ESA 2026
The Local Contexts team will present at the Ecological Society of America (ESA) 2026 Annual Meeting, held in-person in Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
Outreach Manager Emily Santhanam (Chickasaw) will present “Supporting Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Ecology: Leveraging Local Contexts Tools in Research for Recognition, Bridge-building, and Recompense” with Dr. Andrew Rominger, researcher at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and Co-Chair of the Local Contexts Hawai’i Institution/Researcher Network.
In this introductory workshop, attendees will learn about the recognition of Traditional and Biocultural Knowledge and resources in ecological research. We will cover main themes concerning Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov), Indigenous Data Governance (IDGov), and the global importance of each within research and beyond. We will walk through an overview of the Local Contexts initiative which seeks to operationalize IDSov and IDGov. This will include a presentation on Local Contexts Labels and Notices––digital markers of Indigenous rights and interests––which are operationalized through the Local Contexts Hub website. In the Hub, Labels and Notices can be applied to metadata and travel with the data as it moves through digital environments. We will share use cases of Labels and Notices applied in ecological research to highlight how these tools can support co-produced science conducted with local communities and increase local access to and inclusion in the process of Western science. Together, we will facilitate hands-on training in methods to support IDSov and IDGov and in use of the Local Contexts Hub website, with the objective of offering practical next steps for using these tools in researcher, community, or institution contexts.
See the conference website for more information and to register.
