Maiam nayri Wingara

Maiam nayri Wingara is Australia's national Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov) collective — a gathering of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander academics and experts advocating for the right of Indigenous peoples to govern the collection, ownership, access, and use of their own data. Founded in 2017 by Dr. Ray Lovett (Wongaibon/Ngiyampaa), Professor Maggie Walter (Briggs family, Lutruwita/Tasmania), Dr. Gawaian Bodkin-Andrews (D'harawal), and Dr. Vanessa Lee-Ah Mat (Yupungathi and Meriam peoples), the collective built the foundational IDSov framework for Australia and is one of three founding member networks of the Global Indigenous Data Alliance. Its motto — "Indigenous Data Sovereignty Everywhere…All The Time" — names a structural demand: that the right of Indigenous peoples to control data generated about them is universal and non-negotiable.

Founding and the name

The name Maiam nayri Wingara deliberately draws from three distinct Indigenous language groups to embody the collective's cross-mob identity. Maiam means "welcome" in Meriam Mer, the language of the Meriam people of the Torres Strait. Nayri is "a good and important thing" in Palawa Kani, the reclaimed language of the Aboriginal peoples of Lutruwita/Tasmania. Wingara — gifted by the D'harawal Traditional Descendants and Knowledge Holders Circle — names a deep and meaningful understanding reached through careful, considered negotiation of varying pathways to learning. Together the name translates as "Welcome to Good Data/Knowledges," a statement of both hospitality and purpose.

The collective was formally organized in 2017, bringing together Indigenous researchers who had been working on data sovereignty questions across Australian universities. It emerged from a recognition that data about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples — held by government agencies, research institutions, and health systems — was being collected, controlled, and applied without Indigenous authority, with direct consequences for service delivery, policy, and community self-determination.

Principles and independence

Maiam nayri Wingara's core principle is that Indigenous peoples have an autonomous right to decide what, how, and why Indigenous data — defined as information or knowledge in any format or medium that is about and may affect Indigenous peoples both collectively and individually — are collected, accessed, and used. This is not a permission claim against state systems but an assertion of a pre-existing right grounded in Indigenous peoples' self-determination.

The collective has made a structural choice that reinforces its advocacy independence: it does not accept government grants. This deliberate constraint preserves its ability to critique state institutions and government agencies over their treatment of Indigenous data, including challenging the use of linked administrative datasets about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in programs where Indigenous communities have no meaningful data governance authority.

Founding the Global Indigenous Data Alliance

In July 2019, Maggie Walter and Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear of the U.S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network convened a workshop in Oñati, Spain, bringing together Indigenous data sovereignty networks from seven nation states. At that workshop, Maiam nayri Wingara, Te Mana Raraunga of Aotearoa New Zealand, and USIDSN constituted the Global Indigenous Data Alliance as an international coordinating body for the movement. Walter was a co-convener of the founding workshop and has served as Managing Co-Chair of the collective.

Through GIDA, Maiam nayri Wingara co-developed the CARE Principles (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics) — the 14-author 2020 Data Science Journal paper co-authored by Maui Hudson of Te Mana Raraunga and Stephanie Russo Carroll of USIDSN — which have become the international standard for Indigenous data governance alongside the FAIR Principles. The founding three GIDA networks — Maiam nayri Wingara, Te Mana Raraunga, and USIDSN — remain the original national-level anchors of what has since grown into a broader international infrastructure.

Summits and national engagement

The collective has organized major national and international forums to build coordinated advocacy. In 2018, an Indigenous Data Sovereignty Summit in Canberra endorsed Maiam nayri Wingara's IDSov principles for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. In June 2023, the collective hosted a National Indigenous Data Sovereignty Summit attended by more than 130 Indigenous delegates from every Australian State and Territory alongside international participants from Aotearoa, Canada, and the United States — demonstrating the consolidation of Australian IDSov organizing as a national movement, not a research sub-field.

In March–April 2025, Maiam nayri Wingara hosted the Global Indigenous Data Sovereignty Conference in Canberra — drawing more than 250 Indigenous peoples from eleven or more countries and regions — the largest international IDSov gathering to that point.

AI and Indigenous data sovereignty

Maiam nayri Wingara has positioned AI governance as a central front of Indigenous data sovereignty. The collective's position is that Indigenous communities must retain sovereignty over their own data "from creation to infrastructure" — meaning AI development is not downstream of data governance but part of it, and that Indigenous peoples must have active participation in creating, maintaining, and evaluating AI systems from the beginning, not retrospective consultation after deployment.

Specific harms the collective has named include AI image generators trained on Indigenous cultural materials without consent, the spread of AI-generated misinformation about Indigenous peoples, and the use of AI-generated imagery in political campaigns in ways that harm Indigenous interests. These are framed as data sovereignty failures: AI systems that reproduce Indigenous identity and knowledge without Indigenous authority violate the same rights that administrative data exploitation has long violated. The collective's broader vision draws on "Indigenous Futurisms" — a frame in which AI design reflects Indigenous understandings of a living, interconnected world rather than reproducing extractive logics that treat data as a resource to be mined.

At the GIDA-convened IDSov and AI Workshop held February 25–27, 2026 at COLPOS in Texcoco, Mexico, Maiam nayri Wingara joined Te Mana Raraunga, the U.S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network, the First Nations Information Governance Centre, the Pacific Data Sovereignty Network, GIDA-Inuit, and GIDA-Sápmi to develop Indigenous protocols for AI at the international level.

Corpus role

Maiam nayri Wingara is the Australian anchor for the Indigenous data sovereignty organizing layer — the direct counterpart to Te Mana Raraunga in Aotearoa New Zealand, the First Nations Information Governance Centre in Canada, and the U.S. Indigenous Data Sovereignty Network in the United States. Each national network grounds the same international framework — GIDA, CARE Principles — in a specific domestic context; Maiam nayri Wingara brings the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander self-determination tradition to that work, with the structural distinctiveness of operating entirely outside government funding. Its explicit focus on AI as the current frontier of Indigenous data sovereignty makes it a direct node in the make-AI-good movement's emerging Indigenous-rights-as-AI-governance layer.