Respecting Data Sovereignty Starts With the Stories We Tell About the Past

Miranda Jimmy

This post is part of a series. See the other entries here.

Last year I was invited to the Owning History: Indigenous Histories and Records Access Conference organized by Dr. Mary Jane McCallum at the University of Winnipeg to talk about my experiences working with residential school survivors and their loved ones to access archives. As one of the only non-academics in the room, I titled my presentation, “Novice Navigator: Tales of My Time Breaking Down Barriers in Public Archives,” to reflect how I situated myself as a curious disrupter within institutions of colonial memory. Having spent more than a decade in public archives looking for the truth about my family’s history, and supporting other Indigenous community members in their searches, it has become very clear to me that public archives are withholding information from those who need it the most in order to preserve a heroic vision of Canadian history premised upon deeply racist beliefs about Indigenous Peoples. An obvious example of this is how many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people remain unnamed in photographs and historical narratives while lengthy lineages exist for their white counterparts.

My volunteer work has primarily been centered on publicly held records related to residential schools and Indian hospitals in government and private records, working well outside the confines of academia and blurring the lines between living memory and documented proof. The more I looked, the more obvious the intention to hide the truth was, both in the records that existed and in the ignorance of the people who manage those records to do so in a responsible way that presents a balanced understanding of the past. I feel the need to learn what I can about archival practices and processes to help the people who needed the information – survivors and their loved ones – and figure out how to infiltrate the system that was keeping the information from those who needed it most.

As I reflect further on archives and western approaches to historical research, it is clear that institutions of colonial memory are consistently used against Indigenous Peoples as a weapon. This unjust weaponization comes from what is considered accurate information, who has access to its collection, management, and manipulation, and who has the right to challenge its validity. When it comes to representation of Indigenous Peoples in the archives, the responsibility of ‘the what’ and ‘the who’ has often rested solely within documentation obtained from colonial governments and their agents.

The following questions are essential for public archives and the historical discipline to consider and ask themselves:

• Who owns the information in the records?
• Who has the right to copy or grant access to this information?
• Who should be recognized as the rightful keeper of this knowledge?
• Who is responsible to collect, preserve, and care for this knowledge?
• Who has the right to answer any of these questions?
• What is the story being told in the records that are kept?
• Who owns the story/stories and information contained in them?
• What perspectives are being intentionally or unknowingly privileged and perpetuated?
• Who can challenge the documented record?
• What responsibility do researchers and historians have in shifting the narrative?
• What responsibility do archivists, archives, and other memory institutions have?

In 1998, the First Nations Principles of OCAP® were established recognizing the importance of Indigenous data sovereignty through ownership, control, access, and possession of information. A decade later the Assembly of First Nations created the First Nations Information Governance Centre to “promote, protect and advance the First Nations Ownership, Control, Access and Possession (OCAP®) principles, the inherent right to self-determination and jurisdiction in research and information management.” At the same time, movements for Indigenous data sovereignty were emerging internationally leading to the creation of the Global Indigenous Data Alliance and the CARE Principles for Indigenous data governance and the FAIR Principles for scientific data management.

But archives containing data and information and academic research on Indigenous Peoples existed long before OCAP® or CARE so that means there is a lot of catching up to do. Archives, and the researchers, historians, and archivists that are trained to create, navigate, and perpetuate them, need to question their own commitments to reconciliation through righting these wrongs and beginning to address Indigenous data sovereignty through meaningful, tangible change.

In the “What We Have Learned” volume of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Final Report, the Principles of Reconciliation state that “the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is the framework for reconciliation at all levels and across all sectors of Canadian society.” Although UNDRIP doesn’t speak directly to information and data, its 46 Principles are based on free, prior informed consent. More specifically, articles 18 and 19 respectively speak about the role of Indigenous Peoples in decisions that impact them:

• Indigenous Peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedures, as well as to maintain and develop their own Indigenous decision-making institutions.
• States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the Indigenous Peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopting and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.

In the absence of a role for Indigenous Peoples in governing public archives that contain our information or dictating the approaches on how this and other information is gathered by historians and researchers, Nations have been creating their own memory institutions for centuries that protect, preserve, and pass down information through our own laws and governance structures. These approaches to sovereign data management have allowed for languages, knowledge, and traditions to continue to exist despite attempts by colonizers to capture them, erase them, or steal them for their own use. In more recent years, Indigenous-led memory institutions have been created to meld old ways of holding knowledge with modern approaches to data collection and storage without the need to include or involve outsiders. This is part of taking back control of information for the benefit of the Nation and community, rather than academia, and ensuring it continues to serve revitalization and resurgence. The Haida Repatriation Committee has been actively working since 1995 to repatriate ancestors and historical objects from museums across Turtle Island and beyond to Saahlinda Naay Saving Things House, also known as the Haida Gwaii Museum. And after decades of ceremony, story collection, and fundraising, Woodland Cultural Centre reclaimed the former Mohawk Institute Residential School as an Interpretive Historic Site and Educational Resource to begin to tell this history guided by the Hodinohsho:ni Great Laws of Peace.

If you’ve managed to make it this far into my rant, I hope you are curious enough to understand your responsibility in fixing the mistakes of the past and forging a different, more equitable future for archives and transforming approaches for historical research practices. This rebalancing starts with the belief that Indigenous Peoples, like all peoples, deserve to make informed decisions about what information about them is collected, documented, stored, and accessed. If you share this belief, then it’s a matter of transferring that to the systems that you know and navigate.

• How can the Principles of OCAP® be used as the basis to completely revolutionize public archives and government held data?
• How will you change your habits and ensure free, prior informed consent in the work you produce?
• How will you advocate for more equitable and just practices in the institutions and networks you are connected to ensure respect for Indigenous data sovereignty?

Miranda Jimmy is a passionate Edmontonian and member of Thunderchild First Nation. She is a community connector and fierce defender of truth. Miranda is committed to the spirit and intent of the Treaty relationship and finds ways each day to demonstrate to others what this looks like.