Protecting Indigenous Knowledge And Heritage

Whether in Canada, the United States, Australia, India, Peru, or Russia, the approximately 500 million Indigenous Peoples in the world have faced a similar fate at the hands of colonizing powers. Assaults on language and culture, commercialization of art, and use of plant knowledge in the development of medicine have taken place all without consent, acknowledgement, or benefit to these Indigenous groups worldwide. Battiste and Henderson passionately detail the devastation these assaults have wrought on Indigenous peoples, why current legal regimes are inadequate to protect Indigenous knowledge, and put forward ideas for reform. Looking at the issues from an international perspective, this book explores developments in various countries including Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and also the work of the United Nations and relevant international agreements.

The approximately 500 million Indigenous peoples of the world live in Canada, the United States, Australia, India, Peru, or Russia, they have faced a similar fate at the hands of colonizing powers. That fate has included assaults on their language and culture, commercialization of their art, and use of their plant knowledge in the development of medicine, all without consent, acknowledgement or benefit to them. The authors paint a passionate picture of the devastation this assault has wrought on Indigenous peoples. They illustrate why current legal regimes are inadequate to protect Indigenous knowledge and put forward ideas for reform. The book looks at the issues from an international perspective and explores developments in various countries including Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the work of the United Nations, as well as relevant international agreements.

Whether the approximately 500 million Indigenous peoples of the world live in Canada, the United States, Australia, India, Peru, or Russia, they have faced a similar fate at the hands of colonizing powers. That fate has included assaults on their language and culture, commercialization of their art, and use of their plant knowledge in the development of medicine, all without consent, acknowledgement or benefit to them. The authors paint a passionate picture of the devastation this assault has wrought on Indigenous peoples. They illustrate why current legal regimes are inadequate to protect Indigenous knowledge and put forward ideas for reform. The book looks at the issues from an international perspective and explores developments in various countries including Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the work of the United Nations, as well as relevant international agreements.

Ethics has been a perennial concern of qualitative researchers. The subject has been confounded with the emergence of human subjects regulations, the increased concern with indigenous communities, the globalization of research practices, and the breakdown of barriers between researcher and subject. The original contributions to this volume highlight the key topics that face contemporary qualitative researchers and those that will likely emerge in the near future. Written by many of the leading figures in the field—Lincoln, Denzin, Schwandt, Richardson, Ellis, Bochner, Morse, among others—this book will help shape the ethical response of the field to the challenges presented by the contemporary research environment.

Indigenous peoples around the world are seeking greater control over tangible and intangible cultural heritage. In Canada, issues concerning repatriation and trade of material culture, heritage site protection, treatment of ancestral remains, and control over intangible heritage are governed by a complex legal and policy environment. This volume looks at the key features of Canadian, US, and international law influencing indigenous cultural heritage in Canada. Legal and extralegal avenues for reform are examined and opportunities and limits of existing frameworks are discussed. Is a radical shift in legal and political relations necessary for First Nations concerns to be meaningfully addressed?

For indigenous cultures, property is an alien concept. Yet the market-driven industries of the developed world do not hesitate to exploit indigenous raw materials, from melodies to plants, using intellectual property law to justify their behaviour. Existing intellectual property law, for the most part, allows industries to use indigenous knowledge and resources without asking for consent and without sharing the benefits of such exploitation with the indigenous people themselves. It should surprise nobody that indigenous people object. Recognizing that the commercial exploitation of indigenous knowledge and resources takes place in the midst of a genuine and significant clash of cultures, the eight contributors to this important book explore ways in which intellectual property law can expand to accommodate the interests of indigenous people to their traditional knowledge, genetic resources, indigenous names and designations, and folklore. In so doing they touch upon such fundamental issues and concepts as the following: collective rights to the living heritage; relevant human rights norms; benefit-sharing in biological resources; farmers rights; the practical needs of documentation, assistance, and advice; the role of customary law; bioprospecting and biopiracy; and public domain. As a starting point toward mutual understanding and a common basis for communication between Western-style industries and indigenous communities, Indigenous Heritage and Intellectual Property is of immeasurable value. It offers not only an in-depth evaluation of the current legal situation under national, regional and international law including analyses of the Convention on Biological Diversity and other international instruments, as well as initiatives of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and other international bodies but also probes numerous further possibilities. While no one concerned with indigenous culture or environmental issues can afford to ignore it, this book is also of special significance to practitioners and policymakers in intellectual property law in relation to indigenous heritage. This book, here in its second edition, presents the most recent state of knowledge in the field.

" ... The Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies extends beyond the investigation of qualitative inquiry itself to explorer the indigenous and nonindigenous voices that inform research, policy, politics, and social justice". -- BACKCOVER.

The essays in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision spring from an International Summer Institute held in 1996 on the cultural restoration of oppressed Indigenous peoples. The contributors, primarily Indigenous, unravel the processes of colonization that enfolded modern society and resulted in the oppression of Indigenous peoples.