Data Sovereignty

Executive Summary. This page explains the OCAP®, CARE, and Te Mana Raraunga data sovereignty principles and what they mean for developers building translation methods for Indigenous languages. Covers when community consent is required, how rosetta's api method architecture supports data sovereignty, and the ethical obligations of anyone working with Indigenous linguistic data.

Machine translation for Indigenous languages raises questions that don't exist for French or Japanese. Who owns the training data? Who controls how a language model speaks? Who decides whether a translation is good enough to publish?

The answer is always the community.

rosetta is built to support this. The api method keeps all linguistic resources server-side under community control. The plugin system separates the method from the tool. But the tool can't enforce ethics — this page explains the principles you should follow.

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OCAP® Principles

OCAP (Ownership, Control, Access, Possession) is a set of principles developed by the First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC) that establish how First Nations data should be collected, protected, used, and shared.

Principle	What It Means for Translation
Ownership	The community owns its linguistic data — dictionaries, grammars, parallel texts, coaching files, and any translations produced from them.
Control	The community controls how its language data is used, who has access, and what translation methods are acceptable.
Access	Community members have the right to access and manage their own language resources regardless of where they are stored.
Possession	The physical data (coaching files, dictionaries, model weights) must reside on infrastructure the community controls — not on a third-party cloud.

What OCAP means in practice

• Do not publish translations of an Indigenous language without explicit community authorization.
• Do not train models on community-provided linguistic data without a data-sharing agreement.
• Do not scrape community language resources from websites, social media, or educational materials.
• Use the api method so that prompts, coaching data, and dictionaries stay on community-controlled servers. The rosetta api method is a "dumb pipe" — it sends keys out and gets translations back. All linguistic IP stays server-side.
• Document provenance — the provenance field in the plugin manifest should list every resource used, its license, and its origin.

:::warning OCAP® is a registered trademark OCAP® is a registered trademark of the First Nations Information Governance Centre. It applies specifically to First Nations in Canada. The principles have broader relevance, but the trademark and governance authority belong to FNIGC. :::

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CARE Principles

The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance were developed by the Global Indigenous Data Alliance (GIDA) as a complement to the FAIR data principles. FAIR says data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. CARE says that's not enough — data governance must also center Indigenous rights.

Principle	Application
Collective Benefit	Translation tools should benefit the language community first. Leaderboard scores are a means to improve methods, not to extract commercial value from community languages.
Authority to Control	Communities have the authority to govern how their language data is collected, used, and shared. A high leaderboard score does not grant permission to publish translations.
Responsibility	Researchers and developers working with Indigenous language data have a responsibility to build relationships, obtain consent, and share benefits.
Ethics	The rights and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples must be the primary concern. Translation methods should be developed with communities, not about them.

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Te Mana Raraunga — Māori Data Sovereignty

Te Mana Raraunga is the Māori Data Sovereignty Network. It asserts that Māori data — including language data — is a taonga (treasure) subject to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and tikanga Māori (Māori customary law).

Key principles:

Principle	Meaning
Rangatiratanga (Authority)	Māori have an inherent right to exercise authority over their data, including language data.
Whakapapa (Relationships)	Data has origins and connections. Language data carries the relationships and knowledge of the people who created it.
Whanaungatanga (Obligations)	Those who hold or process Māori data have reciprocal obligations to the communities it comes from.
Kotahitanga (Collective benefit)	Māori data should be used for the collective benefit of Māori.
Manaakitanga (Reciprocity)	The use of Māori data should involve care, respect, and reciprocity.
Kaitiakitanga (Guardianship)	Data guardians have a duty to protect the data and ensure it is used appropriately.

These principles apply to te reo Māori (the Māori language) and to any computational work involving Māori language data.

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What This Means for rosetta Users

For standard languages (French, Japanese, Spanish...)

Use rosetta normally. These languages have large, publicly available corpora, established translation APIs, and no sovereignty concerns. Translate, sync, and publish as you wish.

For Indigenous and low-resource languages

The situation is fundamentally different:

1. Get consent first. Before building a translation method for an Indigenous language, establish a relationship with the community. A method built without community involvement — no matter how technically impressive — should not be published or distributed.

2. Use the api method. Host the translation pipeline on community-controlled infrastructure. The api method in rosetta is designed for this: it sends keys and gets translations back without exposing the prompts, dictionaries, or coaching data that make the method work.

   Community-controlled setup

   {
     "pairs": {
       "en:crk": {
         "method": "api",
         "endpoint": "https://api.community-server.example/translate"
       }
     }
   }

3. Document everything. Use the provenance field in your plugin manifest to list every resource, its license, and whether it was provided with community consent.

4. Scores are not licenses. A high score on the leaderboard proves that a method works well technically. It does not grant permission to publish translations, distribute the plugin, or commercialize the method. The community decides.

5. Share the method, not the data. If you develop a technique that works well (e.g., "FST-gated LLM with coached prompts"), share the architecture and approach on the leaderboard. The community retains control over the linguistic data that makes it work for their specific language.

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The api Method and Sovereignty

The api translation method exists specifically to support data sovereignty. Here's why:

Aspect	Other Methods	api Method
Where prompts live	In rosetta's config files (visible to all developers)	On the community's server (private)
Where coaching data lives	In .rosetta/coaching/ directory (committed to git)	On the community's server (private)
Where dictionaries live	In the plugin directory (distributed with the plugin)	On the community's server (private)
Who controls the pipeline	Whoever runs rosetta sync	The community who operates the API
What rosetta sees	Everything	Keys in, translations out

The api method is a deliberate architectural choice. It's a "dumb pipe" because the IP — the linguistic knowledge, the grammar rules, the carefully curated coaching examples — belongs to the community, not to the tool.

See Serving a Method via API for implementation details.

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Further Reading

• First Nations Information Governance Centre — OCAP®
• Global Indigenous Data Alliance — CARE Principles
• Te Mana Raraunga — Māori Data Sovereignty Network
• USIDSN — United States Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network

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See Also

• Support a Low-Resource Language — the technical guide with OCAP context
• Translation Methods — the api method and how it protects IP
• Serving a Method via API — hosting a community-controlled pipeline
• Plugin Specification — the provenance field for resource attribution
• Cookbook: FST-Gated Pipeline — building a pipeline that a community can self-host