Genomic Data Colonialism in Scientific Practice: Stewarding Our Non-Human Kin and Relations through Indigenous Data Sovereignty

A major goal of settler-institutions in biodiversity and conservation genomics is to understand the complexity of life through the collectivization of large amounts of DNA across many organismal taxa. Hence, a common practice is to legitimate and mandate the open sharing of genomic databases among universities and other settler entities, often without due deference and respect for the long-term stewardship and care of non-human kin by global Indigenous peoples. This may lead to the bypassing of Indigenous communitarian ethics which are colonially placed in opposition to “Western” self-ascribed permissivity to previously collected biospecimens. Furthermore, the prioritization of ideologically colonial approaches is problematic as it situates Indigenous territories and traditional ecological knowledges as mere objects of Science, and it imposes disproportionate power dynamics to hypocritically instantiate itself as normative. These practices go against Indigenous Data Sovereignty, which is the recognition of Indigenous peoples’ and communities’ rights to exercise authority, agency, and autonomy over their stewarded genetically-associated knowledges and data. We will mainly focus on the scientific data practices regarding non-human living beings in the context of extractivism and the exploitation of territories and resources by scientists in terms of their perception of their own scientific labor as well as others’. We have conducted qualitative research via an international-scale survey in order to understand how biodiversity genomics researchers perceive their academic work, their praxes, and how they relate to extractivism to their understanding ofIndigenous genomic data sovereignty. The results obtained will be used for establishing recommendations and strategies complying with Indigenous Data Sovereignty Frameworks, that could be applied inside universities and research institutions in order to guarantee the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples and their rights to their own resources and lands.