Southwest Tribal Data Summit: Partnering with Southwest Indigenous Communities to Identify Data Challenges, Needs, and Opportunities
As Indigenous communities in the U.S. and around the world confront ongoing climate hazards and plan for future problems related to climate change such as threats to human health, a variety of challenges have arisen related to the data necessary to support decision-making. As Native nations seek to utilize the best available data and information to build climate resilience and healthy, sustainable communities, issues around data relevance, ownership, access, possession, and control arise. For example, a Native nation may collect their own data or have access to culturally sensitive traditional knowledge useful to inform climate-related decisions, but they may not wish to make that data widely available even though it may be helpful when seeking funding or engaging in regional climate adaptation planning.
On April 24, 2019, the “Indigenous Data Sovereignty Summit in Arizona: Building shared understanding and identifying Tribal Leader needs” was held at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Summit attendees included tribal leaders and data practitioners, academic researchers, employees of the state of Arizona that have experience working with Native nations, students, and others. The day included grounding presentations on Indigenous data sovereignty in practice and facilitated discussions. Summit presenters shared how the Indigenous data sovereignty framework applied to their research with their own tribal communities. See the following policy brief from the event: Indigenous Data Sovereignty in Arizona: Setting an Agenda
