A UArizona researcher is at the forefront of Indigenous data sovereignty. The concept known as IDSov emphasizes Indigenous Peoples’ right to control data about their people, lands and cultures. Stephanie Russo Carroll, associate director of the University of Arizona Native Nations Institute, has focused her career on encouraging institutions to adopt policies and practices that recognize that right. In 2015, Carroll was completing her doctoral dissertation at the University of Arizona. Her research focused on programs run by six Native American tribes in the U.S. to improve the health of their communities. The work involved compiling data that could be easily compared across all six tribes – birth and death rates, the rates of mothers who were breastfeeding and other figures. But Carroll – who is Dene/Ahtna, a citizen of the village of Kluti-Kaah in Alaska – struggled to find a single piece of data that could be compared across all six tribes. That was because state agencies and the federal government defined and controlled the data, rather than the tribes themselves, she said.
Indigenous perspectives have often been excluded from U.S. historical narratives. A Yale University professor hopes to spotlight the importance of those perspectives in a new book. Ned Blackhawk is a professor of History and American studies at Yale University. He is also a member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada. Blackhawk said the Indigenous narrative of early American history has been largely erased or ignored in the broader American educational system. “In these long years of teaching Native American history, I’ve really always felt like there wasn’t a sufficient kind of common text or interpretive work to offer my students,” Blackhawk said. His book is titled, “The Re-discovery of America.”
Those are your headlines at this hour. I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI News center.
