Ibrahim Garba
Rebecca Plevel
Marisella Molina
Stephanie Carroll
Tribes sharing geography with the United States (US) have adopted laws and policies to ensure that research on their territories and with their citizens is ethical and aligned with community priorities. However, these exercises of sovereignty are often hampered in their enforcement beyond Tribal territorial boundaries imposed by US settler policies and maintained by operation of Federal Indian Law (FIL) – a body of legal doctrines developed over two centuries through Congressional acts, Executive actions, and US Supreme Court decisions. In their laws and policies governing research, Tribes have addressed these barriers in various ways but governance infrastructure to make Tribal requirements effective among researchers and institutions beyond FIL-based territorial jurisdiction is often lacking. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (2007; US signed in 2010) is an international legal document that specifies rights and obligations for both Tribes and national governments for advancing Indigenous self-determination. Although declarations are not binding like treaties, signatories take on good faith obligations such as not contradicting the intent of a declaration through official action. This complementary approach offers a model for research governance that could mitigate the effects of FIL on Tribal sovereignty. Grounded in a project analyzing research governance documents from 20+ Tribes, our presentation will use examples to center strategies Tribes have adopted to assert sovereignty over their research data beyond FIL-based territorial jurisdiction. The presentation will also use UNDRIP-based principles to explore how effectively Indigenous research policies at two mainstream research institutions implement Indigenous self-determination.