TK Labels

Live

Local Contexts labels that let Indigenous communities express culturally specific conditions for access and reuse of knowledge and data.

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Website
localcontexts.org/labels/traditional-knowledge-labels
Latest update
Jun 17, 2022 Oriana TV case study shows TK Labels in use
Primary approach
Preference signal
Pipeline
Collect / Retrieve / Train

What it is

TK Labels from Local Contexts let Indigenous communities communicate culturally grounded protocols for access, use, attribution, and circulation of traditional knowledge materials. They are designed to travel with records and metadata so that community expectations remain visible outside their original context.

Although not AI-specific, they are directly relevant to data governance and machine-readable reuse signals because they express conditions that conventional licensing systems often fail to capture.

Limitations

TK Labels are community-governance signals that rely on institutional and downstream respect; they are not a substitute for copyright law or a standard open license.

Evidence trail

Examples

TK Attribution label In use Source

Local Contexts publishes each label with a short code plus customizable template text.

TK Attribution (TK A)
Apply the correct attribution in any future use of this work.
TK Non-Commercial label In use Source

This is the template signal Local Contexts uses when a community wants downstream use limited to non-commercial contexts.

TK Non-Commercial (TK NC)
This material has been designated as being available for non-commercial use.