ABOUT SBI
Sovereign Bodies Institute (SBI) builds on Indigenous traditions of data gathering and knowledge transfer to create, disseminate, and put into action research on gender and sexual violence against Indigenous people.
As part of SBI's commitment to Indigenous research practices, we envision research as part of a broader system of care for our people. We understand research as a flowing relationship, wherein our stories and data are informed by lived experiences as families, survivors, and advocates; our people are empowered to be our own experts on the violence we experience and the healing we create; and the stories and data we hold are transformed into meaningful action to create and maintain effective, culturally relevant systems of care. For these reasons, we are not 'only' a research institute - we also provide mutual aid to families of missing and murdered Indigenous people and Indigenous survivors of violence, as an active part of our research philosophy. We believe sovereignty of self, sovereignty of tribal nations, and sovereignty of Indigenous data go hand in hand in our journey towards healing and self-determination.
SBI is a home for generating new knowledge and understandings of how Indigenous nations and communities are impacted by gender and sexual violence, and how they may continue to work towards healing and freedom from such violence. In the spirit of building such freedom, SBI is strongly committed to upholding the sovereignty of all bodies Indigenous peoples hold sacred--our physical bodies, nations, land, and water--and does not accept grants from colonial governments or extractive industries. Similarly, SBI’s work is not limited by colonial borders, concepts of gender, politics of identity or recognition, or ways of knowing. SBI honors the epistemologies and lifeways of indigenous peoples, and is bound by accountability to the land, our ancestors, and each other.
SBI is fiscally sponsored by Urban Indigenous Collective.
