The Indigenous Navigator: from Data Collection to Self-Determination

Written on 16 December 2025. Posted in News

BY TORA JENSEN FOR INDIGENOUS DEBATES

The Indigenous Navigator is an initiative created to support Indigenous Peoples through data. Established more than 10 years ago, the programme has generated information from communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia. The survey process generates awareness of their rights in the communities and acts as a catalyst for collective reflection. This tool therefore provides people and their support organizations with access to systematized data that strengthens their capacity to claim their rights. True empowerment thus does not come through imposing solutions but through providing communities with the tools with which to define their own future.

When you enter the Indigenous Navigator, the image of a compass appears and, at the top “Data by and for Indigenous Peoples” can be seen. This sentence sums up the essence of the Indigenous Navigator. Launched in 2014, the initiative focuses on empowering Indigenous Peoples through data and seeks to respond to their historical underrepresentation in statistics.

One key component of the Indigenous Navigator is its online portal, which offers tools for collecting and analysing data. True to its motto, Indigenous Peoples and their organizations have played a central role in its development. The Indigenous Navigator is firmly based on the principle that the data collected should serve the causes of Indigenous Peoples and assist them in asserting their rights. Indigenous communities around the world are currently actively participating in the collection and analysis of information on the extent of recognition of their collective rights, using the tools provided by the Indigenous Navigator.

The results are then used to hold States and other duty bearers to account for their commitments, as well as to highlight the gaps between the promises enshrined in international human rights instruments and the realities on the ground. In addition, the Indigenous Navigator supports Indigenous Peoples to exercise their right to self-determination by providing the necessary basis for implementing self-defined projects that are aligned with their aspirations and priorities.

Mapping Indigenous Rights through Surveys

Surveys are one of the main tools of the Indigenous Navigator and are available on its portal. More specifically, the initiative offers two types of survey: a national-level and a community-level one. Both serve to monitor the implementation of Indigenous Peoples’ civil, political, economic and cultural rights and fundamental freedoms as agreed upon in international conventions and instruments: the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), ILO Convention 169, the Outcome Document of the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

While the national survey assesses the extent to which a country’s laws and policies align with these commitments, the community survey is designed to record the actual level of implementation of Indigenous rights on the ground, as reported by communities. In addition, three new national and community surveys, focusing on biodiversity, climate change, and due diligence in human and environmental rights, are being developed and are expected to be implemented in 2025 and 2026.

Mauricio Martínez is the coordinator of the Colombian organization Arte+, which facilitated community surveys in the Misak Ovejas Kaltun Chak Tarau and Guambía Indigenous Reserve territories, both in the department of Cauca. Martínez explains that, after presenting the Indigenous Navigator, its methodology and objectives to the community authorities, the community embarked on an internal discussion and subsequently expressed an interest in participating in the initiative. Misak representatives were then trained to facilitate the survey process in the communities through two-day workshops.

After review by Arte+ and the Misak team, the results of the surveys were presented once more, in the form of a report, to the Misak representatives. Once final comments and observations had been incorporated, the information was uploaded to the Indigenous Navigator portal. These surveys were then integrated into the platform’s datasets, which offers tools that enable data visualization, analysis and comparison.

A Partnership to Improve Global Data

In principle, anyone can apply for an account on the Indigenous Navigator portal, complete surveys, submit data and use its analysis tools. However, only reliable applications for the purpose of uploading surveys are approved. In most cases, the data on the portal have been submitted by organizations, such as Arte+, that receive direct support from one of the members of the initiative’s coordinating consortium.

The consortium currently comprises the Asia Indigenous Peoples’ Pact (AIPP), the Forest Peoples’ Programme (FPP), the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), the Tebtebba Foundation – Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR). The Indigenous Navigator initiative receives funding from the European Commission, the Nordic Council of Ministers and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).

To date, the Indigenous Navigator tools have been used to collect data in 30 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Arctic, with both national and community surveys conducted in most of them. By comparing the results, it is possible to identify implementation gaps between the Indigenous rights that a State has undertaken to respect and the actual effectiveness with which they are fulfilled. As comparable data is collected across countries and regions, the global situation of Indigenous Peoples can be documented.

A Tool for Affirming Identity and Rights

The Indigenous Navigator is an initiative created to support Indigenous Peoples through data. Didier Chirimuscay, a Misak community leader who served as coordinator of the surveys conducted in the Ovejas Kaltun Chak Tarau territory, highlights how the initiative reaffirms the identity of his people: “The Indigenous Navigator shows that we are here, that we exist with our own realities, our own dynamics and our own challenges.”

In the municipality of Caldono, where the Misak people represent less than 6 percent of the population, their needs are often ignored. “Basically, we don’t exist on the map for the institutions,” explains Chirimuscay. The leader sees the initiative as a tool to counteract this invisibility, since this creates a way of including them: their presence is recorded in documents and, through the information generated, the Misak people now have greater possibilities of influencing other actors and larger institutions.

James Twala, programme coordinator for Indigenous Livelihoods Enhancement Partners (ILEPA) in Narok County, Kenya, explains that the initiative helps communities “speak the language that government understands”. Twala notes that, thanks to the initiative, ILEPA has been able to systematically report on the situation and problems facing the Indigenous communities with which they work. This had a direct impact on access to justice in one Maa community: the documentation generated was used as evidence in a court case on the sale of community land, a dispute they eventually won.

As the case of ILEPA demonstrates, the Indigenous Navigator initiative provides peoples and their support organizations with access to systematized data that strengthens their capacity to claim their rights. These data document the extent to which Indigenous rights are being implemented and can be used in a variety of contexts, from negotiations with local authorities to interactions with UN agencies.

From Reflection to Action

The Indigenous Navigator survey process generates awareness of their rights among Indigenous communities and acts as a significant catalyst for reflection. Alfredo Vitery, director of the Sacha Supai Quichua Biotechnology Institute (IQBSS), an Indigenous organization that supports the Kichwa people of Pastaza, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, stresses that the survey workshops help communities better understand their constitutional and international rights.

The IQBSS facilitated surveys with the Kiwcha Kawsak Sacha and Kiwcha Rio Anzu peoples. In these territories, the results revealed critical gaps between recognized rights and their implementation. “It took us years to achieve such recognition and yet most of these rights are on paper only,” says Vitery. The rights of the Kawsak Sacha people are frequently violated, as they are rarely adequately consulted and are excluded from public programmes and projects that directly affect their territories.

The analysis process is not necessarily the final step for the communities involved in data collection. The initiative offers a small grant fund, which allows the consortium organizations to redistribute resources from the European Commission to community-driven projects such as a continuation of the survey process. These projects are designed in collaboration with the organizations that facilitated the surveys.

In follow-up workshops, community representatives use the survey findings to identify the most pressing issues affecting their communities and develop tailored solutions. These solutions are then transformed into project proposals for small grants. As of December 2024, the review committee had approved 98 such proposals. In addition, more than 200 Indigenous communities from across Asia, Africa and the Americas had participated in workshops to develop grant projects.

Supporting the Right to Self-Determination

Once the surveys had been completed, the Kichwa Kawsak Sacha implemented a project with small grant funding. Based on an analysis of the survey process, they identified that the autonomous management of their territory was essential to the exercise of their rights. To advance this objective, the communities considered it necessary to develop an autonomous statute for their territory that would incorporate their rights into their own territorial agenda, embodied in a legal instrument for internal governance. They therefore focused the grant proposal on achieving this purpose.

Vitery thus emphasizes: “The communities themselves, families, women, youth, elders, wise men and women and leaders are the main actors promoting their agenda for autonomy, their vision of life, their realities, their initiatives”. In this way, the project is marking a step towards achieving the Kichwa people’s vision of autonomy, based on their ancestral heritage. Their leader emphasizes the importance of the small grants fund in supporting the self-determined development of the Kichwa people, guided entirely by their own priorities and visions rather than external decisions.

The small grants initiative demonstrates the power of supporting Indigenous Peoples to design and implement their own projects, in line with their own priorities. This approach differs from other forms of fund redistribution whereby external actors define the objectives. Quite the contrary, it recognizes that supporting Indigenous Peoples means supporting their rights to self-government and self-determination.

As the world grapples with the legacies of colonialism, the Indigenous Navigator offers a transformative model for collaboration. It shows that true empowerment does not come through imposing solutions but through equipping communities with the tools to define their own future.

Tora Jensen holds a Master's degree in Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen and is a consultant for the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA). In 2023, she conducted fieldwork in the Monte Verde TCO, Bolivia, focusing on the impact of forest fires on the agricultural burning practices of the Chiquitanos.

Cover photo: Pablo Lasansky

Tags: Indigenous Debates