Knowledge Sovereignty and Environmental Data

Sor Juana claimed intellectual autonomy within a colonial system designed to control knowledge production. Knowledge sovereignty applies directly to environmental justice: communities bearing pollution burdens often become research subjects for scientists, universities, and corporations who extract data, publish findings, and benefit while locals remain marginalized in analysis. This concept rejects extractive environmental research. Instead, affected communities direct environmental monitoring, control data interpretation, and determine how findings serve community interests. Indigenous environmental knowledge systems—accumulated across generations—offer sophisticated ecological understanding systematically dismissed by Western science. Applied practice: community-controlled environmental monitoring networks, Indigenous-led environmental assessment, requirements that researchers share findings in accessible formats with compensation to communities, and centering traditional ecological knowledge in environmental policy. Sor Juana's fierce intellectual independence models this reclamation: communities bearing environmental burden possess expertise about their own situations deserving authority and autonomy in knowledge creation.