Status: voluntary. No Australian law yet gives effect to Indigenous data sovereignty. The Australian Government's Framework for Governance of Indigenous Data (2024) is written for Australian Public Service agencies, not for businesses. What follows is how we work by choice.

What it means

Indigenous data is information or knowledge, in any format, that is about Indigenous peoples and may affect them, collectively or individually.

Indigenous data sovereignty is the right of Indigenous peoples to exercise ownership over that data: how it is created, collected, accessed, analysed, interpreted, managed, shared and reused.

Indigenous data governance is the right of Indigenous peoples to decide what, how and why that data is collected, accessed and used.

These meanings were set down at the Indigenous Data Sovereignty Summit in Canberra on 20 June 2018, convened by the Australian Indigenous Governance Institute with the Maiam nayri Wingara Indigenous Data Sovereignty Collective. Read about the communique.

Our position

• Data sovereignty is part of self-determination. It already belongs to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It is not ours, or any organisation's, to grant.
• So we treat it as something to be enabled. Our part is to work in ways that leave people and communities in control of information about them.
• Koaching the Gap is 100% Indigenous owned. That does not make what people share with us ours.

What we do today

Each of these is already in our terms, policies and statements. They are gathered here so they can be read in one place.

1. We collect only what the work needs. See our Privacy Policy, clause 3.
2. Identity, community, Country and cultural knowledge are treated as sensitive information. We collect them only with consent. They are kept in our Microsoft 365 workspace, which stores data in Australia, and not in our practice management workspace, which is held in the United States. See our Privacy Policy, clause 6.
3. Cultural knowledge stays with the people and communities who hold it. We do not use it for marketing, we do not share it without express consent, and we keep it out of the artificial intelligence (AI) tools we use. See Cultural safety and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP).
4. You can see, correct or delete what we hold about you, except what the law requires us to keep. Ask us and we tell you which platforms hold your information. See our Privacy Policy, clause 16.
5. We do not record a session unless we have both agreed it in writing beforehand. Where we record, it starts when the business part of the session begins. See our Terms and Conditions, clause 14.