Risk Area: Ethical

Ethical and cultural sensitivities

Based on findings from the literature review and online survey conducted by the Working Group, the ethical handling of sensitive collections, particularly those related to Indigenous cultural heritage, emerged as a significant concern. Institutions emphasized the importance of culturally sensitive protocols to manage public access, ensuring respect for community ownership, self-image rights, and ethical representation within digital spaces.

“Our images of our collection appear on foreign websites who use it for their products. We also do not want our images to be used with misleading/incorrect information.”

Museum, United Kingdom

Below, you will find the key ethical risks identified, actionable strategies to mitigate these risks, tools to support the implementation of the recommended actions, and good practices to get inspired.

Key Risks

• Ethical issues regarding culturally sensitive materials, especially Indigenous cultural heritage.

• Risks of misrepresentation or disrespect to communities connected to the collections.

Mitigation Strategies

• Community consultations: Engage with communities to gain insights into how materials should be represented and shared.

• Develop sensitivity protocols: Establish protocols for handling sensitive content, including restrictions on certain types of usage or visibility if requested by communities.

• Implement cultural guidance in metadata: Incorporate metadata tags to indicate culturally sensitive content, and recommended use practices, enhancing respectful interaction with the material.

• Provide ethical training for staff: Ensure team members understand ethical considerations around cultural heritage and the importance of cultural protocols.

Tools & Resources

• Cultural protocol guidelines: Available through consultations with communities, offering guidance on ethically managing cultural collections.

  • CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance

  • Ethical Sharing Card Game by the Ethics of Open Sharing Working Group of the Creative Commons Open Culture Platform for navigating ethical considerations.

    • General guide on how to play the game available on this Medium article.

    • Webinar: Ethics of Open Sharing with Creative Commons & Wiki Loves Living Heritage

  • Anderson, J. (2006), Cultural Protocols: A Framework, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (including a protocol template for a digital archive, pp. 28-31).

  • Janke, T. (2029) Protocols for Using First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts, Australia Council for the Arts

  • The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Protocols for Libraries, Archives and Information Services

  • ENRICH: Equity for Indigenous Research and Innovation Coordinating Hub

  • First Nations Information Governance Centre: The First Nations Principles of OCAP

  • Indigitization Toolkit

  • ARIPO: African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (2010) Swakopmund Protocol on the Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Expressions of Folklore.

• Recommendations for Holocaust Material Evidence and Testimony: Available by the Digital Holocaust Memory Project (most recent work: Landecker Digital Memory Lab)

  • Recommendations for Digitising Material Evidence of the Holocaust (available here and here).

  • Recommendations for Digitally Recording, Recirculating and Remixing Holocaust Testimony (available here and here).

• Sensitivity labeling in metadata: Use labels to flag sensitive items and guide users on appropriate use.

  • Traditional Knowledge (TK) Labels by Local Contexts

  • Collections Trust's Decolonising the Database resources

• Open source collection management systems: There are options for managing and sharing digital collections ethically.

  • Mukurtu CMS – free, mobile, and open source platform built with Indigenous communities to manage and share digital cultural heritage.

Good Practices

• The Museums Association’s Code of Ethics for Museums

• The Museum Association's page of case studies and scenarios on everyday ethics

• The Archives and Records Association's Code of Ethics

• The Oral History Society's legal and ethical guidance

• Local Contexts - Labels and notices in use

• The He Korahi Māori Framework at Auckland Museum

• The Teu Le Vā Framework at Auckland Museum

• Indigenous Archives Collective

• Indigenous Digital Archive

• The Mukurtu Showcase

• Native-Land.ca – web-based resource created in 2015 by Victor Temprano (and now a part of Native Land Digital) to draw attention to the importance of land and territories and the histories of colonization that have systematically dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their land.

• Palestine Open Maps – Developed by Ahmad Barclay, Majd Al-shihabi, Hanan Yazigi, Morad Taleeb, Henry Zaccak, and Bassam Barham, Palestine Open Maps is a platform that uses maps and data to retrace the transformation of human and natural geography in Palestine.

• Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal – a collaboration between the Spokane Tribe of Indians, the Confederated Tribes Of The Colville Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Indians, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation and Native American Programs at Washington State University. The Portal aggregates cultural materials from multiple repositories that have been chosen and curated by tribal representatives.

• The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts issued a statement disapproving the reuse of Jean-Léon Gérôme’s painting “Slave Market” (1866) by the German right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), while still enacting an Open Access policy, allowing for any reproduction of a public domain work to be downloaded high-resolution for free, as expressed in their FAQ page.

Use Cases

Curators don’t make Indigenous collections open access, because there is a risk of unethical sharing without proper decolonial protocols. This could lead to cultural exploitation and disrespect towards the communities, undermining trust and collaboration with Indigenous partners.

Institution managers don’t make certain heritage photographs open access, because of potential self-image rights violations and misuse for commercial purposes. This can harm the dignity of the individuals depicted and damage the institution’s commitment to ethical and respectful representation.

Digital collection managers don’t make certain culturally sensitive audio and video materials open access, because there’s a risk of them being exploited for commercial purposes without permission. This could disrespect the cultural heritage of the content and negatively affect the institution’s relationships with content owners and the public.

Data managers don’t make certain open datasets available without restrictions, because the information could be misused for illicit excavations or fuel conspiracy theories. This misuse can lead to cultural misinformation and damage public trust in scholarly research.