Indigenous data management will get a bit easier this fall, thanks to an online toolkit and series of six webinars being developed to support Indigenous research data management.
Indigenous data sovereignty, or the assurance that Indigenous data is owned and controlled by Indigenous people, is of utmost importance
Dr. Jaime Cidro
Dr. Jaime Cidro, UWinnipeg’s AVP, Research and Innovation; Jaime Orr, Research Data Management Librarian; and Brianne Selman, Scholarly Communications and Copyright Librarian are working with the Manitoba Network Environment for Indigenous Research (NEIHR) to develop resources geared toward the community’s needs.
“There has been a fair amount of research promoting the importance of Indigenous data sovereignty and governance, but not on the practicalities and technical details of Indigenous data management, so we anticipate the impact of this work to be wide-reaching and useful to both non-academic and academic audiences,” said Cidro.
The webinars will introduce community members to the basics of research data management, how to Indigenize and decolonize data management, the organization of data, data management technologies, and management of access to data.
“Indigenous data sovereignty, or the assurance that Indigenous data is owned and controlled by Indigenous people, is of utmost importance, but in order to maintain and make use of this data, they require skills, best practices, and tools to organize, describe, and store their data in ways that are relevant and useful to them,” said Cidro.
Cidro is thankful for this funding, which helps ensure the resources they are developing reach a wider audience.
“Our hope is that these tools will support Indigenous organizations, communities, and researchers on their journeys to Indigenous data sovereignty and self-determination in research,” said Cidro.
Once they are ready, the webinars and online toolkit will be available on the Manitoba NEIHR website.
Their project, Indigenous Data Management: Indigenous Sovereignty in Action, is supported by a The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Connection Grant for Special Research Data Management.
SSHRC is the federal research funding agency that promotes and supports post-secondary-based research and research training in the humanities and social sciences.
Every year, the federal government invests in research excellence in the areas of health sciences, engineering, natural sciences, social sciences and humanities through its three granting agencies. Support from the Research Support Fund ensures that UWinnipeg’s federally funded research projects are conducted in world-class facilities with the best equipment and administrative support available.
