Hannah-Marie Ladd
Chris Turner
Led by the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island (ACSPI) Tribal Government, this presentation shares how Indigenous communities across Alaska are exercising sovereignty over the data and processes that guide governance and environmental resource stewardship. Through initiatives such as the Indigenous Sentinels Network (ISN) and the Bering Sea Research Center (BSRC), Tribes are designing and governing data infrastructures to support ecological research and monitoring programs grounded in Indigenous law, relational accountability, community development, and long-term stewardship. These Tribally-led programs operationalize the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance through community-driven technology and tools, ethical data access agreements, the training of Indigenous data stewards, and the establishment of research centers in Indigenous communities. Each effort is rooted in local values and locally determined protocols, ensuring that data and any associated benefits remain in Tribal hands and serve community-defined priorities. By embedding these principles into sovereign digital and organizational infrastructure, Indigenous observers are transforming data collection and management from extractive to reciprocal, aligning infrastructures and their uses with Indigenous responsibilities to people and place. The efforts described in this presentation individually practice each of the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance: Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics. Taken together, the ISN and the BSRC demonstrate one way that Tribal governments are building infrastructures in the service of intergenerational data governance and the flourishing of their cultures and lifeways.