24.4 (Winter 2000) Intellectual Property Rights: Culture as Commodity

Xavante shaman Waparia, the first Brazilian Amazonian Indian to stand before a UN podium, performs a ritual of healing so that Summit participants will comprehend the sacred and global role played by indigenous forest dwellers.

During my visit to Sheshatshiu and the periphery of the bush-country in July, I stayed with members of the Penashue family. I spent my time listening to the stories of ongoing struggles in Sheshatshiu and the return to the old ways in the country. The bush is the place in which Moshum (Grandfather) beats his drum, tales of the dancing northern lights are recounted, and caribou are processed.

It's all been said before. If you are reading this article, then most probably you are familiar with the issue of saving the world's tropical forests.

The Sierra Tarahumara, a major component of Mexico's northern Sierra Madre Occidental, is a spectacular region of high sierras and deep canyons. It extends for nearly 1000 kilometers from just south of the United States border through the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua, Sonora, Durango, and Sinaloa. Ranging in altitude from around 200 meters to over 3000 meters, the region is characterized by a tremendous diversity of tropical, subtropical, and temperate flora and fauna, including a number of endemic species. It is also an area of great cultural and linguistic diversity.

The Kuna people live on Panama's northeastern Caribbean coast, and their beautiful lands (which they call Kuna Yala, known to others as San Bias) draw many visitors. Their reservation, or comarca, consists of a strip of the mainland and about 400 islands. With sandy beaches, clear water, coral reefs, and sunny skies, Kuna Yala seems like paradise to tourists. According to the Panamanian government's Tourism Development Master Plan,

History

The international policy debate on the intellectual property rights of indigenous peoples has advanced from the question of whether indigenous knowledge should be protected to a consideration of how to protect it. Much of the debate arises from issues addressed by different communities, such as:

- Human Rights: The resurgence of self-determination by indigenous groups, particularly their quest for territorial rights.

- Conservation: The increasing loss of biological and cultural diversity and a deepened awareness of their interrelation.

Struggles by indigenous peoples to preserve native property interests from within western legal systems, and in particular to assert native intellectual property rights, have been arduous. In recent years, however, these interconnected struggles have achieved significant inroads.

My Home Town is a URL in Cyberspace: THE INTERNET, ITALIAN ETHNIC IDENTITIES & THE EUROPEAN UNION

Maori origins are traced back to the beginnings of creation -- Te Kore (total darkness). There was no life, only potential. Papatuanuku (the Earth Mother) and Ranginui (the Sky Father) were clasped together, stifling all growth.

During the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C.

Textiles laden with traditional patterns and symbolic layouts carry rare information among indigenous people of Peru, where writing has never been the prime means of communication among Inca people.

Darwin, Australia, September 1999. The town reveals itself for the military staging post it was always destined to be; soldiers from around the world and UN personnel are everywhere. East Timor, only an hour's flight away, is in flames. Indonesian performers from Makassar, South Sulawesi, are worried on account of false reports by the Indonesian media of street violence against Indonesians in Australia.

Terralingua:

Partnerships for Linguistic and Biological Diversity

Mateo Arevalo, 43, was born into a family of traditional healers, or curanderos, in the Shipibo community of San Francisco de Yarinacocha in Peru. When he decided to follow in his father's footsteps and learn curandismo, he was taught to prepare a ceremonial drink from a woody vine scientists call Banisteriopsis caapi and curanderos call "ayahuasca," a Quechua word meaning "vine of the soul." He drank the brew regularly during his two-year training period to induce physical purging and intense visions of the spirit world.

Over the past two decades or so, the Western intellectual property rights (IPR) legal system has increasingly found itself on a collision course with the cultural and intellectual heritage rights system of indigenous and traditional peo

The Goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), introduced in Rio de Janeiro during the 1992 Earth Summit, are (1) the conservation of biological diversity, (2) the sustainable use of its components, and (3) the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of its commercial use. Ratification of the CBD by 177 nations has led most commercial users of bioresources to comply with convention provisions, which gains them access to the raw bioresources and traditional medicinal plant knowledge that can be developed into bioproducts.

In December 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada issued the landmark Delgamuukw Decision on Native land entitlements -- a progressive (some would say activist) decision that in many ways parallels the Australian High Court's Mabo Decision regarding Australian Aboriginal property rights. The ground-breaking ruling for the Git...an and Wet'suwet'en(1) of British Columbia was that aboriginal title was not extinguished by European conquest.