Cultural stewardship, including Indigenous knowledge stewardship and protection, is often a matter of governance grounded in Indigenous legal orders. It involves decisions about how knowledge and cultural materials are held, protected, passed down, and shared, and how responsibilities are carried in relationships within and beyond the Nation.

In Indigenous contexts, cultural stewardship is often a matter of governance grounded in Indigenous legal orders. It can involve Nation decisions about how knowledge and cultural materials are held, protected, passed down, taught, and shared within the Nation, including responsibilities that may be collective, family-held, or otherwise governed through specific legal traditions. It can also involve decisions about how the Nation engages with outsiders, institutions, technologies, and third parties where access, copying, reuse, or control may be at issue.

My role is to work at the direction of Indigenous clients to help shape stewardship priorities into effective governance approaches, including governance processes and tools where helpful. This can include internal work that supports cultural continuity, language transmission, and the long-term carrying forward of legal and governance traditions, as well as work that supports the Nation’s objectives in contexts where settler legal systems and institutions presume authority over use, access, and decision making. A related area of my practice that informs this work is privacy law, including the protection of sensitive and important information.

My experience in this area is also informed by related experience. Through the University of Victoria’s Juris Doctor and Juris Indigenarum Doctor program, a dual degree in Canadian common law and Indigenous legal orders that combines classroom learning with intensive, practicum-style terms in service of Indigenous Peoples, I had the opportunity to learn directly from Elders and knowledge keepers on the land about how legal traditions reflect relationships with home places, and how Nations are reasserting authority over lands, waters, and cultural property. I am also co-writing a book as part of a long-term collaborative project involving Indigenous knowledge keepers and other contributors, developed through sustained conversations and shared work about how Indigenous knowledge and Western science can work together in addressing our contemporary ecological and intersocietal crises.

Work in this area may include:

• Support for cultural stewardship and Indigenous knowledge issues in settler-dominated contexts, such as negotiations with publishers, producers, museums, universities, funders, consultants, or government bodies, where written tools and clear obligations may be necessary to protect Indigenous rights, responsibilities, and control.

• Indigenous knowledge stewardship and protection in projects involving third parties, such as contractors, researchers, institutions, or technology platforms.
• Negotiating and drafting agreements that protect Indigenous knowledge and cultural materials in ways that support Indigenous authority and are workable in applied projects.
• Permissions and governance approaches for projects that create, record, or compile cultural and knowledge materials, including oral histories and interviews, language and cultural recording projects, Nation research projects and reports, and governance documentation.
• Advice on structuring cultural and linguistic continuity projects to support successful project implementation and prevent potential disputes, internally and externally.
• Work involving museums, archives, and cultural institutions, including negotiating how cultural materials are held, accessed, reproduced, digitized, described, and returned, in ways guided first by Indigenous law and stewardship responsibilities and then by the practical realities of institutional systems.
• Support for cultural stewardship and Indigenous knowledge issues in settler-dominated contexts, such as negotiations with publishers, producers, museums, universities, funders, consultants, or government bodies, where written tools and clear obligations may be necessary to protect Indigenous rights, responsibilities, and control.