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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 |
| If you're interested in a nuanced perspective on responsible open-access scholarship, click on over to Jason Baird Jackson's February 2012 post, "Another World is Possible: Open Folklore as Library-Scholarly Society Partnership." Posted here 27 April 2012. |
Here's a recent article worth checking out if you have access to the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute:
- Lala Rukh Selim, "On the possibility of cultural property: The Musée Guimet controversy and case study of events in Bangladesh," JRAI 17, 2011.
- Abstract: Bangladesh's multicultural and syncretic past is reflected in its artefacts. The Musée Guimet of France planned an exhibition of about 200 masterpieces from the five major museums of Bangladesh in 2007. Against a background of a wider public disinterest in the concept of `cultural property', a plethora of demonstrations and lawsuits sought to block the export of objects as the process was perceived to disregard Bangladeshi and international laws. A polarization of positions emerged among the Bangladeshi left-liberal networks. Through an exploration of the events of the Guimet débâcle this paper brings into focus the debates relating to the national and universal in the context of the status of artefacts as the identity and patrimony of the Bangladeshi nation. The Guimet affair exemplifies how artefacts can play a powerful role in the contestation of the politics of Bengali Muslim identity in a postcolonial nation. Posted here 27 April 2012.
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| "Tourism goes indigenous." IPS News, 4 April 2012. |
A new themed issue of Current Anthropology contains several papers about repatriation and cultural ownership of biological materials. Of particular interest:
Unless I'm mistaken, CA resides behind a pay-wall, so you'll need access to an institutional login with a site-license. |
| "U.N. expert offended by Rodarte Aboriginal-print fashion," Washington Post, 16 March 2012. |
| Another story that won't go away: The "Fighting Sioux" question comes back. See also David Sirota's "Ethnic Mascots are Never Winners," Salon.com, 7 March 2012. |
| Who says businesses are smarter than governments? Urban Outfitters just won't quit pissing off the Navajo--so the Navajo Nation is suing. 29 February 2012. |
| Big story: "Indigenous People Walk Out of WIPO Committee, 26 February 2012. |
| Peter Jean, "Proposal to Research Indigenous Medicines." Canberra Times, 18 February 2012. |
| Another paywall-protected gem: Karolina Lindh and Jutta Haider, "Development and the Documentation of Indigenous Knowledge: Good Intentions in Bad Company?" Libri, 2012. |
| India to patent forest products of tribal communities. Economic Times, 1 February 2012, posted here 8 February. |
| Want a nice fountain pen named after the Mapuche? You can find it here for a mere $895! I have no idea whether the Mapuche have authorized this or whether they benefit from it in any way. 8 February 2012. |
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| From PLOS/Neuroanthropology, information on the "Digital Return" conference held at the Smithsonian in January 2012. Story includes links to relevant websites, including Digital Return's own site. 8 February 2012. |
| 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. |
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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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| “‘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- |
