Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
An Australian research agency references Maiam nayri Wingara principles in its Indigenous data policy.
- Is an instance
A research project aligns its data governance with Maiam nayri Wingara's guidance in addition to community-specific protocols.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A data governance framework that does not engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community priorities does not align with Maiam nayri Wingara's principles.
- Not an instance
Aggregate national statistics published without community engagement are not, in themselves, an expression of Maiam nayri Wingara's mission.
Editorial commentary
Maiam nayri Wingara is the Indigenous Data Sovereignty Collective for Australia, established by delegates at the 2018 Indigenous Data Sovereignty Summit. It works with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, governments, and research institutions to articulate and operationalise Indigenous Data Sovereignty in the Australian context, asserting that data by and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples must serve community-determined priorities and be governed under community protocols and authority.
The five principles
Maiam nayri Wingara’s Indigenous Data Sovereignty principles, formalised in the 2018 Indigenous Data Sovereignty Communique, are: Control (Indigenous peoples should govern the data ecosystem, including its creation, collection, access, analysis, and infrastructure); Contextual (data must be disaggregated and available at individual, community, and First Nations levels, not only as national aggregates); Relevant (data should support and empower sustainable self-determination and effective self-governance); Accountable (data structures and ecosystems must be answerable to Indigenous peoples and First Nations); and Protective (data governance must respect individual and collective Indigenous interests, including cultural and intellectual property rights).
How it relates to the other national/global bodies
Maiam nayri Wingara is the Australian national counterpart to Te Mana Raraunga, the Maori Data Sovereignty Network in Aotearoa New Zealand — both are nationally grounded Indigenous-led bodies articulating their own communities’ data rights, rather than a single shared framework applied identically across jurisdictions. Both contribute to and align with the international Global Indigenous Data Alliance (GIDA), which authored the cross-jurisdictional CARE Principles. A researcher or data steward working with Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander data should engage with Maiam nayri Wingara’s principles and relevant community protocols specifically, not treat CARE alone, or another jurisdiction’s framework, as a substitute.
Worked example
An Australian government research agency references Maiam nayri Wingara’s five principles directly in its Indigenous data governance policy, alongside CARE, when describing how it will handle data collected from or about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Counter-example
A national statistics release that aggregates Indigenous-identified data only at the country level, with no disaggregation and no community engagement in how it was collected or published, does not meet the Contextual or Control principles, even if the data itself is technically accurate and open.
References
- Maiam nayri Wingara Indigenous Data Sovereignty Collective, 2018 Indigenous Data Sovereignty Communique, maiamnayriwingara.org.
Also known as
Maiam nayri Wingara Indigenous Data Sovereignty Collective
Machine-readable encodings
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