Environmental scientists are gathering new data about our planet every day. It鈥檚 often sampled or collected from land stewarded by Indigenous people, and out of Dartmouth College examines how current research practices can improve the governance of Indigenous data.
That can include data about Indigenous ecosystems, health, cultural practices and language, and it's often collected by Indigenous people.
Assistant professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth Lydia Jennings, a citizen of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, is the lead author of the study. She spoke with NHPR鈥檚 All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa about her work.
Transcript
How should we be thinking of Indigenous data as it relates to other types of environmental data that are collected?
Indigenous data, I think, really pertains to the environmental ecosystems and really helping to inform us about stewardship practices, about place-based names. So, for example, I drive around New Hampshire, I'm new here, I'm from Arizona, and I see all of these creeks named 鈥淚ndian Creek.鈥� And I am curious who are the Indians they are speaking to? Why would Indigenous people gather here? That might be attributed to why this is called 鈥淚ndian Creek,鈥� right? We're missing a lot of the core pieces of the metadata of why this place is named that. So that's just one example I observe and on a regular basis.
But when we think about, as an environmental scientist and how we are collecting information, whether it's about soils or plants or marine organisms, and how often in metadata you'll see that Indigenous people use this, but it's really disconnected from the people itself and from their own governance practices. And so when we think about Indigenous data sovereignty and how we can govern this data, it helps give us more information about the people who have stewarded that data [and] help us have better grounded science.
So as I was reading through your paper, something stuck out to me immediately, it was right in the introduction. It's a sentence that says, 鈥淚ndigenous data often remain unrecognized or marginalized within contemporary discussions of environmental data.鈥� Why are indigenous data often pushed to the side?
I mean, for a long time, people didn't think Indigenous people were scientists, right? So, that's part of it. We are still having a lot of jurisdictional challenges and being able to access our homelands, and that can transcend into the digital realm. I see a lot of the conversations about Indigenous data sovereignty, thinking about how do we apply Indigenous peoples鈥� rights in the physical ecosystems into the digital ecosystem? So that's a big piece of this.
The other part is, I think, understanding how to steward Indigenous data by non-Indigenous people is something that people are afraid to make mistakes on. And this is part of why we wrote this paper, is to really give environmental scientists who I think want to work well with local tribal nations and environmental stewards in a way that is appreciated, that is equitable, but often just don't know where to begin and are afraid of making the wrong step. And especially as we get into more and more of the data science and the larger pieces. So this is part of why we wrote this paper, as well as another paper, and really giving tools and guidelines and recommendations for scientists on how to begin and how to steward this data long term.
Let's touch on a few more of those. What are some of the recommendations that you give in your study?
We give a range of recommendations that go from really basic pieces of: How do we think about the assessment and communication with local communities? How are we providing training to scientists on cultural awareness? How do we access sites and make and build up protocols with local communities? How do we develop acknowledgments and review site names that might be harmful and recognize past relationships with scientists who might have been harmful? How do we think about the data and specimen management and increased visibility of traditional stewards in an area, especially on public facing material? And then how do we engage data hosts on Indigenous metadata [and] support education across Earth sciences, and really engage in ethical attribution and reuse through data policies? So many of these recommendations you recognize are going to take a while to happen, but it's the process of beginning a generational change in science.
With that generational change, can you speak more to the collective benefit for all of us of incorporating Indigenous data into preexisting data structures? What do we learn? What do we gain?
I think the biggest piece is that by learning from the local experts of an ecosystem. So, in my area, my community, our tribe has been there for 400 years, right? Thinking about all of the environmental expertise that we've had in this area, as we've encountered multiple climate changes and how our communities have shifted, help give us more information about how to be responsive to current changes. And I think about how this is magnified across many Indigenous communities globally.
So being able to understand Indigenous data sovereignty and the rights to govern that data, but also [making] people more engaged in wanting to be part of science that we have more truth-grounded science moving forward. It means that we don't spend as much money repeating the experiments that the local Indigenous people could tell you the answers to, right? So I think it really makes sure that science funding is better spent and makes sure that people are more included in the process. And it makes science a safer practice.
How do we make sure credit is given where it is due?
In my paper we include our local tribes and scientists involved in that process as authorship. But also, if they don't want to be authorship, that's up to their discretion as well. And then I think it's, again, recognizing how Indigenous peoples are helping to inform the practice and making sure that's well done. The other part, which again, comes to this environmental data governance piece, is really ensuring that in our databases we're attributing whose Indigenous homelands are we collecting samples on. If this data gets reshared and reused, ensuring that the future scientists are also connecting with those communities to let them know these projects are being done and getting permission from that process. So all of those are important pieces to ensure that communities are both cited but also informed in the process, which historically just has not happened.
