Total: 1
We present ELSI (ExELang Legacy Support Interface), a governance platform for managing sensitive child-centered audio datasets that includes recordings from 10 indigenous language communities across multiple continents. While ELSI was designed to balance open science with participant privacy, we identify a fundamental gap: custodianship concentrates control in the hands of European academic researchers, with no formal plan for indigenous communities to govern their own data. We describe the platform, map its current model against CARE and OCAP principles, and issue a concrete call for indigenous community partners to co-design a framework for identifying legitimate community custodians and implementing an enforceable access and control layer. We commit to the architectural and governance changes needed to make this real, and describe what meaningful co-design would look like in practice.