International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples: A Talk by Maui Hudson
This month, in honor of International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, Variant Bio hosted a talk by Maui Hudson, Associate Professor of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Waikato in Aotearoa New Zealand. International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples was first pronounced by the United Nations General Assembly 30 years ago. Since then, it has been observed every year on August 9 to raise awareness of Indigenous rights and to recognize the achievements and contributions of Indigenous Peoples worldwide.
Variant Bio is fortunate to have had Maui sit on our Ethics Advisory Board as one of its founding members. He is also a founding member of Te Mana Raraunga Māori Data Sovereignty Network and the Global Indigenous Data Alliance. He holds a Master of Health Science with a focus on Ethics, and specializes in the interface between Māori knowledge and science, ethics and new technologies, and Indigenous Data Sovereignty.
Because Variant Bio partners on genomic research projects with Indigenous communities around the world — see, for example, a study on gout we carried out in Māohi Nui (French Polynesia) — questions regarding Indigenous Data Sovereignty are of particular relevance to the work we do. As Maui noted, “International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples invites us to think more deeply about issues of fairness, equity, and self-determination.” His talk delved into these themes, as well as the related topics of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights to Data, the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, and the Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels initiative.
Central to Maui’s talk was the idea of reciprocity in research, a theme that was also highlighted last year in a training provided for Variant Bio by members of the Center for the Ethics of Indigenous Genomic Research (CEIGR). Reciprocity provides a lens to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It is key to ensuring equity in research, and one of the ways it can be put into practice is through the adoption of concrete benefit-sharing initiatives (see, for example, Variant Bio’s approach to benefit sharing). Maui pushed this notion even further, noting that beyond benefit sharing, “power sharing” — whereby Indigenous communities have decision-making capacity regarding data governance and use — should be the ultimate goal.
“In the broader context of International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, people are looking for more collaborative models of business,” he concluded. “What else can companies like Variant Bio be doing in terms of power sharing with the communities they’re developing relationships with?”
