These documents come from Indigenous nations, collectives, and communities across multiple jurisdictions. They include foundational declarations, data sharing agreement templates, governance frameworks, research ethics protocols, and implementation toolkits.
No document transfers directly. Jurisdiction, legal context, and community values shape what works. Use these as starting points — to understand what others have done, borrow language that fits, and identify gaps your community will need to fill.
This collection prioritizes documents that are publicly available, Indigenous-authored or Indigenous-led, and directly adaptable. It is not exhaustive. If you know of a resource that belongs here, contact us.
Foundational Declarations & Principles
These documents assert rights and define terms. They are reference points for policy language, not implementation tools on their own.
Te Mana Raraunga’s foundational principles brief defines Māori data, Māori data sovereignty, and Māori data governance, and articulates six core principles: Rangatiratanga (authority), Whakaāhua (representation), Whakatutura (stewardship), Ngā Maru (ethics), Whanaungatanga (relationships), and Kaitiakitanga (guardianship). Grounded in Treaty of Waitangi obligations. Widely cited across international Indigenous data sovereignty literature.
Best for: Building definitional language into policies; grounding governance frameworks in Indigenous relational values; research ethics review processes.
View document →The founding charter of the Māori Data Sovereignty Network. Asserts that data is a living taonga (treasure) with strategic value to Māori, and outlines the network’s core commitments. Shorter and more accessible than the principles brief — useful as a plain-language reference for community-level discussions.
Best for: Community education; policy preamble language.
View document →Produced from the 2018 Indigenous Data Sovereignty Summit in Canberra. Endorsed by delegates representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Defines Indigenous data, Indigenous data sovereignty, and Indigenous data governance for the Australian context, and asserts communities’ right to abstain from data processes inconsistent with these principles.
Best for: Grounding Australian and Pacific context policies; asserting community authority over data processes including AI.
View document →Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession — the foundational framework for First Nations data governance in Canada. One of the earliest articulations of Indigenous data sovereignty principles globally. FNIGC offers training and certification; the principles themselves are publicly documented.
Best for: Research partnership agreements; data governance committee charters; understanding the historical development of Indigenous data sovereignty frameworks.
View document →Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics. Developed as a complement to the FAIR data principles, explicitly centering Indigenous peoples’ rights and interests in data governance. Endorsed by Indigenous data sovereignty networks across multiple jurisdictions and increasingly referenced in academic research ethics standards.
Best for: Researcher-facing policies; institutional data governance frameworks; AI ethics reviews involving Indigenous data.
View document →Data Sharing Agreement Templates
These are adaptable documents — actual templates you can modify for your context.
A comprehensive data sharing agreement template governing creation, collection, exchange, storage, use, and dissemination of culturally sensitive, confidential, or proprietary information. Developed by the largest federally recognized tribe in California. Released under a Creative Commons-compatible license explicitly for adaptation by other tribal governments.
Covers: Data categories, access controls, confidentiality obligations, security protocols, termination clauses, sovereignty protections.
Best for: Tribal governments building data sharing agreements with research institutions, federal agencies, or technology vendors. The sovereignty-forward framing is more protective than standard institutional templates.
Note: US tribal legal context. Adaptation required for other jurisdictions — especially provisions referencing federal Indian law.
View document →A shorter template covering the core elements of a data sharing agreement: parties, purpose, data description, access and confidentiality terms, use restrictions, and termination. Includes provisions specific to American Indian and Alaska Native communities, including IRB approval requirements for research involving tribal citizens.
Best for: Starting point for communities that want a simpler, modifiable agreement before building toward something more comprehensive.
Note: US-centric framing. Requires adaptation for other contexts.
View document →Governance Frameworks & Reports
Community and government-level frameworks that show how Indigenous nations have translated sovereignty principles into operational policy.
One of the most comprehensive publicly available tribal AI governance documents. Grounds technology policy explicitly in Cherokee Community Values and recommends a full governance architecture: AI and Data Governance Committees, NIST AI Risk Management Framework adoption, standardized citizen ID systems, and STEM education investment. Frames AI and data sovereignty as extensions of self-governance — not separate technical concerns.
Best for: Tribal governments building internal AI governance structures from scratch; understanding how to integrate cultural values into technical policy.
Note: Specific to Cherokee Nation’s governance structure and US federal context, but the values-integration approach is transferable.
View document →Australian federal government framework guiding agencies on implementing Indigenous data governance across the full data lifecycle — from conceptualization through dissemination and reuse. Grounded in Maiam nayri Wingara principles and the OCCAAARS Framework for First Nations Data Sovereignty. Significant because it operationalizes Indigenous data sovereignty principles within a large government bureaucracy.
Best for: Indigenous governments and advocacy organizations engaging with national/state-level agencies on data governance; understanding how IDS principles translate into institutional policy.
Note: This is a government-to-government framework, not community-authored. Useful as a reference for what to demand from agencies, or as a model for institutional policy language.
View document →A 50+ page guidebook covering digital sovereignty concepts, infrastructure considerations, and governance frameworks — including AI governance protocols. Includes case studies from tribal nations. A foundational document for understanding how digital sovereignty extends and operationalizes political sovereignty.
Best for: Tribal governments early in digital sovereignty planning; community education on the full scope of digital sovereignty beyond data.
View document →Research Ethics & Protocols
Documents that govern how researchers — inside and outside of communities — engage with Indigenous data and knowledge.
A comprehensive research ethics framework requiring Indigenous community control over data at every stage of the research lifecycle. Section 4.1 (Indigenous Data Governance) specifies requirements for data management plans, including storage, access controls, community permission structures, and secondary use provisions. Increasingly adopted as a standard by Australian universities and research institutions.
Best for: Researchers working with Indigenous communities; institutions developing ethics review processes; communities evaluating research proposals.
View document →Peer-reviewed guidelines translating Māori data sovereignty principles into practical steps for evaluating or deploying AI systems. Covers meaningful partnership engagement, algorithmic transparency through open-source approaches, collective privacy frameworks, and building community capacity to govern AI systems independently — not just use vendor products. One of the few documents that directly addresses AI through an Indigenous data sovereignty lens.
Best for: Communities and researchers evaluating AI tools or vendors; AI developers seeking Indigenous-informed design standards.
Note: Most globally applicable document in this collection — not jurisdiction-specific.
View document →Toolkits & Implementation Guides
Practical tools for building and assessing data governance and AI readiness.
A structured self-assessment tool helping researchers and institutions evaluate their practices against Indigenous data sovereignty principles. Developed in the Australian context but applicable across research partnerships globally.
Best for: Research institutions; communities evaluating potential research partners.
View document →Designed for federal agencies, this toolkit covers organizational and system-level AI risk management, stakeholder mapping, Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs), and NIST controls alignment. Relevant because it addresses sovereign government entities with public trust obligations — a context structurally similar to tribal governments.
Best for: Tribal government IT and policy staff building AI risk management processes; understanding how federal AI governance frameworks are structured, and where they fall short for Indigenous contexts.
Note: Not Indigenous-authored. Useful as a reference for what federal agencies are required to do, which has direct implications for tribal-federal data relationships.
View document →Built by cohorts of the Emergence Fellowship — Indigenous professionals, academics, and community members. Organized into Learn and Protect sections, with policy templates, implementation guides, and curated resources for tribal governments.
Best for: Federally recognized tribes in the United States building or strengthening AI and data governance programs. The Learn/Protect structure makes it easier to navigate to the right resource for where your nation currently is.
Note: Primarily US tribal context; most useful for federally recognized tribes in the United States.
View document →Gaps in This Collection
This collection has real geographic gaps. Most publicly available Indigenous data sovereignty and AI governance documents come from the United States, Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Australia — nations where Indigenous data sovereignty movements have produced and published frameworks over the past two decades.
That distribution reflects institutional access and publication norms, not the breadth of Indigenous governance practice. Policy and protocol work is happening across the Pacific, Latin America, Africa, and Asia — much of it in community hands and not intended for public circulation. That is appropriate.
Where we are aware of specific gaps:
- Pacific Island nations: Significant Indigenous governance work exists, particularly in Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji, but AI-specific or data sovereignty policy documents are not yet widely published in accessible form.
- Latin America: COICA (Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin) and affiliated organizations engage with data rights in the context of environmental monitoring and territorial sovereignty, but AI-specific governance frameworks are still emerging.
- Africa: Indigenous data sovereignty as a named framework is less established in published form, though data governance work connected to community land rights and health research exists across multiple contexts.
- Arctic and Northern Europe: Sámi Council governance work addresses data and digital sovereignty, but AI-specific policy documents are limited.
Submit a Resource
If your nation, collective, or organization has developed a governance document — policy, template, protocol, or framework — that belongs in this collection, please share it. We are especially looking for resources from the Pacific, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and for anything specifically addressing AI rather than data sovereignty generally.