In Canada, First Nations have adopted some of these ideas about decolonizing research to inform projects they are involved in. They have outlined some broad guidelines to inform Indigenous research methodologies in the Canadian context. Developed by First Nations in Canada, the concept of OCAP – Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession – is a set of principles concerning data and information management with First Nations.
OCAP was originally developed through the National Aboriginal Health Organization (NAHO), where it was designed to protect Aboriginal control over data pertaining to health. The national not-for-profit organization was set up to address the needs of First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples. It closed in June 2012, after the federal government (through Health Canada) cut all funding to the organization. Read a CBC News story about the funding cuts here.
NAHO developed a research and discussion paper regarding the OCAP principles. Expressed as an application of self-determination in research, OCAP was coined by the Steering Committee of the First Nations Regional Longitudinal Health Survey. You can read about the development of the OCAP principles in this 2004 paper by Brian Schnarch, a researcher with the First Nations Centre at NAHO.
Read more about NAHO’s work in a three-part series about Aboriginal resilience and First Nations communities in crisis. In 2009, the Journal of Aboriginal Health published a series of multidisciplinary research papers that explore various dimensions of First Nation crisis. This work was supported by the First Nation and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada and NAHO. It aims to provoke an informed debate and support positive change.
First Nations Information governance Centre
Although NAHO’s funding has since been cut, the OCAP principles remain in place. Today, they are associated with (and trademarked by) the First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC), and tied to the work of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN). In the past, the First Nations Statistical Institute was also tied to this work, although that organization’s funding has since been cut (in 2012). The videos below explain some of the work of the First Nations Information Governance Centre and the application of OCAP principles.
OCAP also takes place in local Indigenous communities – individual First Nations adapt and express OCAP in ways that are the most appropriate to them: the principles are diverse and situated in the lived reality of people in communities.
You can read more about the OCAP principles at the link below, which leads to a document created by the FNIGC in 2014 – Ownership, Control, Access and Possession (OCAP®): The Path to First Nation Information Governance – First Nations Inherent Right to Govern First Nations Data.
According to the AFN, OCAP is designed to support First Nations in governing their communities. Self-governance is about more than just control over resources: it encompasses control over self-identity too. The AFN suggests this can ultimately lead to a higher state of well-being for First Nations people, governments, and communities. First Nations have always maintained an understanding and relationship to their information. They have respected and recognized certain protocols pertaining to the collection, use, and sharing of information and data. For example, oral traditions include songs and stories shared among communities, families, and individuals. This process involved a complex set of rights and responsibilities that people adhered to when accessing and sharing information.
The principles of OCAP emerged as a means to adopt these traditional ideas in the contemporary context of self-government. They outline a framework that First Nations can use to assert control over their information. When engaging with external groups like government agencies or academic institutions, OCAP provides a set of principles that can be invoked to ensure legislative and policy protection. OCAP was also developed as a political response to counteract the harms done to First Nations by researchers. In the past, social scientists and others treated First Nations as specimens rather than people. Studies failed to respect First Nations ways of knowing, and often extracted information from communities without giving anything in return. In this context, OCAP is a way to ensure that First Nations retain control over their information, so they can use it to support their own objectives.
In recent years, the concept of Indigenous data sovereignty has been theorized and practiced by different Indigenous Nations, communities and organizations in ways that reflect similar goals as those expressed in the OCAP principles. For example, this page at the University of Arizona’s Native Nations Institute provides information about Indigenous data sovereignty in the U.S. context.