WEBINAR: Indigenous Data Sovereignty

🌱 Kaikōrero / Speaker: Tahu Kukutai
🌱 Ringa hāpai / Chair: Nik Coupe

⦿ Webinar format: Formal Presentation

For Indigenous peoples, technologies of classification, monitoring and surveillance have long been a part of the colonial project.

However, the unequal power arrangements underpinning state-controlled surveillance have been amplified with rapid advances in data linkage, data integration and the use of algorithmic and predictive risk modelling.

In Aotearoa NZ, one encounters an abundance of data about Māori “disparity, deprivation, disadvantage, dysfunction and difference” - or what Walter calls “five D data” (2016: 80) - but a data desert when seeking high quality, culturally relevant data to support aspirations for self-determination.

Transforming the locus of power over Indigenous data from the nation state back to Indigenous Peoples lies at the heart of Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov) movements globally. IDSov is fundamentally concerned with the rights of Indigenous Peoples and nations over data about our peoples, territories, lifeways and natural resources.

Focusing on Aotearoa, this talk traces recent developments in IDSOV and consider how IDSov, as an emerging global site of data activism and resistance, can both mediate the potential for individual and collective harm to Indigenous peoples, and provide pathways to realise collective benefit.

★ TAHU KUKUTAI ​★
Ngāti Tiipa, Ngāti Kinohaku, Te Aupōuri

Tahu Kukutai is Professor of Demography at the National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis. She specialises in Māori and Indigenous population research and has written extensively on issues of Māori population change, Māori identity and official statistics.

She co-edited Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an Agenda and is a founding member of the Māori Data Sovereignty Network Te Mana Raraunga and the Global Indigenous Data Alliance. Tahu has undertaken research for numerous indigenous communities and Government agencies and is a member of the Chief Science Advisor Forum. Tahu has degrees in history, sociology and demography from the University of Waikato and Stanford University. She was previously a journalist.

On the day, go to: https://zoom.us/j/161745300