11.16.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:00 pm by Leonard Kniffel
The last panel discussion at the Traditional Cultural Expression Conference in Washington, D.C., addressed “Emergent Technologies, Emergent Cultures: The Interface of Technology with Traditional Cultural Expression.”
“How is knowledge embodied in media?” asked Ramesh Srinivasan, assistant professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA. He advocates for a hip-hop model or any number of other modern interpretations of traditional culture, along with new methods of organization and access. Does that mean we reject cataloging and classification? No, he said, but it argues for including “the narrative associated with an object,” leading to collaborative methods, research done with people not on or about them. He called for flexible, practical models that involve people in all phases of a project.
Greg Younging, assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, talked about indigenous use of technology. “I come from a traditional family,” he said, ”which also went through the educational system that uprooted children and put them in residential schools.” He is the first member of his family that didn’t go through that system. “I don’t have my language,” he said, “and I had to discover the traditions for myself.” One of misconceptions he pointed to is the notion is that “authentic” or “traditional” means “being exactly what we were when we first encountered Europeans, hunting buffalo and living in teepees.” Using technology does not amount to abandoning tradition, Younging maintained. Technology belonged to indigenous people too; witness mound building, long houses, the pyramids. Mound building was such an ancient technology that it had stopped even before Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere. ”Modern technology is a tool that people can adapt to their cultures, not something with intrinsic power,” he said. “We can indigenize anything.” Oral history, and the need to pass it from generation to generation, is a validation of the need to preserve history—the principal not the means.
Eric Kansa, of the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley asked why it is that scholarship, supported with public money, is limited to one community. Because “we are in a restrictive publishing paradigm,” he answered, calling for “common ground in the digital commons.” Why can’t this discussion be more widely available and participatory, he asked, instead of locked behind subscription barriers. Kansa suggested an alternative to intellectual property protection in libraries could be “our own mark, like the copyright symbol, that is mark of respect.” He also warned against letting Google become “a giant Hoover of content.”
The Traditional Cultural Expression Conference ended with a free-wheeling wrap-up led by Jonathan Franklin of the Gallagher Law Library, Janice Pilch of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Lori Driscoll of the University of Florida Smathers Libraries. The trio will be the library liaisons to WIPO, and they collected recommendations from the participants that will further the American Library Association’s primary purpose in holding the three-day invitational: “to define the U.S library position on cultural expression.”
Respect, reciprocity, responsibility, collaboration, self-determination, and openness, need to be among the principles that guide library and archival preservation of traditional cultural expression, with a focus on the “human value” libraries can bring to the WIPO table. Several participants confirmed the sense that there is a difference between the general protection of traditional cultural expression and the intellectual property rights of indigenous people who believe in collective ownership in perpetuity. Libraries need to focus on the latter, in relation to WIPO, and to stand behind the U.N. Declaration of the Human Rights of Indigenous People.
Conference organizer Carrie Russell, of the sponsoring ALA Office for Information Technology Policy, said the group’s recommendations will be organized and posted to the conference website for further development. And she thanked the MacArthur Foundation for funding the Traditional Cultural Expression Conference.
Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:23 pm by Leonard Kniffel
A panel titled “Drawbacks to Traditional Copyright Protections and Alternative Models” delivered perhaps the most empassioned talks of the Traditional Cultural Expression Conference in Washington, D.C.
Debra Harry, executive director of the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism pulled no punches as she emphasized that indigenous people must be consulted at the onset and throughout any effort to manage or preserve their cultural heritage. She looked around the room and observed that not enough idigenous people were present at the conference.
Trying to twist western intellectual property laws to fit indigenous expression is futile, Harry suggested, as it protects “alienable commodities.” Indigenous people have a completely different view. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) refers to it as the conceptual divide. Indigenous people view their cultural expression as holistic and dynamic, with collective rights that are unalienable, intergenerational, and perpetual, with a foundation in human rights law or the right of self-determination. The Western view is that intellectual property rights are alienable or a commodity that we think of as needing short-term protection and public domain provisions founded in trade agreements. Indigenous peoples are rights-holders not stake-holders, Harry said. When it belongs to indigenous communities, she observed, it no longer has its real value when used by outsiders. Librarians need to rely on the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, asserting the right of self-determination, she recommended.
Rebecca Tsosie, professor of law at Arizona State University, said the human race is “at time when we have to embrace change and do it by talking to people not like us.” Indigenous people are always compared to Europeans, she asserted, since “contact” it has always been this way. The difference now is that indigenous people have a political status, unlike the period of colonization when there was a presumption that indigenous people had no laws, no status. “We have sui generis laws,” Tsosie said, but until that statute there was no protection. She emphasized, as did Harry, consultation with native people, who look at cultural heritage collectively. ”It’s the right thing to do,” she said, especially with regard to all the cultural heritage and artifacts that have already been taken away from their rightful owners. ”Tribal and indigenous people are not at the table in the international sphere, and they should be,” she added. The U.N. Declaration says indigenous people have the right to self determination and contains model for defining native rights within domestic structures.
Wednesday evening keynote speaker Wend Wendland of WIPO rose to the challenge presented earlier in the conference by Winston Tabb of Johns Hopkins University. In attempting to answer Tabb’s challenge with regard to what the profession wants to see happen, he said that the library community could do two main things: 1) see to what extent your resources and technology and expertise could be made available to indeigenous people so they can document their own culture, and 2) develop a framework or protocol that can serve as guidelines. He acknowledged the need to consult widely, and to observe and participate in a wide variety of projects. He invited the American Library Association and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions to help develop a guidebook for libraries. It’s not that indigenous people want to be included in the existing system, he added, it is that they want a distinctly different one. But the agenda of the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, and Folklore is overloaded, he said, and need to focus squarely on intellectual property.
It was at this point in the conference that it became clear to many that the discussion had veered away from the general concept of traditional cultural expression, which is way too inclusive. It was only when the group got into issues specific to indigenous populations that the question was understandably framed. Similar concerns apply to native people in Australia and New Zealand and other places around the world, just as much as North America.
Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:20 pm by Leonard Kniffel
“Challenges to Libraries and Archives in the Management of Works of Indigenous Communities” was the theme of the fourth panel at the Traditional Cultural Expression Conference in Washington, D.C.
Kimberly A. Christen, associate professor at Washington State University, explained access parameters in tagging for databases, to illustrate collaborative management of indigenous materials, that is, matching access to user profiles that honors indigenous people’s wishes. Communities can do this now, without the law, she said, citing examples from Australia, where there is a strong movement afoot to preserve and collect indigenous knowledge. She also talked about “reciprocal curation” and announced that a Plateau Peoples Web Portal is launching in 2009, containing stories from the Coeur d’Alene, Umatilla, and Yakama peoples. We are “moving toward models that work in a more balanced way,” she said.
The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress began in 1928, said Michael Taft, head of the archive, and it started by attempting to collect all American folk music. All the material is openly accessible and no one has objected in 80 years, he said, adding that he did not expect that to last. He noted that no one can copy material without going through protocol, and LC views itself not as copyright owner but rather custodian. The Center has in some instances tried to repatriate recordings to tribal owners. Taft talked about the Zuni storytelling collection, which was deteriorating by the 1990s. The Zuni community blessed turning the collection over to LC in 1996, and the library is planning to make it entirely available to the Zuni community while preserving it at the Library of Congress. Yet, there remains the question of who the tribe deems eligible to access the tapes, he added.
“There has probably never been a more interesting time to be an archivist,” said Robert Leopold, director of the National Anthropological Archives and Human Studies Film Archives at the Smithsonian Institution. Speaking about ethical issues surrounding the acquisition and curation of indigenous materials, he talked about the slippery slope of restricted access when donor language specifies, for example, only “genuine scholars” need apply, which requires “archival clairvoyance,” Leopold quipped. He said that protecting traditional cultural expression requires “strengthening trust in what are already some of the most trusted institutions in America.”
Christen observed that a lot of people object when they hear that certain things are only for women, only for men, but these restrictions consitutue, in library lingo, a knowledge management system.
Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:59 pm by Leonard Kniffel
“Indigenous Perspectives on Intellectual/Cultural Property Rights and Access” was the theme of the third panel at the Traditional Cultural Expression Conference in Washington, D.C., featuring three speakers who represented native people from the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. The panel followed a luncheon talk by Peter Jaszi, law professor and director of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic in the Washington College of Law at American University. A self-described intellectual property skeptic, Jaszi said the main function of intellectual property law has become to preserve the old business models and generate profit, and this constitutes a perversion of its original intent, which was to foster creativity and enable people to earn a living from their work.
It struck some at the conference as ironic that now, just when disenfranchised people are lobbying for a piece of the action, the legal establishment is saying the system isn’t working. Jaszi’s point, however, was that we need to examine what can be done to protect traditional cultural expression. He told a story about some surprising findings in Indonesia where traditional music protection has clashed with young musicians who want to play interpretations or variations on the traditonal, a conflict that ended up being echoed by many of the speakers at the conference. “A minimalist approach is best calculated to avoid the pathologies of intellectual property,” Jaszi said. He was told repeatedly by idigenous people with whom he had worked that “the law stuff is not what they need; they need real support now.” That translates into government ensuring better exposure in the media and in schools and supporting local revitalization projects, including performance spaces, and finding ways of connecting arts communities with discerning consumers. Jaszi’s talk led to an interesting discussion—with no general agreement—about the offensiveness of the updating being done by young people when they leave the indigenous community and reinterpret the traditional in the context of the contemporary.
Loriene Roy, immediate past president of the American Library Association and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, joked with the group about cultural blunders by talking about her own Anishinabe heritage and some of the gaffes she herself has made while learning about it. Roy is currently working with PBS on We Shall Remain, scheduled to air on public television in April 2009, on developing a multimedia toolkit to help libraries use the American Experience series to establish native history as an essential part of American history.
New Zealander Spencer Lilley, Maori services manager for the Massey University Library System, began his talk with an ancient Maori chant, leading into a discussion of Maori cultural and intellectual property rights. He presented a brief history of New Zealand and showed examples of Maori tattoos being used in fashion marketing and in sporting events in ways that native people find offensive and exploitative.
Martin Nakata, chair of Australian indigenous education at the University of Technology in Sydney, reported on his research on indigenous knowledge in Australia. He pointed out that 40,000 to 60,000 years of knowledge being passed on through oral tradition is not to be interpreted as entertainment. He offered an off-the-cuff, spot-on answer to the question, What does it mean to be indigenous? “We didn’t name the place, the place named us,” he said.
Permalink