Who Owns Native Culture? Resources for understanding the struggle for control of indigenous knowledge

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Recent Developments, Indigenous Cultural/Intellectual Property
Background information for students using this website.
The International Journal of Cultural Property is now regularly carrying articles on indigenous IPR and is actively seeking innovative submissions on this and related topics. For additional information, browse the website of the International Cultural Property Society.
*RSS feed for Who Owns Native Culture?* website.**
Some blogs to track if you're interested in indigenous IPR, heritage protection, and questions of open access: SavageMinds, the Museum Anthropology blog, Material World, Culture Matters, and Kimberly Christen's Long Road. You might also want to check the web page of a project at Simon Fraser University in BC, Canada, called "Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage."
News stories, articles, reports
More interesting work on indigenous cultural/intellectual property in the latest issue of the IJCP: Josephine Asmah, "Historical threads: Intellectual property protection of traditional textile designs: The Ghanaian experience and African perspectives," and Olivier Amiel, "A Maori head: Public Domain?" 3 October 2008.
New article: Chidi Oguamanam, "Local knowledge as trapped knowledge: Intellectual property, culture, power, and politics." Journal of World Intellectual Property 11: 29-57, 2008 (Blackwell Synergy, which is not, alas, open access).
The International Expert Group on Biotechnology, Innovation and Intellectual Property, based in Canada, has issued a report, Toward a New Era of Intellectual Property: from Confrontation to Negotiation, which is designed to "assist policy-makers, industry, universities, researchers and NGOs in managing the transition from Old IP, under which companies and governments mistakenly believed that holding on to more and greater patents was the key to success, to New IP, in which actors recognise the importance of collaboration and sharing." 23 September 2008.
John Rapko has published a thoughtful Open-Access review of James O. Young's Cultural Appropriation and the Arts (Blackwell, 2008).
A long blog entry on cultural appropriation and pseudo-Native American tarot decks. It's difficult to determine authorship from the page, but it appears to be Joan Schraith Cole and to date from 2004. Includes links to other sites about "plastic shamans." Added here 11 September 2008.
"IP laws creating 'bare medicine chest,'" according to Canadian study. 10 September 2008.
	Australian company criticized for posting advertising images in front of Uluru (a.k.a. Ayers Rock) in Second Life. (Images of Uluru, arguably Australia's most familiar geological feature, are considered the cultural property of the site's Aboriginal "owners.") 8 September 2008.
"Uproar over girls playing didgeridoo," News.com.au, 2 September 2008.
The journal Cultural Anthropology has just published "The Anthropology of/in Circulation: The Future of Open Access and Scholarly Societies," an article about open access and related publishing issues that emerged from a multi-person exchange that included, in approximate order of the scale of his/her contribution, Christopher Kelty, Michael M.J. Fischer, Alex “Rex” Golub, Jason Baird Jackson, Kimberly Christen, Michael F. Brown, and Tom Boellstorff. A PDF copy of the article can be downloaded here; alternatively, you can read the text and then add your comment to the evolving blog by going here.
The University of Pennsylvania has announced the establishment of the Penn Cultural Heritage Center, "dedicated to expanding scholarly and public awareness, discussion and debate about complex issues surrounding the world’s endangered cultural heritage," 25 August 2008.
Yet another chapter of the row over Prince Harry's "appropriation" of Aboriginal art.
Building on the success of the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive, Kimberly Christen has helped to launch a new project, the Plateau Peoples' Web Portal, a "web-based environment that allows the Plateau Peoples' cultural materials held in Washington State University's special collections and the Museum of Anthropology to be curated by Plateau Tribes." The site is still sparsely documented but shows great promise. 11 August 2008.
Can UNESCO designation as World Heritage Site lead to a border war? News sources report that Cambodia and Thailand are facing off over control of the Preah Vihear temple and adjacent lands. (Thanks to Alex Bauer for bringing this story to my attention.)
The Universities of Göttingen and Hamburg have established a multi-disciplinary project on cultural property. You can browse their website here.
	The latest issue of the International Journal of Cultural Property (Vol 15, no. 2) is almost entirely focused on indigenous IP, cultural property, and museum policy issues, with emphasis on the Pacific. (Complete contents here.) It's headlined by an introductory essay by Haidy Geismar, guest editor, but includes other contributions of note. Not an Open Access journal, alas, but it may be accessible electronically via your public or university library. 22 July 2008.
Pretty sleepy on the indigenous IP front . . . Must be summer! The website IP Watch published an update on recent work of the governing body of the Convention on Biological Diversity, with particular reference to indigenous peoples, 10 July 2008.
The Dominion in Canada carried a story about indigenous demands directed to the G8 Summit, some of which deal with indigenous IP and sovereignty issues, 9 July 2008.
Journal article worth reading if you're interested in bioprospecting/biopiracy: "Bioprospecting: tracking the policy debate," by Rachel Wynberg and Sarah Laird. Environment 49.10 (Dec 2007): p20(13). It appears not to be an open-access publication.
"Let's all have tickets to the universal museum," Ben MacIntyre, The Times, London, 10 July 2008.
I came upon an interesting website for a University of Maine-based project called the Cross-Cultural Partnership, which among other things attempts to foster constructive conversation about use and non-use of Indigenous cultural elements: "Native peoples face a dilemma of how far to encourage the borrowing, reinterpretation, or commercialization of their heritage. It's a dilemma the Wabanaki of the American east coast face when deciding whether to permit chants to be remixed into new-age music; the Warlpiri of Australia face it when deciding whether to allow motifs from their songlines to be incorporated into acrylic fine-art paintings. A partnership can dictate the terms of such artistic re-use, to ensure any sacred emblems or motifs are used respectfully and with the measure and type of compensation appropriate for that culture." The project seems to originate in a wing of the New Media Department of U Maine, along with various Indigenous collaborators. Be sure to check it out. Posted here 18 June 2008.
At the blog Therioshamanism.com I happened upon a provocative post about the cultural appropriation of indigenous religion in the context of neo-shamanism, paganism, and other new or revived forms of spirituality. Dates to November 2007 but linked here 2 June 2008.
	"Indiana Jones and the plunder of cultural heritage." ScienceDaily, 29 May 2008. Caveat emptor: the Indian Jones stuff is a shameless come-on for an otherwise routine article about the promising Simon Fraser-based project "Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage."
Marc Lacey, NY Times, "Treasures of a nation, not fodder for an ad." On Mexico's control of images of its cultural heritage. 27 May 2008.
Edward Rothstein, "Antiquities: The world is your homeland," New York Times, 27 May 2008. More on James Cuno's book Who Owns Antiquity? and the implications of rigid definitions of cultural property.
"WHO bridges rich-poor intellectual property split." Reuters, 24 May 2008
"Biodiversity: Indigenous peoples fight theft." IPS News, 24 May 2008.
Worth looking at the archaeology blog "The Assemblage" for a brief review of John Carman's 2005 book Against Cultural Property.
The IJCP continues to publish important work on cultural property issues. Among recent articles is Elizabeth Willis's "The Law, Politics, and 'Historical Wounds': The Dja Dja Warrung Bark Etchings Case in Australia," which deals with an important Australian repatriation case dating to 2005. You can see the abstract here, although it's not clear whether the entire text is accessible without a subscription.
Tlingit warrior's helmet from 18th century sells for more than USD $2 million at auction, 20 May 2008.
Judge allows discrimination lawsuit brought by group of Native American women drummers to move forward. The plaintiffs allege that they have been discriminated against because male drummers from the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation excluded them from a powwow drum performance, citing culturally-based rules of gender exclusion. 10 May 2008; added here on 22 May.
From Xinhua News Service, China: UN/WIPO launches program to help indigenous communities manage their cultural heritage and IP interests, 20 May 2008.
Two fairly new websites that are focused on facets of heritage protection: --Recalling Ancestral Voices, a Finnish site promoting repatriation of Sámi heritage, especially material culture. --The blog Photoreturn, created by two Dutch scholars and dedicated to the repatriation of historical photographs. Not much content in either one yet, but worth checking out. 20 May 2008.
Be sure to read Evan Ratliff's, “Law of the Jungle,” Wired, June 2008, an article on the circumstances surrounding Brazil's prosecution (and persecution) of conservation biologist Marc van Roosmalen in connection with charges related to alleged biopiracy. Ratliff’s article is first-rate, but like countless journalists before him, he repeats a yarn that now seems obligatory in stories about bioprospecting: that Eli Lilly “stole” the active ingredients of the rosy periwinkle from Madagascar and derived millions of dollars from this act of biopiracy without sharing any of the profits with its country of origin. This grossly oversimplified tale is endlessly repeated in books, articles, and websites, as I discovered years ago while doing background research for Who Owns Native Culture? It is a canard that refuses to die. For those (few) who care about the moral complexity of drug discovery, here are the relevant paragraphs from WONC. No, I am not a defender of biopiracy. But it's useful to get the facts right.
Slashdot.com published a link to an online lecture (60 min.+) by patent attorney Stephen Kinsella entitled "Rethinking Intellectual Property Completely." Parts of it are witty, and it raises interesting Lessig-esque questions about how (or whether!) we know that existing patent laws actually encourage innovation. 12 May 2008.
	Salvia divinorum, an indigenous New World hallucinogen, has sparked the latest moral panic in the US. From Slate.com, 6 May 2008: "The normally staid Associated Press attached a headline to a March 11 story that inquired, "Is Salvia the Next Marijuana?" If the AP meant to ask whether Salvia divinorum is the next misunderstood recreational drug to be both demonized and popularized by the press, the answer is yes." (Rest of article)
Excerpt from James Cuno's Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage (Princeton University Press, 2008). Wall Street Journal, 26 April 2008.
Many more archived stories about recent developments in Indigenous IP, 2003-2006, 2007-