Privacy across cultures : indigenous self-determination and the politics of information
Date
2003
Authors
French, Martin
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Abstract
The surveillance of Indigenous Peoples by the Canadian state constitutes a threat to Indigenous self-determination. State discourses concerning Indigenous Peoples are oriented away from self-determination and fail to question practices, like surveillance, that fall outside of their limited purview. This thesis undertakes a critical case study of The First Nations and Inuit Health Information System, highlighting problems in the state's surveillance of Indigenous health information. The case study is approached through a discourse analysis of law and public policy, and through a review of privacy and surveillance literature. The central conclusion of this work is that state discourses of Aboriginal rights and self-government must be reoriented towards self-determination. Simultaneously, state discourses of privacy protection, discourses that resist surveillance, must accommodate Indigenous groups by moving towards a collective conceptualization of privacy. So long as Indigenous (informational) self-determination is excluded from state discourse Canada will continue to act as a colonizing state.