# CARE_GATE_PROTOCOL

**Type:** Doctrine (operational, not philosophical)
**Authority:** Carroll, S. R. et al. (2020) "CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance," *Data Science Journal* 19:43, doi:10.5334/dsj-2020-043. Smith (2021), *Decolonizing Methodologies* 3rd ed. Stefanoudis et al. (2021), Haelewaters et al. (2021).
**Invocation:** Step 4 of SKILL.md. Runs BEFORE any retrieval query hits an Indigenous-source corpus or a general corpus where Indigenous-authored content is the target. Never a post-filter.

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## Decision Tree

For each query whose target set includes Indigenous-source content, evaluate all four gates in order. Any `FAIL` without a documented operator override halts Indigenous-source retrieval for that query and triggers an architectural-limit disclosure.

### G1 -- Collective Benefit

**Question:** Does the calling claim plausibly support collective benefit, or is this pure commercial extraction without reciprocity?

**PASS** when any holds: claim returns value to the named community (policy, pedagogy, ecology, governance, health); operator has logged a reciprocity path (data-return, citation-return, co-authorship, grant-share); community has publicly authorized the use-class (e.g., tribal-IRB-approved program).

**FAIL** when all hold: claim is commercial optimization / ad-targeting / product development / extraction-for-sale; no reciprocity path logged; no community authorization on file.

### G2 -- Authority to Control

**Question:** Is there a documented community data-governance policy that applies?

**PASS / BIND** when a policy is found: tribal IRB, OCAP (First Nations Canada), Maori kaupapa, Aboriginal Data Sovereignty Collective protocol. Retrieval MUST honor the policy's scope as binding filter.

**FAIL** when a policy exists and the planned query violates its scope.

**UNKNOWN** when no policy is discoverable: set `flagged` and require operator confirmation. Unknown is NOT a pass.

### G3 -- Responsibility

**Question:** Will retrieved excerpts travel with (a) a provenance tag naming the community (not just the author) AND (b) a protocol/context paragraph?

**PASS** when the downstream artifact (S4 render) is contractually required to include both. Verify via S4 render spec.

**FAIL** when either is absent. Do NOT retrieve.

### G4 -- Ethics

**Question:** Is the purpose-declaration logged in the Ledger?

**PASS** when a purpose declaration is present AND the purpose is either non-commercial or commercial with a reciprocity entry.

**FAIL -- HALT** when the purpose is pure commercial extraction with no reciprocity.

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## Record-Level Re-Check

G1-G4 run AGAIN at record level in Step 6. A corpus-level PASS does not license record-level acceptance.

## Ledger Write

`care_gate_status` is one of: `passed` | `flagged` | `halted`. G1-G4 rationales are required. A `passed` verdict with missing rationale is a CARE-bypass defect.

## Operator Override

An operator may override a single FAIL only with (a) a reciprocity statement, (b) a named community authority or policy citation, and (c) a purpose declaration. Logged to Ledger. No blanket overrides.

## Anti-Patterns

- G1-G4 after retrieval "to save time" -- extraction has already occurred.
- Treating G2 UNKNOWN as pass.
- Aggregating across Indigenous communities under one label -- Authority-to-Control violation.
- Operator override without reciprocity entry.
