By A. Rodney Bobiwash/Wacoquaakmik May 30, 2000
One of the great challenges facing Indigenous people across the world is how they protect their unique identity as indigenous people and how in the face of globalisation they will ensure that their traditions and knowledge are protected for future generations. This is a matter of much debate at the international level with discussions currently being carried out primarily in the World Intellectual Property Organization and under the TRIP's agreement of the World Trade Organization - but should we as Original Peoples leave the discussion of our rights in somebody else's hands? This question is to be considered by a caucus of indigenous leaders, scholars, activists and elders at a meeting at the Squaxin Island First Nation in Washington State, June 19-20th. Indian people have been invited from across the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama and the South Pacific. The challenge goes far beyond the problem of the appropriation of our image to sell products and the mining of our spirituality to sell new age religions. Large pharmaceutical companies have discovered that the knowledge our traditional people and Elders have about healing plants can be worth millions of dollars once extracted and patented. Much of this information is taken from Elders who are eager to share their knowledge, believing that this knowledge should be shared for the benefit of humankind, with little or no compensation ever paid the people and communities involved. In the United States COICA, the indigenous organization of the Amazon, recently won a case against the University of Michigan, who had illegally patented one of their most sacred of plants - the Ayuhuasca, and the patent was disallowed. In other cases record companies and performers have used traditional music to sell millions of records without permission of the people the songs belong to. Authors and academics write books based on "field research" accessing our stories and histories which are then published under their own names and build their own careers. The meeting at Squaxin Island will draw together some of the best minds in Indian country to draft an treaty between Indian Nations on how to deal with the question of protection of cultural property. This treaty will then be circulated among First Nations for review and ratification and in those Nations which adopt it will begin to form the basis for our own law on these issues. The meeting is being sponsored by the Center for World Indigenous Studies, the Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute and the Morning Star Institute.
For more information contact Rodney Bobiwash Center for World Indigenous Studies Tel. 416-929-4581 E-Mail: abobiwash@cwis.org Website: www.cwis.org:
