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| The International Journal of Cultural Property is now regularly carrying articles on indigenous IPR and is actively seeking innovative submissions on this and relate topics. For additional information, browse the website of the International Cultural Property Society. |
| Additional publications by Michael F. Brown, Williams College, on indigenous rights and heritage protection, most available for full-text download. |
 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 In Transition. 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." Likewise the website of the Lawyers' Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation. Another useful and sometimes amusing blog site to check out is Native Appropriations. |
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News, Stories, Documents |
| Here's an Indian Country Today piece from August 2011 that only recently crossed my path: "Protecting Identity and Art." Posted here 27 January 2012. |
Gotta love the strange world of intellectual property. The Economist has run a story on efforts to protect the name of the plant that provides tequila's raw material, the agave. Liquor manufacturers can only call their beverage "tequila" if it's made in one of five Mexican states. To meet growing demand in the US, distillers in other parts of Mexico are calling their product "agave liquor." This led to demands that agave should be redefined as a trademark or geographical indication. ¡Salud! 22 January 2012.
More still: How about the litigation that would declare Chinese red a trademarked color when it appears on the bottom of women's shoes? This time it's from the Wall Street Journal. Posted here 27 January 2012. |
| Article worth reading if you can surmount the Wiley-Blackwell pay wall: Larry Nesper, "Law and Ojibwe Indian 'traditional cultural property' in the organized resistance to the Crandon Mine in Wisconsin," Law and Social Inquiry 36.1 (Winter 2011). |
| More evidence that US IP law is getting crazier every day: Story of how a folk artist in Vermont who makes tee-shirts that say "Eat More Kale" is getting cease-and-desist letters from lawyers for the fast-food chain Chick-fil-A, whose trademarked slogan is "Eat more Chikin." New York Times, 4 December 2011, posted here 9 December 2011. |
| Nathaniel T. Noda, "Perpetuating cultures: What fan-based activities can teach us about intangible cultural property," Creighton Law Review 44, 2011. You may need access to Lexis-Nexis to download this. |
| Francesco Francioni, "The human dimension of international cultural heritage law: An introduction." European Journal of International Law 22, 2011, available full-text. 9 December 2011. |
| Interesting paper on indigenous secrecy and its legal implications: "We could tell you, but then we'd have to kill you: How indigenous cultural secrecy impedes the protection of natural cultural heritage in the United States," by Audrey Mense. 9 December 2011. |
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The AP reports that Mexican fashion designers are now actively taking inspiration from the traditional clothing of the nation's indigenous peoples, including huipiles. An act of cultural appropriation? You decide. 14 November 2011; posted here 29 November. |
| From the PLoS blog Neuroanthropology, a lengthy description of an important session on Digital Anthropology at the recent American Anthropological Association meeting in Montreal. Elements of this session were directed to the digitization of indigenous heritage and the establishment of indigenously developed protocols for its management. Not to be missed. 28 November 2011. |
| There's a great story in Jezebel.com about the offensive appropriation of "Navajo" by Urban Outfitters. Includes trenchant comments by Susan Scafidi and others. Not to be missed. 14 October 2011. Update: More on the case here, 17 October 2011. |
| Latest issue of the IJCP is out. Full list of articles can be browsed here, but of special note are essays by Charles Kamau Maina, "Power Relations in the Traditional Knowledge Debate," and Emma Lees, "Intangible Cultural Heritage in a Modernizing Bhutan." |
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| Looking for sophisticated recent analyses of indigenous IP issues and solutions? Be sure to check out the publications page of the IPinCH Project in British Columbia. 27 September 2011. |
| Controversial South African law to protect indigenous TK is passed. But is it the best solution? 19 September 2011. |
| Aboriginal stone tjuringa removed from UK auction after negative publicity. 8 September 2011. |
| The German Anthropological Association, which will hold its biennial meeting in Vienna on September 14-17, will be offering many papers related to repatriation, heritage protection, and the conversion of culture into property. Little seems to be offered online as of yet, but interested readers may want to contact individual scholars for copies of papers of interest. 1 September 2011 |
More appropriation stories related to sports:
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Here are recent journal articles worthy of attention. All seem to be behind pay walls, unfortunately, but your library may be able to provide access. (Post updated on 10 August 2011)
- Two remarkable essays about Southwestern Indians not to be missed: (1) Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, "Sketching Knowledge: Quandaries in the Mimetic Reproduction of Pueblo Ritual," American Ethnologist, 38 (3), 2011; (2) Justin B. Richland, "Hopi Tradition as Jurisdiction: On the Potentializing Limits of Hopi Sovereignty," Law and Social Inquiry 36, 2011.
- Several articles in the IJCP 18 (2), 2011, including Marilena Alivizatou, "Intangible Heritage and Erasure: Rethinking Cultural Preservation and Contemporary Museum Practice," and Shoshaunna Parks, "Winning Title to Land but Not to Its Past: The Toledo Maya and Sites of Pre-Hispanic Heritage."
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July 2011: Waitangi Tribunal releases report on Wai 262 claims regarding Maori traditional knowledge.
After years of work, the Waitangi Tribunal, Aotearoa/New Zealand, has released its findings on the Wai 262 claims. The report website includes multiple, downloadable documents, including a media release, a report for a general-interest readership, and several more technical documents. This is likely to stand as one of the most important set of documents ever issued on the legal status of indigenous knowledge in a multicultural settler society. Not to be missed! (With special thanks to Charles Dawson, Research Analyst/Inquiry Facilitator, Waitangi Tribunal, for bringing this to my attention.)
An NZ news story about the Waitangi decision accessible here, with more sure to follow. 25 July 2011.
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| “‘In Defense of Property’: An Exchange" International Journal of Cultural Property 17: 569-598, 2010. Consists of comment by Michael F. Brown (pp. 569-579) and reply by Kristen A. Carpenter, Sonia K. Katyal, and Angela R. Riley (pp.581-598). Carpenter, Katyal, and Riley’s contribution is included with authors’ kind permission. Full-text download here. This article is a lively debate about Carpenter, Katyal, and Riley's important essay, "In Defense of Property" (Yale Law Journal, 2009) which is available full-text here. |
Many more archived stories about recent developments in Indigenous IP, 2003-2006, 2007- |
