Full Statement: Data Sovereignty & Consent

Your Stories Belong to You

At Native Voices Rising, we believe data sovereignty is an extension of the sovereignty we resource in Native communities every day. Native societies have always collected, applied, and retained their own data, helping guide decision making and ensuring a sustainable world for future generations. Today, Indigenous data sovereignty serves as a principle reminder that all tribal nations have the right to govern the collection, application, and ownership of their own data and knowledge systems.

Native communities have the inherent right to govern their own data, from information and records to stories, images, knowledge, and history. Philanthropy has a long history of extracting from all of these types of data: requiring communities to perform their struggles for funding, harvesting their stories for reports, and holding data about Native peoples that Native peoples never controlled. We practice something different.

Consent, always. 

We only share grantee partner names, stories, photographs, and quotes with explicit permission, and consent given once is not consent given forever. grantee partners can change their minds at any time, and we will remove or update content when asked, without affecting their funding relationship in any way.

Communities control their narratives. 

Grantee partners decide how their work is described, review content about them before it’s published, and tell their stories in their own words wherever possible. We practice asset-based storytelling. We don’t engage in deficit narratives or images of struggle to move donors.

Protection where visibility carries risk. 

Some of our grantee partners do work that draws opposition: defending land and water, confronting extractive industries, protecting their communities. We never publish information that could compromise anyone’s safety or organizing, and grantee partners may choose not to be listed publicly at all. Receiving funding from NVR never requires public visibility.

Data minimalism. 

We collect only the information we need to move resources well, we don’t sell or share personal data, and application information is held in confidence, reviewed only by our community reviewers and staff for the purpose of grantmaking and programming.

Cultural knowledge stays home. 

We do not ask grantee partners to disclose ceremonial, sacred, or culturally protected knowledge in applications or reports,  and if such knowledge is shared with us in relationship or conversation, it is never published or repeated.

Our practice is guided by the growing global movement for Indigenous data sovereignty.

This includes the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, and Ethics). We are always learning, and we welcome grantee partners telling us how we can hold their information in a better way. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Rowen at rowen[at]nativevoicesrising.org.