Intending to be in good relations during research collaborations is great, but it isn’t enough. For instance, the Nunatsiavut Government Research Advisory Committee found that only 18% of all data was returned to them by outside researchers, and even more telling, only 33% of those who said they would return data, did (Ortenzi et al. 2024). This post outlines some key infrastructure that directly deal with the uneven power relations and legacies between universities and Indigenous communities during research collaborations so that intentions systematically turn into action and don’t rely exclusively on goodwill.

Decision-making power

Who is making the Big Decisions and the day-to-day decisions about how the research happens, from the core research questions to the budget to which statistical model will be used for analysis? If the answer to most of these is the university team or you haven’t had discussions about this yet, then you have a problem. Luckily, you can solve this kind of problem through a discussion: how will this project be governed, and by whom? One you have that sorted, but it in a Research Agreement (see below).

At CLEAR, our director works closely with a member of Nunatsiavut Government staff, Liz Pioggee (Northern Contaminants Research Coordinator). They make decisions together. They do co-analysis together. They present the research at conferences together. And Liz (and through her, the Nunatiavut Government) always has veto power over any decisions, from hiring to analysis. That’s our interpretation of Indigenous research sovereignty and it works pretty well. We also have direct contracts with some Indigenous groups, where they send us samples to process, and we send them their data. We aren’t in constant conversation with them, but they hold the main decision-making role in the collaboration: what is to be studied, where, how, and what is to be done with the data?

Indigenous Research Boards

Many Indigenous governments have formal or informal processes for evaluating and permitting research. One of the most important roles of this group is ensuring research is useful to the community and isn’t being duplicated or causing research fatigue. Ideally, university researchers will have been invited to do research to meet a specific research need and already have a way to connect to these processes. If not, and there isn’t a formal research board, university folks should talk to the governing body. If there isn’t one, talk to community groups that represent the community. If there isn’t one, you need a better phone book.

Nunatsiavut has the Nunatsiavut Research Advisory Committee (NGRAC). They always ask for the same set of requirements once a research project is accepted:

• Translate all material into Labrador Inutitut (one-page summaries, reports, consent forms…)
• Provide copies of all research data (there is a norm in academia to only share data or findings after publication, but that is about being scoped by other researchers, not about Indigenous data sovereignty)
• Provide copies of any reports, journal articles, papers, posters or other publications
• Include an acknowledgment of Labrador Inuit Lands in any publications or presentations
• Provide copies of any photographs

For us at CLEAR, all media interviews include or are done by Liz or someone else from the Nunatsiavut Government unless they had it off to the university team.

Indigenous data sovereignty agreements/contracts

While an Indigenous Research Board may ask for your data, a contract between the university and the community/Indigenous government is more binding and more specific. These enable clarity of how the Indigenous group will control, have ownership of, possess, and have access to their data (OCAP). As mentioned above, Ortenzi et al. 2024 found that more researchers saying they would return data did not result in more data being returned. That’s why we need infrastructure.

Memorial University has a template of their Indigenous Research Agreement online. If your university is at a loss for how to draw one up, you can adjust the type of contract they usually use for industry partners. Industry partners almost always have control of their proprietary data.

A good Indigenous data sovreignty contract should include:

• A regular timeline of when the data is returned (it can be annual, at the end, access can be ongoing through passwords and portals, or a combination)
• The requirements for useable metadata (including what column headings mean, units of measurement, how measurements were obtained, etc)
• Any stipulations of data storage, destruction, and sharing with third parties (including funders*, other researchers, and in publications)
• Who has access to data and how. It’s crucial to diversity access, as many researchers have said they can’t return data because a student has graduated, or graduate students don’t have it because advisors do (Ortenzi et al. 2024)
• A timeline for sharing and reviewing data and findings
• What happens to graduate students if they do not have access to the data for their thesis or dissertation (note that having graduate students on a project like this is risky for them, as a contract like this requires the ability for Indigenous groups to claim their data and leave the university researcher without any)

*At CLEAR, we have never, ever had a problem with not sharing our data with funders. Our data was embargoed by the Nunatsiavut Government for about five years, first because we had some puzzling results about plastics in wild food– a very big deal. They wanted us to get a large sample size and figure out what was going on. Then because COVID hit and then because of staff turnover, where our research just wasn’t the priority. In that time, we were consistently funded. When we reported to funders, we discussed our processes, methods, community events, the creation of infrastructure, and wrote about what Indigenous data sovereignty was and how it worked. There was no pushback.

A research or funding agreement with terms that benefit community in concrete ways

If a funder can transfer money directly to an Indigenous community group or government, these guidelines can be in the funding agreement. If the funder doesn’t love that or if funds must be routed through the university partner, these terms can go in the research agreement. The university must be the signatory on these agreements, not the university researcher (you don’t want that anyhow, since it makes the individual researcher liable if anything goes wrong). As long as all parties agree, you can put any dang thing you want in a research agreement. Any. Thing.

Percent of funding to go to community

The community partner should be involved in the budget any how (see point #1), but whether they have been or not, the agreement can stipulate the amount or percent of funding that needs to go to community and community members. As a bar, the ArcticNet North by North program stipulates that 80% of funds go to the North and Northerners. You can also do this for equipment, materials, training, and other concrete resources.

Hiring community members

We have found that no matter how good the university partner is, without community input and knowledge, our research falls short of its potential. Always. Hiring community members has helped this a lot (among other processes, like co-analysis). For some strange reason, one of the reasons we hear from university researchers for not hiring community members is that community members don’t know how to do the work. As university researchers, it is literally our job to educate and train so that can’t possibly be a barrier. Good news!

There are positions that may require training, such as researchers and technicians, as well as many positions that do not require additional training, such as liaison, coordinator, translator, photographer, and illustrators. For tips and tricks on how to pay community members if funding is held at a university, see the guide at the IndigeLab Network.

Principles of attribution

For some reason, the vast majority of publications done in partnership with Indigenous groups do not have any Indigenous authors on them, and when they do, they are rarely (never?) first author (Liboiron and Cotter, 2023). Perhaps community members who contribute to the research would like co-authorship and maybe not. Perhaps they would like to be cited for their intellectual property. Perhaps they want something else. You’ll never know what to put in the contract without a conversation.

For CLEAR, we have a working group specifically for community attribution to facilitate these conversations. So far, every group has asked for co-authorship and more.

Works cited

• Liboiron, M., and Cotter, R. (2023). Review of participation of Indigenous peoples in plastics pollution governance. Cambridge Prisms: Plastics 1, e16. https://doi.org/10.1017/plc.2023.16.
• Ortenzi, K.M., Flowers, V.L., Pamak, C., Saunders, M., Schmidt, J.O., and Bailey, M. (2024). Good data relations key to Indigenous research sovereignty: A case study from Nunatsiavut. Ambio. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-024-02077-6.