Intellectual Property and Indigenous Heritage

In today’s episode, we’re looking at issues that come up in Indigenous communities, and one initiative to respond to the limitations of the law and to reassert cultural authority in one’s own heritage, culture and data. Episode notes In this season of the podcast we’re working with the Engelberg Center for Innovation Policy at NYU Law. In this episode, Dr. Jane Anderson talks about how she found “the law doesn’t do a very good job in protecting collective knowledge.” One of the big challenges in the area that I work in is the language of ownership to start with, and the framework of property itself conditions what’s possible to think about and what’s possible to talk about. Jane co-founded Local Contexts, “a global initiative that supports Indigenous communities with tools that can reassert cultural authority in heritage collections and data. By focusing on Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property and Indigenous Data Sovereignty, Local Contexts helps Indigenous communities repatriate knowledge and gain control over how data is collected, managed, displayed, accessed, and used in the future.” We also speak with Courtney Papuni of Te Whakatohea iwi in Opotiki. Courtney speaks on her community’s work with Local Contexts labels and the limitations of western notions of copyright on cultural heritage and knowledge. Full transcript, notes, links and contact can be found on the episode website.