Culturally Sensitive Information
With DAILP being a community-based and community-led archive for language persistence, indigenous data sovereignty is a main priority. DAILP’s collection and publications are approached with thoughtfulness and respect for the Cherokee community.
All published items are selected and approved by community members. We do not publish publicly sensitive materials. Community members decide the relationship between what is translated into the collection and what is not translated are decisions made by community members.
Here is the process of publishing documents in DAILP’s collection:
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Our community members select and provide the documents to be published and translated.
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When we receive the documents, select members of the DAILP team review the information carefully.
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If there is any content that has the potential to be culturally sensitive or private information, it is brought to the community members’ attention for further review.
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The decision to proceed with publication or to omit any information after their review lies solely with the community members.
As part of the global initiative Local Contexts, the Traditional Knowledge Labels are a tool created by and for Indigenous communities and organizations to protect the intellectual property of Tribal members. They are labels that provide organization, classification, and clarification to existing indigenous community rules in terms of circulation and translation. The TK Labels are used to help navigate and protect the accessibility and use of traditional, culturally sensitive, and sacred knowledge.
In the redesign of our website, DAILP has integrated TK Labels into our Metadata display should it be necessary for future collections.
DAILP’s implementation of these Labels adhere to the practice of the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. DAILP’s current collections do not contain Traditional Knowledge as decided by community members.
Disclaimer: The following overviews of the TK Label categories are pulled from Local Contents’ website
The different categories of TK Labels are: “Provenance Labels”, “Protocol Labels”, and “Permission Labels”. There are specific guidelines and specifications for adapting and displaying these TK Labels.
These Labels identify the group or sub-group that is the primary cultural authority for the material, and/or recognizes other interest in the materials.
The list of Provenance Labels that can be used are:
- TK Attribution (TK A)
- TK Clan (TK CL)
- TK Family (TK F)
- TK Multiple Communities (TK MC)
- TK Community Voice (TK CV)
- TK Creative (TK CR)
These Labels outline traditional protocols associated with access to this material and invite viewers to respect community protocols.
The list of Protocol Labels that can be used are:
- TK Verified (TK V)
- TK Non-Verified (TK NV)
- TK Seasonal (TK S)
- TK Women General (TK WG)
- TK Men General (TK MG)
- TK Men Restricted (TK MR)
- TK Women Restricted (TK WR)
- TK Culturally Sensitive (TK CS)
- TK Secret / Sacred (TK SS)
These Labels indicate what activities the community has approved as generally acceptable. Other uses require direct engagement with primary cultural authorities.
The list of Permission Labels that can be used are:
- TK Open to Commercialization (TK OC)
- TK Non-Commercial (TK NC)
- TK Community Use Only (TK CO)
- TK Outreach (TK O)
- TK Open to Collaboration (TK CB)
The Local Contexts Hub Application Programming Interface (API) permits communication between two computers over the internet. Making a request through API allows for users to gather information from the Local Contexts Hub to publish to websites. API is needed for labels to communicate ongoing information and expectations for Indigenous data circulation. Applying the labels using API promotes research encouragement and allows for automatic updates about any changes to implemented Labels or Projects. Some of these changes could be: Labels being added to a Project to replace Notices, changes to Label text, and additional Labels added or removed from a Project.
Local Contexts has an API Guide on the website that includes:
- More information about the interface
- How to connect to API
- Guidelines for using API
**Additional general information and resources can be found on Local Contexts’ website.