| KELLE DHEIN (Diné, Enrolled Tribal Member), Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute Consulting Bioethicist at the Native Biodata Consortium

Whether it’s genetic data from Indigenous populations with historically low admixture, wild type plant specimens found only on Indigenous lands, or traditional Indigenous medicinal knowledge, Indigenous data has become extraordinarily valuable to the Western scientific-industrial complex in the 21st century. Thus, to realize the aims of Indigenous data sovereignty, Indigenous peoples must contend with entrenched Western scientific norms surrounding data production and use. In this talk, I combine insights from the history, philosophy, and sociology of science to articulate a relational view of data wherein the meaningful contents of data are determined by context of use. I argue that this view 1) clarifies Western scientific uses of data, 2) supports the creation of Indigenous-led biobanks, and 3) provides a philosophical framework for developing biobank data management policies.