Every Indigenous community has cultural and biological knowledge within educational systems, archives, libraries, and museums that they do not own, do not control, and cannot govern circulation over. Issues of responsibility, ownership, as well as incomplete or significant mistakes in the metadata extend to every other knowledge asset or digital record building upon this information.
Local Contexts (www.LocalContexts.org) offers a digital labeling system, the Traditional Knowledge (TK) and Biocultural (BC) Labels and Notices, that work to enhance and legitimize locally based decision-making and Indigenous governance frameworks for determining ownership, access, and culturally appropriate conditions for sharing historical, contemporary, and future collections of cultural heritage and Indigenous data. This presentation will give an introduction to the Local Contexts initiative and how its TK and BC Labels and Notices are being used in various settings around the world.