OCAP Principles

A set of principles developed by the First Nations Information Governance Centre establishing that First Nations communities must own, control, access, and possess data and information about themselves — their people, territories, resources, and cultural knowledge. OCAP emerged as a response to centuries of extractive research in which data about Indigenous peoples was taken without consent and often used to their detriment. It is a foundational framework for Indigenous data sovereignty and has been invoked in accessibility scholarship (alongside the CARE Principles) as a model for how disabled communities might similarly assert collective authority over research, data, and technology that represents or governs their lives. OCAP is widely considered specific to Indigenous contexts and should not be borrowed uncritically.