Sámi perspectives on biodiversity data governance: when biodiversity data travel, does their governance travel with them?

What this was about

Máret Heatta, a Sámi biologist, uses lichen monitoring data she helped collect on NINA permanent plots on the Finnmark Plateau in 2005 as a thought experiment for Indigenous data governance. She shows how an apparently simple lichen occurrence record is also information about Sámi reindeer winter grazing lands, and how a report finding of increased lichen cover became a newspaper headline of 'better grazing' without reindeer herders' knowledge of snow, ice and access. She grounds Indigenous data sovereignty in UNDRIP and self-determination, contrasts FAIR with CARE, and surveys Sámi and international initiatives (GIDA Sápmi, the 2023 Tromsø conference, SODA, Finnish Sámi research ethics guidelines, IEEE 2890-2025, the GBIF Indigenous data governance task group, Māori data infrastructure), closing with questions for biodiversity infrastructures about existing, reused and newly collected data.

Why it matters. For GBIF and TDWG, the talk challenges the assumption that species occurrence data are neutral and 'not about people', and sets out concrete questions (recognising the significance of existing data, keeping context attached on reuse, building CARE in at collection) that the GBIF Indigenous data governance task group and standards such as Local Contexts labels and IEEE 2890 are starting to address.

In the room

• The same lichen occurrence record is an occurrence for an infrastructure, ecological evidence for a researcher, land-use evidence for a planning authority, and pasture information for a reindeer herder.
• Indigenous data include data about individuals, about collectives, and about non-human relations (land, water, ecosystems, plants, animals); biodiversity data need not mention a Sámi person to be relevant to Indigenous data governance.
• Indigenous data sovereignty begins with rights and self-determination (UNDRIP, especially Articles 11-13), not with data; Indigenous data governance is putting that authority into practice.
• Two dimensions: data for governance (access to data for own decision-making) and governance of data (authority over how data are governed).
• FAIR assessment can largely be a technical exercise, whereas CARE requires engagement with people across the whole data lifecycle; technically reusable is not the same as appropriate or ethical reuse.
• The NINA report's measured increase in lichen cover and thickness was communicated publicly as 'better grazing', although grazing conditions for herders also depend on snow, ice, access and reindeer land use; more lichen does not by itself mean better grazing.
• Sámi historical experience of being researched, including racial biology and the extraction of remains and objects, explains caution towards data sharing; trust must be earned, not requested.

Notable moments