An official website of the United States government
In this paper, we challenge the ACL community to reckon with historical and ongoing colonialism by adopting a set of ethical obligations and best practices drawn from the Indigenous studies literature. While the vast majority of NLP research focuses on a very small number of very high resource languages (English, Chinese, etc), some work has begun to engage with Indigenous languages. No research involving Indigenous language data can be considered ethical without first acknowledging that Indigenous languages are not merely very low resource languages. The toxic legacy of colonialism permeates every aspect of interaction between Indigenous communities and outside researchers. To this end, we propose that the ACL draft and adopt an ethical framework for NLP researchers and computational linguists wishing to engage in research involving Indigenous languages.
more »
« less
An ethical crisis in ancient DNA research: Insights from the Chaco Canyon controversy as a case study
In recent years, the field of paleogenomics has grown into an exciting and rapidly advancing area of scientific inquiry. However, scientific work in this field has far outpaced the discipline’s dialogue about research ethics. In particular, Indigenous peoples have argued that the paleogenomics revolution has produced a “vampire science” that perpetuates biocolonialist traditions of extracting Indigenous bodies and heritage without the consent of, or benefits to, the communities who are most affected by this research. In this article, we explore these ethical issues through the case study of a project that sequenced the ancient DNA (aDNA) of nine Ancestral Puebloan people from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. By providing a “thick description” of this controversy, we are able to analyze its metanarratives, periodization, path dependency, and historical contingencies. We conclude that the paleogenomics revolution needs to include an ethical revolution that remakes the field’s values, relationships, forms of accountability, and practices.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10297289
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Social Archaeology
- Volume:
- 21
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1469-6053
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 157 to 178
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
This material is primarily based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (grant no. DGE-1321845). Addressing complex social-ecological issues requires all relevant sources of knowledge and data, especially those held by communities who remain close to the land. Centuries of oppression, extractive research practices, and misrepresentation have hindered balanced knowledge exchange with Indigenous communities and inhibited innovation and problem-solving capacity in all scientific fields. A recent shift in the research landscape reflects a growing interest in engaging across diverse communities and ways of knowing. Scientific discussions increasingly highlight the inherent value of Indigenous environmental ethics frameworks and processes as the original roadmaps for sustainable development planning, including their potential in addressing the climate crisis and related social and environmental concerns. Momentum in this shift is also propelled by an increasing body of research evidencing the role of Indigenous land stewardship for maintaining ecological health and biodiversity. However, a key challenge straining this movement lies rooted in colonial residue and ongoing actions that suppress and co-opt Indigenous knowledge systems. Scientists working with incomplete datasets privilege a handful of narratives, conceptual understandings, languages, and historical contexts, while failing to engage thousands of collective bodies of intergenerational, place-based knowledge systems. The current dominant colonial paradigm in scientific research risks continued harmful impacts to Indigenous communities that sustain diverse knowledge systems. Here, we outline how ethical standards in researcher practice can be raised in order to reconcile colonial legacies and ongoing settler colonial practices. We synthesize across Indigenous and community-based research protocols and frameworks, transferring knowledge across disciplines, and ground truthing methods and processes in our own practice, to present a relational science working model for supporting Indigenous rights and reconciliation in research. We maintain that core Indigenous values of integrity, respect, humility, and reciprocity should shape researcher responsibilities and methods applied in order to raise ethical standards and long-term relational accountability regarding Indigenous lands, rights, communities, and our shared futures.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)The study of ancient genomes has burgeoned at an incredible rate in the last decade. The result is a shift in archaeological narratives, bringing with it a fierce debate on the place of genetics in anthropological research. Archaeogenomics has challenged and scrutinized fundamental themes of anthropological research, including human origins, movement of ancient and modern populations, the role of social organization in shaping material culture, and the relationship between culture, language, and ancestry. Moreover, the discussion has inevitably invoked new debates on indigenous rights, ownership of ancient materials, inclusion in the scientific process, and even the meaning of what it is to be a human. We argue that the broad and seemingly daunting ethical, methodological, and theoretical challenges posed by archaeogenomics, in fact, represent the very cutting edge of social science research. Here, we provide a general review of the field by introducing the contemporary discussion points and summarizing methodological and ethical concerns, while highlighting the exciting possibilities of ancient genome studies in archaeology from an anthropological perspective.more » « less
-
ABSTRACT. Well-being and equity are increasingly identified as integral to environmental governance and improved sustainability outcomes. Greater consideration of these dimensions has generated calls for more data and new methodologies capable of collecting, evaluating, and converting social and cultural data into formats deemed more useful to decision makers. These efforts expose gaps and challenges related to an over reliance on quantitative data, especially when it comes to adequately accounting for the well-being of Indigenous communities. Located along the western shore of Nanvarpak (Lake Iliamna) in southwest Alaska, this paper examines Indigenous conceptions of well-being and provides insights on how to better account for the well-being of Indigenous communities in sustainable governance. Carried out in partnership with the Tribal Nation of Igyaraq (Igiugig), we draw on ethnographic and interview data to identify and examine three foundational elements of Indigenous well-being: (1) land relations or nunaka (my land, my birthplace), inclusive of one’s responsibility to ensure continuation of a way of life defined by connections to ancestral lands; (2) sovereignty; and (3) effective governance. We pay special attention to the implications of Indigenous well-being as primarily expressed and achieved through enactments of sovereignty and nation-building. We draw attention to the need for greater investment in diverse scientific expertise and data but caution against assuming that more science will lead to better governance. There is a need to acknowledge the ways in which dominant Western science-policy structures do not serve Indigenous communities. Our research suggests that you cannot adequately account for Indigenous well-being without explicit consideration of governance, and the often taken for granted value assumptions and political conditions that quietly frame policy debates and scientific understandings of what data are considered useful and what impacts are considered acceptable. This paper demonstrates the fundamental importance of centering sovereignty in not only well-being and equity considerations, but as a central tenet of ethical scientific inquiry and environmental governance more broadly.more » « less
-
The industrial revolution of the 19th century marked the onset of an era of machines and robots that transformed societies. Since the beginning of the 21st century, a new generation of robots envisions similar societal transformation. These robots are biohybrid: part living and part engineered. They may self-assemble and emerge from complex interactions between living cells. While this new era of living robots presents unprecedented opportunities for positive societal impact, it also poses a host of ethical challenges. A systematic, nuanced examination of these ethical issues is of paramount importance to guide the evolution of this nascent field. Multidisciplinary fields face the challenge that inertia around collective action to address ethical boundaries may result in unexpected consequences for researchers and societies alike. In this Perspective, we i) clarify the ethical challenges associated with biohybrid robotics, ii) discuss the need for and elements of a potential governance framework tailored to this technology; and iii) propose tangible steps toward ethical compliance and policy formation in the field of biohybrid robotics.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605321991600
