U.S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network

HEAPS of Knowledge: Black Women’s Positionality, Solidarity, and Liberation in Data Governance


Sharon Attipoe-Dorcoo

Kimberly Harris

MONIQUE LISTON

This roundtable, led by members of HEAPS (Highly Educated and Politicized Sisters), creates space for dialogue between Black women’s sovereignty and Indigenous data governance through the concept of solidarity. We position solidarity not as sameness but as shared accountability —a relational practice of mutual recognition that deepens our understanding of Responsibility within the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. Our frameworks, the Realms of Resiliency (RoR: history, place, culture, spirituality, family, community, and creativity), Realms of Possibility (RoP), and Return on Investment (RoI), guide how we govern the data within and around us. Through these lenses, we explore responsibility as both self-governance and communal stewardship, maintaining a strong internal signal amid external noise. We connect this to the CARE Principles’ call for Responsibility, which emphasizes ensuring that data use supports self-determination and collective benefit through ethical and reciprocal relationships. By invoking solidarity, we honor the intertwined struggles and wisdom traditions of Black and Indigenous peoples, acknowledging shared histories of dispossession and shared commitments to reclamation. Using storytelling, reflection, and collaborative analysis, we trace how lived data expressed through memory, ritual, and creativity functions as a site of relational accountability and liberation. Participants will leave with questions and practices to enact responsibility and solidarity in their own data work, grounded in care, creativity, and collective benefit.

Discover more from U.S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading