Can-Peat Local Contexts Guide Part 1 is now available
Data and information about Canadian peatlands are valuable to a wide range of knowledge users concerned about the future of peatlands in the country. The Can-Peat project is particularly interested in information related to carbon storage and greenhouse gas exchange in Canadian peatlands to inform Canada’s climate action plan. To achieve that goal, many of the Can-Peat activities aim to make Canadian peatland data more findable and accessible, while also working to support Indigenous data sovereignty. One step that Can-Peat is taking towards this goal is using the Local Contexts Hub as a tool to help identify Indigenous data in its research activities.
Over the summer, the Indigenous Research Team at the University of Waterloo worked with several members of the Can-Peat project and Local Contexts to produce Part 1 of the Can-Peat Local Contexts Guide for Researchers. This document is designed to support researchers with existing data to apply Notices to these data sets in the Local Contexts Hub. The Guide contains an introduction to Indigenous data sovereignty, Can-Peat efforts on that topic, and an overview of Local Contexts. It then provides step-by-step guidance to help researchers register with the Local Contexts Hub, join the Can-Peat Project, and create sub-projects to start applying Notices to their data. The Guide also features a data decision tree to help researchers determine how to apply Notices to their data appropriately, frequently asked questions about Local Contexts and a handout about Local Contexts that can be shared with Indigenous community collaborators. We hope that this will be a valuable tool for researchers both within the Can-Peat project and beyond.
To help researchers get started, we are holding a series of drop-in sessions about registering for and using the Local Contexts Hub. These drop-in sessions will be held on Teams on October 21 from 11 am–12 pm ET, October 29, 1–2 pm ET and November 6, 3–4 pm ET. Contact canpeat@uwaterloo.ca if you’d like to attend a drop-in session and need a meeting invitation.
The Indigenous Research Team is currently working on Part 2 of the Guide. This will focus on supporting teams with ongoing collaborations with Indigenous communities, covering topics including data use agreements and how to support communities in the use of Labels.