Gillian Corless

The OCAP® principles—the Ownership, Control, Access and Possession of First Nations information resources by First Nations—were developed by the National Steering Committee of the First Nations and Inuit Regional Longitudinal Health Survey, the precursor to the First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC), in 1998. While OCAP® has important practical roots in the area of health and other quantitative data, the principles of Ownership, Control, Access and Possession of First Nations information resources by First Nations apply to all areas of knowledge. For twenty years OCAP® has evolved into an important tool for First Nations—and impacted other Indigenous communities, researchers and allies—in a wide range of research, data management and governance fields. For many reasons, however, OCAP® has also been widely misunderstood and misapplied. While perhaps wellintentioned, many academic researchers have assumed that OCAP® simply means “good ethics” with Indigenous communities generally and have avoided the complexities of what fully-realized OCAP® means to research with First Nations as self-determining nations. This workshop will focus on a core concern: research relationships with First Nations that, while they may satisfy minimum ethical standards, also fail to recognize and ultimately empower First Nations self-determination and ownership of research, data, and other information resources. Senior staff at FNIGC will outline the organization’s agenda of data sovereignty for First Nations and facilitate discussion on the different ways university REB’s are in relationship to this goal. Keywords: Indigenous research ethics