Research Data Management: Te Mana Raraunga | Māori Data Sovereignty

As Māori/Indigenous data sovereignty perceives data as being subject to the laws of the nation in which it is collected and stored, best practice is to store Māori data locally here in Aotearoa New Zealand.  

Cloud storage services are most often based outside of New Zealand, this means that any data stored on the cloud could potentially be subject to overseas law and would not be considered secure (from a Māori data sovereignty perspective). We advise researchers to store Māori data on a local server (such as your staff or student H drive) in addition to your personal devices. If you have particularly large datasets, you can contact ITS to request additional server storage. 

Depending on the discipline, it may be standard practice for an academic journal to require its contributing authors to publish their research data alongside their findings. While we support data sharing in principle, there may be instances when it is not appropriate or ethical to make your data completely open and accessible to the public. It is crucial that data about or from Indigenous communities is managed by researchers in such a way that those communities are still able to exercise governance over how the data is used. However, there are some alternative practices that can be employed where you can signal the potential availability of your data while still supporting Indigenous governance of that information. Below are some practical steps that can be taken in this situation: 

• Publish a description or metadata-only record of research data in a data repository with citable DOIs for research (DOI). This enables others to discover and understand the applicability of the research data. Consider a meaningful name (e.g. avoid 'Thesis data'), appropriate metadata, and providing a sample of the data, actual or synthetic. 

• Establish and maintain a mediated access process (e.g. email request or form) linked to the published description. This process should follow agreed governance processes and ideally, take a people and purpose-oriented approach to granting access. 

• Create a data sharing agreement to define and record who the data is shared with, for what purpose, under what conditions (e.g. method of transfer, security requirements) and by whose authority (governance). 

• Produce a data availability statement within the publication (e.g. journal article, thesis) linking to the description, possibly referencing the mediated access process and alignment with FAIR, CARE and Māori Data Sovereignty data principles. 

Source: ResearchHub 

The CARE principles were developed by the Global Indigenous Data Alliance (GIDA), with input from Te Mana Raraunga (Māori Data Sovereignty Network), as guides for working responsibly with Indigenous data. Indigenous peoples and their right for self-determination are at the centre of these principles and they have been designed to sit alongside and be complementary to the FAIR principles, which encourage open data sharing.     

Collective benefit 

Data ecosystems shall be designed and function in ways that enable Indigenous Peoples to derive benefit from the data. 

Authority to control 

Indigenous Peoples’ rights and interests in Indigenous data must be recognised and their authority to control such data be empowered. Indigenous data governance enables Indigenous Peoples and governing bodies to determine how Indigenous Peoples, as well as Indigenous lands, territories, resources, knowledges and geographical indicators, are represented and identified within data. 

Responsibility 

Those working with Indigenous data have a responsibility to share how those data are used to support Indigenous Peoples’ self-determination and collective benefit. Accountability requires meaningful and openly available evidence of these efforts and the benefits accruing to Indigenous Peoples. 

Ethics 

Indigenous Peoples’ rights and wellbeing should be the primary concern at all stages of the data life cycle and across the data ecosystem.