Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. The Notices work to activate researcher and institutional responsibility to identify potential Indigenous rights and interests. Decolonial research methodologies insist that Indigenous interests should be addressed and included in any research at the first instance. This means that Indigenous peoples are more likely to be connected to the research and its results and derive benefits from it in the future. Adding the Notice, as a first step, opens the space for those rights and interests to be clarified and expanded on by Indigenous communities over time.

The Institution Notices were designed to be applicable to any institution or repository. If you’re interested in using the Notices at your institution, please check the additional resources for getting started, or reach out to the Local Contexts team.

Yes. The TK and the BC Notice were designed so that they could be used separately and/or together.

Yes. The Notices were developed to make visible existing Indigenous rights and interests that derive from research contexts. Increasingly publishers are supporting greater transparency and integrity in research, and the Notices help do this. If you are interested in using a Notice for a publication, please contact the Local Contexts team.

The Notices operationalize the CARE Principles for the Governance of Indigenous Peoples Data. Specifically, they help researchers and institutions make clear and visible Indigenous rights as a standard research responsibility. By connecting Indigenous peoples to research conducted on Indigenous lands and waters, the Notices also increase capacity for Indigenous peoples to derive collective benefit from this research. The Notices support the application of Labels which reflect Indigenous ethics and protocols of engagement, collaboration and partnership.

Historical Indigenous collections are extremely difficult to find because they are mis-labelled, misattributed, or have missing information. This makes an ongoing connection to collections by Indigenous peoples and communities a very slow and labor-intensive process. The Notices will help make Indigenous collections and data Findable and Accessible in the future. The Notices will help make Indigenous collections and data FAIR.

Yes. You can add a Notice at any time during your research. You may also develop Labels for your community working with the appropriate community authority/ies.

All the Local Contexts tools work together to support the proper recognition of Indigenous rights and interests in traditional knowledge and biocultural data. Each Local Contexts tool requires collaboration between communities and institutions and/or communities and researchers. The TK Labels communicate ongoing Indigenous relationships, obligations, and responsibilities to information and data as well as expectations for its future circulation. Their implementation encourages researchers and institutions to adopt new practices.

The Institution Notices are specifically for archives, museums, libraries, universities, and data repositories that are engaging in processes of collaboration and trust building with Indigenous and other marginalized communities who have been excluded and written out of the record through colonial processes of documentation and record keeping. These Notices are useful to communities because they communicate in what capacity institutions are willing to work with Indigenous and local communities.

The Notices are generated in the Local Contexts Hub. When a Notice is generated, a notification can be sent directly to the relevant community. If they are also users of the Local Contexts Hub this can be done automatically. If not, an email notification can be sent to the relevant community or the notification sits in the Hub until the relevant community connects to the Hub.

All the TK tools work together to safeguard traditional knowledge in Indigenous communities, regardless of if they’re being used by a community itself or cultural institution. Because each TK tool requires collaboration between communities and institutions, their implementation represents a relationship of best practices that communicates to viewers and visitors about the nature of the object and what it means to the community.

Institution Notices are a valuable asset for any university, museum, library, archive, cultural organization or data repository. They communicate to Indigenous communities and local organizations that an institution is open to collaborate and willing to do the work of going through collections to determine what items need proper cultural attribution and additional community perspectives.

The Institution Notices are a pathway for implementing TK Labels from Indigenous communities, and can start the process of meaningful collaboration between institutions and communities.

Implementing Institution Notices at your university, library, museum, cultural organization or data repository is easy to do. Please contact the Local Contexts team as we are happy to talk through the small steps needed.

Notices can be displayed on institutional landing pages, website pages and promotional/marketing materials of institutions to easily signify to Indigenous communities and organizations that the institution is either open to community collaboration, or that cultural information regarding materials and exhibitions is missing or incomplete. You can also easily link back to the Local Contexts project so visitors can get more information on the Notices as well as learn about the TK Labels and Licenses.

Find more information in our Institution Notices Style and Usage Guide here.

Researcher accounts are for individuals. Unlike community and institution accounts, others cannot join a researcher account. The individual is a single member of the account. You can have multiple accounts — for example, an individual can be a member of their community’s account and have a researcher account. Individuals with researcher accounts can collaborate with others by adding them as a contributor to a Project within the Hub.

All account profiles and their basic information, for instance organization or entity name, location, description, and number of members and Labels/Notices applied, are visible on the Local Contexts Registry. Individual user profiles are not visible.

On the My Profile page, click on Settings to update your personal information, such as your name, email, and password. When you are in an account, click on Settings to update that account’s information, such as the account’s name and contact person.

Existing Labels can be added to the Hub by following “What is the Label customization process?”

Editing Labels will not be available in Version One of the Hub but edits to Label text will be implemented in future Hub versions. Similarly, archival versions of Labels will be retained but this function is not yet in place for Hub v1.

Notices on the Hub are generated through Projects. To add existing Notices to the Hub, members of institution and researcher accounts can create a Project on the Project page of their account.

Editing a Project will not be available in Version One of the Hub but edits to the Project’s text will be implemented in future Hub versions. Similarly, archival versions of Projects will be retained but this function is not yet in place for Hub v1.

A wealth of introductory information as well as examples of Labels in use can be found on the Local Contexts website.

With regards to technical support, an API Implementation Guide is available on the Local Contexts website and documentation on the Hub’s API can be found on the API GitHub. As we further develop the Hub, video tutorials will be added; please feel free to send any questions, comments, or issues to our team as we appreciate your thoughts and feedback.

Connecting your institutional tools to the Local Context Hub will occur via our API. Please see the API Implementation Guide page.

Institutions and researchers can always register on the Hub on their own. Through the Hub’s API, institutions are searchable via their unique ID (which is auto-generated when the institution registers with the Hub). Projects are searchable by their unique ID or title.

Similarly, researchers are assigned an auto-generated unique ID upon registration which is searchable.

Institutions or researchers will be associated with the projects that they create. For more information on finding unique IDs, please see the API Implementation Guide page.

Unique IDs are assigned to Projects created in the Hub.

October 2021 is the soft launch of Version One (V1) of the Local Contexts Hub. Thank you for your interest, contributions, and patience as we continue to refine this tool in order to make it as useful and effective as possible. Subsequent major versions may follow in the future and will appear as V2, V3, and so on.

Currently, the Local Contexts Hub’s API is read-only/PULL requests only.

Currently, there are no API keys required to access the Local Contexts Hub API.

Yes, sometimes certain errors on the site will need to be fixed as soon as possible in which case the site will go into maintenance mode to get it fixed fast.