Rethinking Privacy Through Indigenous Data Sovereignty

Indigenous data sovereignty is often misunderstood as a diversity or inclusion issue. It is not. IDS is about governance, jurisdiction and inherent rights; the authority of Indigenous Nations to decide how their data is collected, used, shared and protected.

For privacy professionals, this distinction changes everything. Designing privacy programs on Indigenous land, and in relation with Indigenous peoples, requires more than adapting compliance models; it requires understanding sovereignty, power and law.

This session examines how IDS challenges conventional privacy and technology practices within Canadian legal and business contexts, including emerging technologies like AI, and how Indigenous-led approaches can shift privacy systems toward accountability, equity and long-term trust.

What you will learn:

• Why IDS must be treated as a rights and governance issue and built into privacy and AI programs from the start.

• How IDS principles challenge and reshape PIAs, consent models, security practices and privacy-by-design approaches.

• What IDS reveals about power, collective rights and relational accountability, and why these lessons matter globally, not just in Indigenous contexts.