Biocultural Labels and Notices
The use of Biocultural (BC) Labels and Notices supports transparency and
integrity in research engagements with Indigenous communities (e.g.
tribes, clans; Anderson & Hudson, 2020). The initiative is part of the
Local Contexts system (www.localcontexts.org, Anderson & Christen,
2019) that has successfully instilled information regarding the
Indigenous provenance, context, and appropriate use of collections into
digital infrastructures, through the use of Traditional Knowledge (TK)
Labels and Notices (Anderson, 2012). In response to the Nagoya Protocol
and concerns over Indigenous (genomic) Data Sovereignty (Carroll et al.,
2020; Hudson et al., 2020), the BC Labels/Notices extend the inclusion
of Indigenous interests to biological research (Anderson & Hudson,
2020). The Labels and Notices (Figure 1) are designed to provide a
highly visible (and in time, quickly recognizable), machine-readable,
persistent and durable connection between collaborating Indigenous
communities and: researchers, research projects and activity; the
collected genetic resources, generated Digital Sequence Information
(DSI), and knowledge; that exist as metadata in sample/data repositories
and can appear on published articles.
The BC Labels support Nagoya Protocol expectations around the disclosure
and origins of genetic resources (i.e. Provenance Label) and help to
define and communicate Indigenous community expectations and consent
about appropriate and future use of genetic resources and derived
benefits. Importantly, BC Labels may only be applied by an Indigenous
community and although the icons are generic in appearance, each Label
has a persistent unique identifier and the Label metadata (as text) is
customized to each use-case (potentially a research project, curated
collection, a specimen, or collaboration). These community customized
Labels are hosted on the Local Contexts Hub
(https://localcontexts.org/tk-label-hub) and offer an Indigenous
narrative regarding ABS that is not pre- or over-determined by
researchers.