Stewarding Contextual Integrity in Data Services for Indigenous Scholarship

Abstract

The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance provide essential guideposts for the stewardship of Indigenous data. To put CARE into practice in libraries and repositories, resources are needed to support implementation and integration into current research data services (RDS). Based on analysis of case studies with scholars of Indigenous language and culture, this paper articulates specific Indigenous research and data practices to guide metadata work and other areas of responsibility in RDS. The cases surface the richness of relationships and the significance of accountability in the research process—demonstrating the “relational accountability” inherent in Indigenous research methods. Robust representation of relationality is essential to retaining integrity of context in metadata for Indigenous research data. We consider the practical implications of documenting relational context with current descriptive metadata approaches and challenges in achieving CARE adherent metadata, which we argue is the backbone for broader application of CARE for Indigenous RDS.