P rimum N on N ocere: B efore working with I ndigenous data, the ACL must confront ongoing colonialism (2022)

Abstract: In this paper, we challenge the ACL community to reckon with historical and ongoing colonialism by adopting a set of ethical obligations and best practices drawn from the Indigenous studies literature. While the vast majority of NLP research focuses on a very small number of very high resource languages (English, Chinese, etc), some work has begun to engage with Indigenous languages. No research involving Indigenous language data can be considered ethical without first acknowledging that Indigenous languages are not merely very low resource languages. The toxic legacy of colonialism permeates every aspect of interaction between Indigenous communities and outside researchers. To this end, we propose that the ACL draft and adopt an ethical framework for NLP researchers and computational linguists wishing to engage in research involving Indigenous languages.

## introduction beginning with our community's first academic conference in 1952 (see @xcite and continuing with the establishment of the association for computational linguistics (acl) foot_0 in 1962 @xcite , the members of our research community have examined a huge range of topics, ranging from linguistic and computational linguistic models and theories to engineering-focused problems in natural language processing. 2 while great progress has been made in recent years across many nlp tasks, the overwhelming majority of nlp and cl research focuses on a very small number of languages. over the 70 years from 1952 to 2022, the vast majority of cl and nlp research has focused on a small number of widely-spoken languages, nearly all of which represent politically-and economically-dominant nationstates and the languages of those nation-states' historical and current adversaries: english, the germanic and romance languages of western europe, russian and the slavic languages of eastern europe, hebrew, arabic, chinese, japanese, and korean. @xcite surveyed papers from acl 2008 and found that english dominated (63% of papers), with 20 other languages distributed along a zipfian tail (chinese and german shared the number 2 slot at just under 4% of papers each); across all acl 2008 long papers, only three languages (hindi, turkish, and wambaya) were represented outside of the language families listed previously. this lack of diversity directly impacts both the quality and ethical status of our research, as nearly every successful nlp technique in widespread current use was designed around the linguistic characteristics of english. 3 a special theme designed to address this shortcoming has been selected for the 60th annual meeting of the acl in 2022: "language diversity: from low resource to endangered languages." this theme is to be commended as a step towards a more linguistically diverse research agenda. yet as we expand our research to a broader and more inclusive set of languages, we must take great care to do so ethically. the endangered indigenous languages of the world are not merely very low resource languages. the toxic legacy of colonial-ism permeates every aspect of interaction between indigenous communities and outside researchers @xcite . ethical research must actively challenge this colonial legacy by actively acknowledging and opposing its continuing presence, and by explicitly acknowledging and centering indigenous community goals and indigenous ways of knowing. to this end, we propose an ethical framework for nlp researchers and computational linguists wishing to engage in research involving indigenous languages. we begin in §2 by examining the abstracts of papers published in the proceedings of the toptier conferences (acl, naacl, emnlp, eacl, aacl) and journals (computational linguistics, tacl) of the association for computational linguistics from the past several years (hereafter referred to as *acl papers/abstracts), replicating the results of @xcite , confirming that recent *acl papers still lack significant language diversity. in §3 we address research practices and ongoing colonialism in indigenous communities. finally, we examine decolonial practices appropriate for a draft framework of ethical obligations ( §4) for the acl research community. ## recent *acl papers lack significant language diversity we begin by examining the abstracts of *acl papers from the past several years to confirm the results of @xcite , namely that recent *acl papers still lack significant language diversity. we collect a corpus of 9602 recent *acl abstracts from the acl anthology; 4 more than 80% fail to mention any language (see ## research and ongoing colonialism in indigenous communities the linguistic homogeneity in *acl papers can be viewed as a symptom of a much larger problem, namely that our research paradigms are deeply rooted in a western scientific tradition that is inextricably intertwined with colonialism. smith (2012, p.50) notes that in this tradition, there are implicit and explicit rules of framing and practice that express power. in *acl research, the act of not explicitly stating any language, of assuming english as the default, is one such practice. research scientists rarely consider the philosophy of science @xcite on which our research is predicated; as @xcite notes, this is defined by an ontology, epistimology, methodologies, and axiology that are seldom acknowledged. in our field, these often surface as unacknowledged positivist @xcite assumptions that science is value-neutral and empirical observations and logical reasoning fully and completely define the nature of science and reality @xcite . the first step in enacting decolonial ethical practices is acknowledging that we hold these assumptions and recognizing that there are other indigenous philosophies of science that are equally valid and are rooted in fundamentally distinct worldviews that center relationality (see @xcite . by failing to acknowledge and critically examine the philosophical foundations of our science, we implicitly and unconsciously elevate our ideas of research and language work above those of indigenous communities @xcite . given the distinct value systems and distinct views of reality of outside research scientists and indigenous communities, it is not surprising that even good-faith efforts of well-meaning outside researchers are often viewed by indigenous communities as irrelevant at best and exploitative at worst. 6 outside perceptions of indigenous peoples are inextricably linked to corresponding histories of colonization, and are typically accompanied by (usually outdated and incorrect) assumptions about the "proper" roles of indigeneous peoples today that correspond with neither reality nor indigenous people's views of themselves @xcite . when a linguist (or a computer scientist) begins the process of interacting with an indigenous community and working with that community's indigenous language, the starting "lens through which others view [the linguist's] professional activities will at least partly reflect what 'linguist' has come to mean, and that this in some cases will occur regardless of whether [the linguist] personally exhibit a trait that has come to be associated with this named position" @xcite . endangered indigenous languages are not merely very low-resource languages. each indigenous community represents a sovereign political entity. each indigenous language represents a crucial component of the shared cultural heritage of its people. the rate of intergenerational transmission of indigenous language from parent to child in many indigeneous communities has declined and is continuing to decline @xcite , resulting in a deep sense of loss felt by older generations who grew up speaking the indigenous language as well as by younger generations who do not speak the language who experience a diminished sense of cultural inclusion @xcite . language is an integral part of culture, and declines in robust indigenous language usage have been correlated with serious negative health and wellness outcomes @xcite . at the same time, indigenous individuals and indigenous communities have suffered greatly from colonial practices that separated children from communities, actively suppressed indigenous language and culture, misappropriated land and natural resources, and treated indigenous people, cultures, and languages as dehumanized data to study @xcite @xcite @xcite @xcite . as @xcite notes, "research is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world's vocabulary;" it is "implicated in the worst excesses of colonialism" and "told [indigenous people] things already known, suggested things that would not work, and made careers for people who already had jobs." it is then, hardly surprising that "after generations of exploitation, indigenous people often respond negatively to the idea that their languages are data ready for the taking" @xcite . indigenous communities are rightly taking up the slogan "nothing about us without us" (see, for example, @xcite . even when we consider the "lived experiences and issues that underlie [the] needs" of indigenous communities, these community priorities are far too often treated as subordinate to research questions deemed valuable by members of academe @xcite @xcite . credulous evangelical claims of technology as savior 7,8 only exacerbate these tensions @xcite . ## prerequisite obligations for ethical research involving indigenous languages and indigenous peoples when cl and nlp researchers begin to work with indigenous language data without first critically examining the toxic legacy of colonialism and the self-identified priority needs and epistemology of the indigenous community, the risk of unwittingly perpetuating dehumanizing colonial practices is extremely high. it is therefore critically urgent that the acl, perhaps through the recently-formed special interest group on endangered languages (sigel), should go beyond the acl's 2020 adoption of the acm code of ethics 9 and begin a process of drafting and adopting a formal ethics policy specifically with respect to research involving indigenous communities, indigenous languages, and indigenous data. in so doing, the acl can provide specific and foundational ethical guidance for our members that goes far beyond the general ethical 7 "the number of endangered languages is so large that their comprehensive documentation by the community of documentary linguists will only be possible if supported by nlp technology." @xcite 8 "languages that miss the opportunity to adopt language technologies will be less and less used, while languages that benefit from cross-lingual technologies such as machine translation will be more and more used." (elra, 2019) 9 https://www.aclweb.org/portal/ content/acl-code-ethics guidance provided by institutional review boards (only some of which are intimately familiar with the ethical pitfalls particular to work with indigenous communities). we should draw upon the recent linguistics society of america (2019) ethics statement, the foundational principles of medical ethics (autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice; @xcite , the recommendations of @xcite , and the wisdom of indigenous scholars such as deloria, wilson, smith, and leonard. as a beginning, we have identified four key ethical obligations that should at a minimum be included in such an ethics policy: cognizance, beneficence, accountability, and non-maleficence.