New Indigenous data governance guidelines bring the CARE Principles into scholarly publishing
On 24 September 2026, Native News Online previewed a Native Bidaské interview with Dr. Lydia Jennings of Dartmouth College about the Guidelines for the Governance of Indigenous Peoples’ Data in Scholarly Publishing. The 30-page Indigenous data governance guidelines, posted on Figshare in August 2026 by the Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance with Jennings as first author, turn the CARE Principles into concrete steps for journals and publishers. For anyone publishing field recordings or oral histories, the message is direct: document consent to naming, credit community affiliation, carry community labels in metadata, keep people in the review loop and give the work back.
What was published and who wrote it
The Guidelines tell publishers, editors, data infrastructure providers and indexers how to apply the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance at every publishing stage, from pre-submission to post-publication.
- Participants who contributed
- 100+
- Convenings, 2023–2025
- 4
- Workflow stages covered
- 6
- Year CARE was released
- 2019
The Collaboratory, the Sovereign Soils Research Collaborative, the Indigenous Data Law Lab @NYU and Te Kotahi Research Institute led the effort in partnership with the American Geophysical Union and NISO, with funding support from the U.S. National Science Foundation. Read the full document (DOI 10.6084/m9.figshare.33273561) and the Native News Online interview preview.
“Why should communities share information with the larger world if it’s not protected?” — Dr. Lydia Jennings, Dartmouth College, quoted by Native News Online
What the CARE guidelines change in publishing practice
The Guidelines turn CARE into policies and submission checks for journals. These matter most for recordings and oral history:
Community affiliation in the byline
Bylines for Indigenous authors include their community affiliation, such as their Tribal Nation; Indigenous lands can be listed in author affiliations; group authorship gets its own pathway.
Naming only with consent
A community may consent to publication and still decline to be named. The submission checklist covers proof of consent for naming, plus Indigenous Data Sovereignty agreements, research permits and endorsement letters from communities.
Community labels in metadata
Local Contexts TK and BC Labels and Notices sit in metadata rights fields next to any Creative Commons licence and travel to Crossref.
Oral history counts as research
Publishers should provide ways to publish oral history and storytelling data, and offer other formats such as multimedia, policy briefs and reports.
People review first
The Guidelines advise against AI as a first-pass check and ask a fluent translator to validate any LLM translation.
The work goes back to the community
Free access for the communities concerned, revised manuscripts shared with community partners, and DOIs linking outputs back to places and communities.
On FirstCiv, a community holds authority over its recordings, with documented consent it can withdraw.
Claim stewardship for your community →What it means for archiving field recordings
For researchers, archives and museums, publishing a recording under these norms means preparing consent, provenance and the return path before submission. The table compares each step with FirstCiv today, per our data sovereignty policy.
| Guideline step | What to prepare for a recording | FirstCiv today |
|---|---|---|
| Consent to naming | A record of who agreed to be named and credited | Partial: the consent record is verified with the community representative before approval and collaborators are credited by name; a separate naming-consent field is still to come |
| Community authority over use | Separate permission for display, research, teaching and AI | Live: four separate consent choices; community-restricted by default |
| Right to withdraw | A stated withdrawal path | Live: withdrawal unpublishes the item and stops its media being served |
| People review first | A person checks before release | Live: 100% human review; the AI draft assistant is dormant |
| Provenance in metadata | Source, licence or consent basis, decision trail | Live: source and consent basis per item; decisions logged to a public hash-chained ledger |
| Local Contexts Labels | TK or BC Labels next to the licence | Gap: labels unsupported for now; restrictions go in the contribution note |
| Return to the community | Free access and a full copy | Partial: full copy on request; self-serve export planned |
Every commitment and its status: governance.
Questions about the new guidelines
- What are the new Indigenous data governance guidelines for publishing?
- Recommendations for journals and publishers on applying the CARE Principles across six stages of the publishing workflow, from the Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance and partners, with Dr. Lydia Jennings as first author.
- What are the CARE Principles?
- CARE stands for Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility and Ethics. Developed by the Research Data Alliance International Indigenous Data Sovereignty Interest Group and hosted by the Global Indigenous Data Alliance, they were released in September 2019 and complement the FAIR data principles.
- Do the guidelines require Local Contexts Labels?
- They recommend them: Labels and Notices in metadata rights fields next to Creative Commons licences, passed to Crossref.
Fund a CARE-aligned archive
Consent, human review and the public ledger already run. FirstCiv seeks a community partner to lead the first collection, and funders to resource it.