Or instead be "nasty" to the dead people and nice to all the living people by sharing freely with them. To me it doesn't look like a question of niceness, it's far more nuanced surely?
It's not just dead people you're talking about, it's the families of those people. Keep in mind that in many cases the recordings of their ancestors are the only ones existing. It's not at all clear that a university or library should always be able to make those decisions without the involvement of the families.
There is often very private, very personal information in language documentation: even though it seems like the fact that the speaker should have been aware that making a recording was equivalent in some way to publication.
Plus, it's important to remember that before modern standards of informed consent were created, many linguists didn't have the speakers' best interests at heart, and were unscrupulous about recordings.
The ethics of legacy field recordings is a very messy business, with consequences ranging from legal measures to the unceremonious end of otherwise productive relationships between speech communities and researchers. I've seen cases where individual children of a single speaker have had differing opinions on what should happen to recordings.
Why do my children get claim over my speech, that I freely gave, any more than anyone else?
> I've seen cases where individual children of a single speaker have had differing opinions on what should happen to recordings.//
Which is natural as relatives make an emotional response, rather than a response that looks to the greatest/greater good. Which is exactly the reason why a broader view should be taken.
Legally speaking I imagine the recorder [of the speech, or lead researcher] owns the copyright or its in the public domain -- there really doesn't seem a strong reason to try and add additional restrictions based on racial discrimination and supposed moral outrage.
Do you want to create a right of people to hold censor over all media their ancestors produced or is it only native North Americans you want to pussyfoot around?
There were massive genocides in not too distant past; I fail to see how adding modern racial inequity fixes that in any way.
Or instead be "nasty" to the dead people and nice to all the living people by sharing freely with them. To me it doesn't look like a question of niceness, it's far more nuanced surely?