Governing data and data for governance: the everyday practice of Indigenous sovereignty

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7
Governing data and data for
governance: the everyday practice
of Indigenous sovereignty
Diane E Smith
Not everything that can be counted counts,
And not everything that counts can be counted.
— Albert Einstein (according to the available data)
Introduction
The right of indigenous peoples to pursue development and cultural
agendas in keeping with their self-determined aspirations and needs
has been asserted by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The reluctance of nation-states
to recognise self-determination, let alone sovereignty, among the
indigenous polities within their borders has been the subject of
both critical commentary and advocacy. However, it is only recently
that attention has been given to the kinds of internal expertise and
institutions that are needed to mobilise the exercise of such rights
by indigenous peoples. The argument of this chapter is accordingly
twofold. First, that the foundation stone for translating indigenous
rights into everyday practice now—as opposed to remaining an
intangible future goal—is the collective ability of indigenous nations,

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communities and groups to self-govern, to make informed and
internally accountable decisions about their current priorities and
future direction. Second, for such eective self-governance to occur,
indigenous peoples need access to a range of culturally relevant and
accurate information about themselves; they need data they can trust.
A particular catalyst for much recent innovation by indigenous
peoples in both these areas has been the imperative to decolonise
the governance arrangements and the colonial data archives that
have been externally created for and about indigenous peoples.
As a consequence, a common set of interrelated questions is being
considered by indigenous peoples across Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and the United States (CANZUS), in spite of their having
distinctive cultural traditions, histories and legal rights. These
inuential questions include:
• Who exactly is the collective ‘self’ in the self-determined and
self-governing indigenous polity?
• Who are the intergenerational members of such polities on whose
behalf data are to be collected and used?
• What kind of collective identity do indigenous people want
toshape for themselves, now and into the future?
• What kinds of development—social, cultural and economic—
willbe pursued, and who should benet from it?
• What role should indigenous culture play in collective decisions
and solutions about these matters?
• What kinds of data will best support informed decision-making
and eective solutions about these matters?
• And, importantly, who should have the authority to govern data
on indigenous peoples—to collect, validate, interpret, own and
use it?
These questions are considered here primarily through the lens of
‘governance’, meaning the institutions, relationships, processes and
structures by which the collective will of a nation, clan, group or
community is mobilised into sustained, organised action (Dodson &
Smith 2003; Smith 2005). Neither governance arrangements nor social
collectivities are static; they are dynamic entities that may be modied
and recongured according to changing conditions and needs. But
for changes in governance and collective identity to be considered

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legitimate and so be supported by group members, ‘knowledgeable
agents’ (Giddens 1984: 199) are needed who are able to mobilise
consensus and consent among those members. For that to occur, timely
access to relevant information about current circumstances, options
and likely future outcomes is an inuential precondition for arriving
at condoned action.
It is not surprising then that data collection for exercising eective
governance and the eective governance of data are emerging as
twin capabilities fundamental to underwriting the daily exercise of
indigenous self-determination and sovereignty for the social good.
These entwined issues are examined in the remainder of this chapter.
But rst it is useful to understand more about the common conditions
that have invigorated conversations and initiatives among indigenous
peoples about data sovereignty in the four CANZUS countries.
From datum nullius to data sovereignty
The governance of data—that is, who has the power and authority to
make rules and decisions about the design, interpretation, validation,
ownership, access to and use of data—has emerged as a site of
contestation between indigenous peoples and the colonial settler
states within which they reside. A particularly salient concern is
the concept of ‘data’, which is itself a socially constructed eld with
epistemologically diverse underpinnings and corresponding issues of
validity, relevance, application and dissemination (see, for example,
Agrawal 1995; Smith 1991ab, 1994; Smylie & Anderson 2006).
At their most basic, data are simply attributes or properties that
represent a series of observations, measurements or facts that are
suitable for communication and application (Ellis & Levy 2012;
Bruhn 2014). Data constitute a point-in-time intervention into a ow
of information or behaviour—an attempt to inject certainty and
meaning into uncertainty. As such, data can be useful for generalising
from a particular sample to a wider population or category set, for
testing hypotheses, for choosing between options and determining
the relationship between particular variables. However, when derived
from ethnocentric criteria and denitions, data can also impose
erroneous causal connections and simplify social complexity, thereby

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freezing what may be uid formations in the real world. In their
unadorned quantitative form, data are hard-pressed to cope with
social and cultural intangibles.
‘Data’ should also be conceptually distinguished from ‘information’,
which results when people attribute meaning and values to data in
a particular context. In intercultural contexts, seemingly objective
data and their interpretation as information can become misguided
political, policy and ideological instruments. For that reason, both
data and information may have limited validity or usefulness when
externally imposed as constructions of indigenous behaviours and
social formations.
Eorts to permanently settle and control mobile indigenous peoples
have been a perennial project of colonial and contemporary nation-
states in all four CANZUS countries. Indigenous families were
frequently forcibly relocated from their lands, separated from each
other and centralised into articial communities. Their collective rights
and self-constructed categories of social organisation were reshaped
by colonial frameworks resting on the Western principles and primacy
of individual citizenship and assimilation. The scope of the colonial
paradigm of ‘nullius’ has been more broadly applied beyond the legal
ction of terra nullius. It has also purported equivalent ctions about
indigenous governance and knowledge systems.
Colonial governments deployed strategies to standardise and simplify
the indigenous ‘social hieroglyph into a legible and administratively
more convenient format’ (Scott 1999: 3). Indigenous ‘peoples’
were enumerated into ‘populations’ (Taylor 2009); their domestic
arrangements and wellbeing were constrained within quantitative
datasets and indicators that reected colonial preoccupations and
values. For example, in Australia, the Indigenous logic of family
structures, shared parenting and kin relations disappeared under
the overwhelming weight of national census statistical analyses
(Smith1991a, 1994; Daly & Smith 1996). Indigenous economies were
relegated to a precapitalist category positioned outside so-called
mainstream indicators of what constituted ‘economically active
work’, employment and unemployment and productive development
(Smith1991b).

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In a similar vein, Indigenous modes of governance across Australia
werevariously portrayed in colonial discourse as a form of gubernare
nullius—that is, empty, invisible and unknowable—frozen in
an underdeveloped ‘primitive’ stage of social evolution. From
such a standpoint, they were pathologised as being hopelessly
dysfunctional and corrupted by kin relationality (Smith 2008).
Indigenous knowledge systems in turn were treated as datum
nullius—ablank slate on which could be constructed the edice of
adistorting ‘colonial archive’ (Nakata 2007; see also Pool, this volume).
In all four countries, similar nullius ctions contributed to the
imposition of Western modes of democratic governance, the disruption
of indigenous leadership networks and the belittling of indigenous
systems of authority and knowledge. Collective institutions of
governance were overridden and transformed into legal corporations
where indigenous governing traditions, roles and responsibilities
were curtailed and externally regulated. New categories and
institutions of governance—of boards, executives, councillors, voting,
representation, democracy and so on—were inserted into the daily
fabric of indigenous peoples’ lives.
Today, these tools continue to facilitate the neoliberal control and
management of indigenous peoples’ lives by nation-state governments.
It is hardly surprising, then, that there has been a common move by
indigenous groups and their leaders over recent decades to reassert
their self-determined modes of governance and their self-identied
aspirations. However, as indigenous groups begin to replace outsiders’
agendas with their own, they are often confronted with the daunting
reality that their contemporary governance arrangements have been
signicantly eroded and that they lack the relevant data on which
tomake informed decisions and take action.
Over 25 years ago in Australia, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal
Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC 1991) recommended that:
When social indicators are to be used to monitor and/or evaluate
policies and programs concerning Aboriginal people, their informed
views should be incorporated into the development, interpretation and
use of the indicators, to ensure that they adequately reect Aboriginal
perceptions and aspirations. (RCIADIC 1991: Recommendation 2:53)

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In the development of future national censuses and other data
collection activity covering Aboriginal people, the Australian Bureau
of Statistics and other agencies … ensure that full account is taken
ofthe Aboriginal perspective. (RCIADIC 1991: Recommendation 2:63).
Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments provide access to all
government archival records pertaining to the family and community
histories of Aboriginal people. (RCIADIC 1991: Recommendation 2:79)
These were groundbreaking recommendations and were asserted in
dierent contexts by indigenous leaders and organisations in each of
the CANZUS countries. However, it has become increasingly clear that
the process of rebuilding or strengthening indigenous governance
is closely aligned with the need to also reassert indigenous peoples’
control and interpretation into the colonial data archives, and to
produce alternative sources of data that are t for their contemporary
purposes.
It is in this historical context that the concept of data sovereignty
has emerged to describe the ability of indigenous peoples to practice
self-rule and self-governance when it comes to data and the opening
of data, and their capacity to gather and manage data for their own
purposes and use.
The indigenous governance challenge
The international experience of former UN Special Rapporteur on
Indigenous Rights James Anaya (Smith 2012) led him to identify three
eras in the ght by indigenous peoples for self-determination, with
each era having its own discrete governance challenges. These are:
1. the prerecognition era of colonisation with its denial of indigenous
sovereign governance
2. the battle for rights and recognition in which indigenous governance
solutions focused on political priorities
3. the post–UN Declaration era of governance implementation.
Over the past 40 years, in each of the four CANZUS jurisdictions,
atransition has been occurring from the rights battle to the governance
and development challenge. Which is not to say that the rights battle
has been won, but rather that the progress made on the rights agenda

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has led directly to a critical issue—one captured in Patrick Dodson’s
comments to an international conference on indigenous peoples
(seeSmith 2012: 11):
The challenge for traditional owners, like the Yawuru, is how do we,
as a people, leverage our native title rights so as to promote our own
resilience and reliable prosperity in the modern world.
Arguably, this is the challenge of governance performance and
eectiveness—a challenge that has turned out to be a very dierent
task from that of ghting for rights.
Successfully achieving a treaty or land claim, negotiating a resource
agreement or implementing an economic initiative invariably requires
indigenous people to reassess and restructure their existing governance
arrangements. This is because what worked to get them through
negotiations is not necessarily what will work to implement the
conditions of resulting agreements, claims and treaties. Furthermore,
success propels people from thinking about past grievances to thinking
about future priorities and how to achieve them.
In addition, there is now an entire generation of young indigenous
people whose careers and involvement in indigenous aairs have
taken place in the post–land rights, post-treaty and post-settlement
environment. Not only does this give them a dierent viewpoint on
history and what is possible, but also they are impatient for strong
indigenous governance, for sound decision-making and informed
action that will translate the promise of rights into tangible outcomes.
From these varied indigenous viewpoints, the collection, ownership,
analysis and strategic use of a range of robust data are increasingly
recognised as being fundamental to building resilient governance
capable of delivering outcomes.
Data for governance
Eective governance, whether for a small group or a large nation,
means being capable of leadership and stewardship, future-oriented
planning, problem solving, evaluating outcomes, developing strategies
and taking remedial action. To support that suite of governance
capabilities, many indigenous groups and their governing bodies are
choosing to produce, interpret and manage their own information

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systems and databases (Smith 2002, 2005; Taylor 2005; Taylor etal.
2014). In an age of information overload, this can be a daunting
governance task in itself.
As part of designing the methodological and conceptual framework
for the conduct of the Australian Indigenous Community Governance
(ICG) Research Project, I identied several key dimensions and
inuential components of indigenous modes of governance—both
internal and external (Smith 2005: 23–4). Each of these dimensions
is associated with a range of governing capabilities, institutions,
structures and practices that can be strengthened and adapted through
considered interventions (Dodson & Smith 2003). For that to happen
successfully, various kinds of data and information will be needed
about each dimension (Table 7.1).
Table 7.1 Data for building and evaluating indigenous
governance arrangements
Dimensions of governance Some key items of information/data needed
Cultural geography and
legitimacy
The culturally valued layers and aggregations of social
relations and territorial organisation forming the bases
of group ownership of land and related identities.
Power and authority Sources, scope, composition, social boundaries
and distribution, networks, checks and balances,
accountability, transmission, modes and standards
of exercise.
Leadership/governors Pathways, selection, monitoring, accountability, roles
and responsibilities, standards of conduct, hierarchies,
succession, capacity-building of leaders and decision-
makers (male and female).
Decision-making Processes, mechanisms and rules for, forms of,
consensus orientations, implementation of, free prior
informed consent, social organisation and subsidiarity of.
Institutional bases Standards, measures, structures, purposes, goals,
capacities, policies, actions and outcomes, transparency,
compliance, organisational bases and structure for.
Strategic direction Planning, priorities, strategies for short and long-term
risk management.
Participation and voice Group membership, demographic characteristics, extent
of participation and involvement in decision-making,
elections and voting, communication with members/
citizens, dispute resolution.
Accountability Rules and norms, mechanisms and procedures for
internal and external controls over corruption and rent-
seeking behaviour.

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Dimensions of governance Some key items of information/data needed
Resource governance Cultural, human, natural, economic, technological,
nancial and other resources and assets that indigenous
people need, have access to or control over. Availability,
use and impacts of resources.
Governance of (nation-state)
governments
Institutions, structures, values and capacities, powers,
policy and service delivery, funding mechanisms,
accountability mechanisms, communication and
negotiation with.
Governance environment Web of relationships with external parties, wider
operating environment, stakeholder analyses, scal ows
and funding, impact of wider regional, state and national
environment, markets.
Capacity development Skills, expertise, knowledge, information, abilities to
build governance, capability gaps between government
rhetoric and on-the-ground reality about what works.
Governance self-evaluation Standards and measures by which governance
‘success’ is dened from indigenous and other
perspectives, inuential factors, meaningful criteria
and principles for assessing eective and legitimate
indigenous governance.
Source: The author.
Prioritising data for governance:
where to start
A challenge in indigenous governance more generally is that often
it is the case that everything needs work, which sometimes means
that little gets done. So what kind of data will support indigenous
peoples’ purposes of evaluating and strengthening their governing
arrangements? Is there a way to think about priority areas for data
collection and analysis that would: 1) begin to implement data
sovereignty, 2) provide a data foundation on which to build, and
3)move people further down the road towards self-governance based
on robust information?
Strengthening and rebuilding governance is a journey. All the issues
cannot be addressed at once, and there are no perfect ‘good governance’
solutions. Rebuilding governance might require immediate substantial
changes or small progressive ones. Someone has to lead the way, but
it is also critical to keep the nation and community members fully
informed, with a voice in decisions. The process of data collection

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may challenge existing vested interests within a community and in
the wider external environment. So being inclusive, transparent and
consultative promotes credibility and participation in the process.
Whatever the initial impetus, data strategies will be more eective and
sustainable if the governance problems and solutions are identied by
the group or organisation itself.
Governance is about relationships. As a consequence of colonial
interventions and violence across the CANZUS countries, one of the
very rst issues that arises when indigenous people discuss the kind
of governance they have or want is the conguration of their own
collective cultural identity and internal relationships: Who is the ‘self’
in their particular mode of self-determination? Who is, and is not,
a member? Is the ‘self’ dierently constituted at dierent societal
levels? On whose behalf are leaders and representative organisations
governing? These questions go to the heart of self-determined
legitimate solutions for governance. To answer them, people often
seek out information about their particular cultural geographies and
group membership.
Usually such information is not to be found in mainstream data
collections and institutions (such as university libraries, government
archives, national censuses, sample surveys). Those invariably operate
at the level of Western enumeration concepts and categories. Such
datasets are rarely available at the level of indigenous culturally based
polities (such as nations, governments, regions, communities, local
groups, clans and extended families).
Accordingly, a priority data area for governance is to get some hard
demographic facts about group membership and relationships that are
also linked to landownership. That can include nding out about such
things as: what matters to members about their governance as well as
their concerns and suggestions; what they think can be done about
it; how many members are attending annual general meetings or are
involved in selecting or electing leaders; and how many young people
are involved in decision-making processes. Such data will reveal a lot
about the future demands on governance and services.
Another critical area for early data collection and analysis is governance
performance. For example, are decisions and risk assessments routinely
informed by relevant sound data? Have decisions over the past year

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been implemented? What are the leadership strengths and gaps?
These data will give a better idea of governance eectiveness and
future needs. Today, indigenous nations and their organisations are
increasingly using computerised systems to keep records of decisions
made, allocate responsibility for follow-up action, track outcomes,
report back to their governing bodies and deal with any problems.
Data for nancial planning and accountability will help a nation or
community to understand their overall nancial situation as reported,
ask the right questions so members can know the true state of their
collective nances and make more informed decisions about nancial
priorities and development options. However, it is important for
complex nancial and business information to be pulled together into
accessible formats for presentation to governing bodies and members.
A cornerstone of collective resilience in times of crisis and rapid change
is strong governance built on knowing what you have and using it well.
This means having information about the strengths, assets, resources
and expertise a nation, community or organisation already has and
can bring to bear. Everyone in a group has skills, abilities, knowledge
and experience that can be drawn on to strengthen governance and
reinforce a shared commitment to rebuilding. An early data collection
priority therefore is to document a group’s existing infrastructure,
technology, funding sources and base, human and cultural capital
andnatural assets.
While most data are informative, not all data will be t for indigenous
peoples’ purposes of assessing and (re)building their governance.
On the contrary, when an indigenous governance agenda is imposed
from the outside, data needs and the bases for interpretation are also
eectively imposed from the outside. This can seriously undermine
indigenous self-evaluation of governance and the design of self-
determined solutions. From this perspective, poor data quality and
analyses arguably contribute to poor governance. By contrast,
robust culturally informed data used in relevant contexts can serve
as a foundation to support more eective and legitimate indigenous
governance.

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This suggests the possibility of creating a self-reinforcing
system—a ‘virtuous’ cycle—in which improving the relevance,
validity and applicability of data enhances governance, which in
turn improves capability for a range of governance responsibilities,
including that of collecting and governing data.
Culture-smart information
In every society there are cultural determinants of what constitutes
leadership, decision-making, representation, group membership,
participation, legitimacy and accountability. And dierent
behaviours, standards and measures may apply. Serious problems arise
when supposedly objective statistics do not adequately reect these
dierences. Exacerbating that limitation is the tendency to dismiss as
unimportant those processes and behaviours which we do not know
how to measure by standard methods. The result is a tyranny of the
measureable, which confers power and legitimacy on the thing that
is measured. So the production of data for and about governance
immediately raises issues of relative power—that is, whose voice
is given priority in determining the meaning, validity and values
attached to data (see Morphy, this volume)?
Just as governance is a culturally based concept, so, too, are the
criteria, indicators and measures used to generate systems of data and
information. Hence, in Indigenous Australia, not all information is
freely available to everyone within a group. There are inuential gender
and age dimensions and associated rules around certain restricted
forms of information, who owns and can reproduce and authorise
information and who has access to it and for what purposes. There is
also a hierarchy of value given to dierent elds of information and
knowledge, with certain kinds constituting ‘inalienable possessions’
passed on from one generation to the next. Information about high-
value things (be they land, sites, names, body designs, songs, stories,
knowledge, ritual practices or paraphernalia) becomes imbued with
the intrinsic and ineable identities of their owners, accreted with
history, and acts as a repository of collective memories and identities.
As a consequence, authority over particular kinds of indigenous
information is distributed across interdependent social layers and
polities, establishing a culturally based subsidiarity of information

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and knowledge. Often particular people and subgroups are charged
with the transfer of specic areas of knowledge from one generation
to another. Such information and things constitute what Radin (1982)
and Moustakas (1989: 1185) refer to as rights in cultural ‘property for
grouphood’. This complex knowledge economy has implications for
the collection, digitisation and dissemination of indigenous knowledge
(see Nakata & Langton 2006; Nakata et al. 2008). Furthermore,
assessments by indigenous people of the legitimacy of their leaders
and governance are sometimes closely linked to their ability to protect
and maintain these valued heartlands of cultural information.
These culturally based conditions and practices do not negate
the importance of quantitative data for governance performance.
Indigenous groups want governance that not only is culturally
legitimate, but also has the practical capacity to deliver outcomes.
Furthermore, to facilitate free, prior informed consent, people need
accurate and relevant information. And local levels of governance
require ‘the development of local-level data collection, management
and reporting systems’ (Smith 2002: 18). These various goals depend
on having collection, access and use procedures and policies for the
governance of both qualitative and quantitative data, supported by
technical skills and infrastructure. From this perspective, then, data
system priorities and standards should be driven by the strategic
priorities of indigenous communities and nations, rather than imposed
from the outside via nation-state policies and agendas.
To govern for the future, indigenous people are looking for what
I would call ‘culture-smart’ data—that is, information that can be
produced locally, captures local social units, conditions, priorities and
concerns and is culturally informed and meaningful. These kinds of
data build on existing indigenous capabilities and knowledge, have
direct practical application and represent collective identities, rights
and priorities. Culture-smart data have greater potential to mobilise
support and a mandate from group members, to boost accountability
and legitimacy and to improve the quality of actual service delivery—
all of which are fundamental ingredients in the practical exercise
ofsovereignty.

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Governance of data and information
The ownership of, access to and control over the use of data are
governance issues (Nakata & Langton 2006; Bruhn 2014). Contrary
to contemporary Western conceptualisations of corporate governance
and ‘big data’ management systems, indigenous peoples’ governance
or stewardship of data is not simply about the data. It is about the
people who provide and govern an asset that happens to be data.
Fromthis perspective, arrangements for the governance of data tend
tobe assessed by indigenous peoples according to whether they satisfy
the spirit and intent of reproducing their culturally based systems of
knowledge, alongside delivering on their planning, service-delivery
and development aspirations.
Critical functions of governance therefore are the collection and
analysis of relevant packages of information that can be communicated
eectively to governing bodies, leaders, group members, organisations
and external stakeholders. Strong governance creates checks and
balances to ensure that data collection supports the priorities of a group
or organisation, implements agreed standards for data quality control
and works to ensure data are available in a timely way. Ineective
governance of data can lead to uninformed decision-making, low
participation by membership, project failures, loss of reputation and
credibility and missed development opportunities.
The clear conclusion is that nations, communities and organisations
need practically eective governance arrangements to collect and
convert relevant and meaningful information into sensible advice and
options. Unfortunately, many indigenous groups lack the economies
of scale and human capital needed to underwrite the governance
of big data systems, especially where data are of varied quality and
reliability.
Therefore, to deliver on the promise of culture-smart and relevant
information systems, indigenous governance arrangements need to
be designed and implemented under a framework of principles and
practices that:
• Sets and enforces agreed standards, culturally informed denitions
and classication systems for data production, ownership, analysis
and administration.

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• Develops and enforces agreed rules, policies and processes around
access, dissemination, monitoring, management and review of
data, including what kinds of data will not be collected or will
have restricted access.
• Identies and publicises clear cultural rules and protocols with
respect to indigenous intellectual property rights, which outline
the consents required to access and use high-value cultural
information that has been collated.
• Sets out a management structure for data that claries the roles,
responsibilities and accountabilities of people charged with
collecting, analysing, maintaining and communicating data. This
includes leaders, executive committees, managers and community
members.
• Puts in place user-friendly technologies and infrastructure
and member-focused data platforms that include building the
capabilities of members to access, interpret, use and maintain their
own data.
• Ensures governance arrangements for repatriating and protecting
indigenous data property rights are based on the principle of self-
determination.
When such data governance is in place, indigenous communities and
nations will have a more reliable foundation on which to make sound
decisions about their overall goals and objectives; what kind of life
they want to build; what assets they have or require; what things they
want to retain, protect or change; the kind of development they want
to promote or reject; and what actions they need to take to achieve
those goals (see also FNIGC, Hudson et al., Hudson, Jansen, Yap & Yu,
this volume).
Conclusion
The concept of data sovereignty has emerged as a particularly salient
one for indigenous nations and groups whose sovereignty has been
diminished and whose representation within colonial archives has
often been maligned. It is a concept that alludes to the promise that
self-determination can be put into practical eect by indigenous

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people gathering data that are t for their own purposes. It also
implies having not only a recognised right, but also the local mandate
and capacity to produce more meaningful, culture-smart information.
Sovereignty includes being able to design rules for the restriction and
opening of data. Open data in the context of indigenous peoples is a
double-edged sword. On the one hand, open data could be used to
inform development, allocate resources and set a future vision—and
to inuence wider public opinion and debates. On the other hand,
opening up data may be accompanied by concern about protecting
indigenous cultural information, rights and intellectual property
(seePool, this volume). Importantly, data sovereignty means taking on
a signicant responsibility to collect and maintain data that reinforce/
restrict particular collective identities and assist in delivering real
improvements in people’s circumstances. From this perspective,
indigenous governance of data assets is about stewardship for both
present and future generations.
Finally, in light of the rapid spread of internet technologies and the
globalisation of access (legal and illegal) to information, we must
consider the extent to which data sovereignty is facing additional,
signicant new challenges. Everything seems to be becoming, in
one way or another, public data; even the strongest encryptions and
rewalls cannot protect modern data systems. But this phenomenon
is dependent on certain technologies. Perhaps the next challenge in
this arena is for indigenous people to identify whether there are ways
to use their own technologies and institutions to protect condential
data—for example, by keeping certain culturally valued or personal
data in the form of oral tradition or producing data using indigenous
languages. Long-term data protection for indigenous peoples may
directly depend on the preservation and transmission of their
technologies of language, art and semiotics and the extremely narrow
distribution of the knowledge necessary to use those technologies.
The narrowness of such distribution perhaps makes this a fragile kind
of protection—but, at the very least, as a consequence of considering
and making informed decisions about such data challenges, indigenous
peoples are eectively acting in sovereign ways. In other words, the very
act of designing workable ways of governing data for contemporary
purposes, and producing indigenous data representations of collective
identity, contributes to constructing self-determination as a current
practice rather than an ephemeral future goal.

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This text is taken from Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an agenda,
edited by Tahu Kukutai and John Taylor, published 2016 by
ANU Press, TheAustralian National University, Canberra, Australia.