognizing that this is a longstanding issue due to little formal data management training within the fields of ecology and evolution, we highlight steps that research institutions and publishers could take to improve data archiving.

Indigenous Peoples and research: self-determination in research governance

Indigenous Peoples are reimagining their relationship with research and researchers through greater self-determination and involvement in research governance. The emerging discourse around Indigenous Data Sovereignty has provoked discussions about decolonizing data practices and highlighted the importance of Indigenous Data Governance to support Indigenous decision-making and control of data. Given that much data are generated from research, Indigenous research governance and Indigenous Data Governance overlap. In this paper, we broaden the concept of Indigenous Data Sovereignty by using the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance to discuss how research legislation and policy adopted by Indigenous Peoples in the US set expectations around recognizing sovereign relationships, acknowledging rights and interests in data, and enabling Indigenous Peoples' participation in research governance.