Knowledge sovereignty is the right of a community to control how its knowledge is represented, stored, transmitted, and used. It applies to Indigenous knowledge systems, community archives, traditional ecological knowledge, and any body of knowledge whose meaning depends on the context of its production.
Colonial knowledge practices extract knowledge from communities in the same way colonial economies extract resources: the raw material is taken, processed elsewhere, and returned (if at all) in a form that serves the extractor’s purposes rather than the community’s. Ethnography, linguistics, and natural history have all operated as extractive knowledge industries. Knowledge sovereignty names the refusal of this extraction and the assertion of community authority over what is known and how.
For Indigenous communities, knowledge sovereignty is inseparable from Indigenous sovereignty more broadly. Control over land, governance, and knowledge are not separate domains — they are aspects of the same self-determination. Traditional ecological knowledge, ceremonial practice, and language are not cultural artifacts to be preserved in institutions. They are living systems that function within the communities that hold them.
Knowledge sovereignty also applies to the digital domain: questions of data governance, algorithmic representation, and who controls the infrastructure through which community knowledge circulates are contemporary extensions of the same struggle.