The Forest Has a Dataset: Rakhain Healing Knowledge, Bioprospecting, and Digital Sovereignty in Bangladesh

The digitalisation of Indigenous medicinal knowledge constitutes a qualitatively new form of bioprospecting — one that operates through artificial intelligence, open-access repositories, genomic databases, and state-led data infrastructure rather than field collection alone. This article examines this transformation through the Rakhain community of Bangladesh, whose plant-based and non-plant healing heritage occupies a structurally vulnerable position at the intersection of biodiversity law, data governance, and digital capitalism. Drawing on long-term ethnographic engagement with the Rakhain community (2004–2024), Indigenous Gnoseology (Chowdhury, 2026a), reciprocal methodology (Chowdhury, 2026b), and the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (Carroll et al., 2020), the article argues that existing legal regimes are insufficient without community-centred digital sovereignty. A Rakhain Digital Healing Sovereignty Framework is proposed, grounded in collective consent, tiered knowledge classification, sacred secrecy, reciprocal benefit sharing, and post-research accountability.