Joey’s ETEC 521 Blog

Listening to our Past is the online version of a series of collections of oral history books published by Nunavut Arctic College. The series is based on interviews and talks by Inuit elders invited to the college. There are five collections in the series:

1. A journey into Inuit Traditional Knowledge
2. Winds of change
3. North meets south
4. Development of Government Services in the arctic
5. The creation of Nunavut

The focus of the first series is passing on traditional Inuit knowledge such as childrearing practices, shamanism, and traditional health and law.  There is video footage in that records elders talking in their native language, about traditional games. There is an animated story about a Shaman’s spiritual journey as raven.  In our class discussions we have talked about the issues of viewing a culture from the outside.  It was interesting to observe the practices used in this animation.  The Shaman begins his spiritual journey tied-up on the floor of an igloo.  In the film Atanarjuat, the Shaman is bound during the ceremony.  Until seeing this website animation, I had not connected this as part of a ceremony.

In the second series, Winds of Change, the focus remains on the ways before the missionaries, but it begins to question the traditional customs as a way to better understand the contemporary issues facing the Inuit. This examines the interplay between Christianity and Shamanism.

The North meets South series discusses how military deployments to the Artic during the second world changed the land, and indigenous populations’ relationship to it. Stories make one think about how much Western cultures impose on indigenous cultures without thinking. For example in this case, the influx of HBC goods, hiring Inuit for pay, seemed to draw the people away from their relationship with the land.

This is an amazing project, and web presence.

This site provides a series of National Post articles that look at First Nations engagement with other cultures through a variety of discussions about economic development. Topics include: living off band land, ability to hold jobs, casinos, governance issues, business acheivements, and education.  The site also includes an interactive map that helps to place all of these key issues for reserves within the larger geographical context of Canada.

The education article questions whether private schools are a better alternative for native kids.  The article  describes how one private school helped turn around education for native students who have now become leaders in native education. The article also discusses how changes to education funding over the years have made this type of schooling more difficult for native families to access.  The page also includes links to interviews with principals, teachers, parents and students.

This link is to a 1999 CBC radio broadcast about issues of overfishing, fishing out of season, aboriginal treaty rights, and non-aboriginal fishing rights. The link is interesting from a teaching and learning perspective because it uses video, audio, and internet technologies to present a variety of perspectives on the issues and implications surrounding this news story.   Perspectives include aboriginal and non-aboriginal, commercial fishers, native fishers, and journalists.

The page also includes links to similarly presented archived news stories on land claims, logging, and whaling, and also interesting from a historical perspective.  The clips and the other links on this page are from the CBC archives and provide examples of attitudes and actions surrounding these stories which date back to a period between 1971 to 1999.

Our World, Our Way of Life is a virtual exhibition preserving and expressing the culture and connections to the land of the Inuit, and the Haida Peoples. I feel that this site is intended to increase awareness of these cultures among non-Native, or among non-Haida and non-Inuit peoples. The site provides a great synopsis of the languages, and relationships of these two cultures with their natural world.  There are descriptions of the language, their way of life and communties.  I was interested to learn that the syllabic writing used by some Canadian Inuit was first introduced by Moravian missionaries in 1770. In our class discussions we have discussed how technology can impact indigenous cultures, and questioned the meaning of “traditional”.  The link to the Inuit Hunting page makes a point that echos our class discussions. The author commsent that given the changes in hunting technology, the Inuit are often asked how they can call themselves “traditional” hunters when they no longer use their old technologies.  There is also a beautiful true story by an Inuit hunter that exemplifies his cultural and spiritual connection to the land and the animals.

Seeing is Believing focuses on the use of digital technology to address human rights issues.  The site also raises some very important questions about use of digital video for this purpose – such as whether cameras help or worsen the dangers for those involved. The website is built around a documentary movie entitled “Seeing is believing: Handicams human rights and the news”. The site includes an e-zine for teachers that is organized into 4 thematic modules: the film (Seeing is Believeing); impact of digital technologies on democracy; use of digital technologies by indigenous groups; and controversies around ethics and bias in the use of digital technologies.

The modules align with the curriculum for grades 10-12 in several courses, including environmental studies, and aboriginal studies.  The site’s focus is on video advocacy for human rights, but this links closely use of digital technologies to advocate cultural and ecological awareness, connections with the land.  The third module on indigenous cultures provides an interesting discussion and activities for students about the two-way street and the issues of give and take of technology.

I have found some online excerpts of what looks to be a great book – Walking A Tightrope: Aboriginal People And Their Representations (Eds.) David McNab, Ute Lischke. (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005) (Links for online excerpts here).

I found Chapter 5 particularly relevant to the current module of the course (Module 3:  Decolonization and Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights) . Chapter 5 (Chapter 5 excerpts here) is a paper by Mark Dockstator – “Aboriginal Representations of History and the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples” (RCAP) . Dockstator’s doctoral thesis provided the model for the historical foundation for the RCAP report.  His model is based on traditional Aboriginal teachings.  Dockstator’s paper discusses the societal interactions between Western society and Aboriginal society from different perspectives, and through stages ranging from pre-contact, contact, treaty, and contemporary relationships. Reading through Dockstator’s presentation and seeing the contrast (diagrams here)  between Western and Aboriginal views with respect to these relationships is quite a revelation. Dockstator’s model contributes to a better understanding of Aboriginal/Western relationships and provides useful background for our ETEC 521 analytic papers.

The 2008 imagineNATIVE film and media arts festival has recently wrapped up in Toronto.   It was interesting to see the cover image they chose for the festival program this year.

What immediately struck me was the cover of the program, which is a mock-up of the original Indiana Jones movie poster.  The festival has replaced the image of Indiana Jones tipping his fedora with one of “Indian Jane”. The festival represents some good film media – intellectual property belonging to native authors, while at the same time, the cover image grew out of a western culture, and highly commercial product (the series of Indiana Jones films), and a character who makes his living as a relic hunter.  The imagery this site evoked for me at first glance cried out as the perfect poster child for our ETEC 521 Module 3:  Decolonization and Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights.

This is a Weblog aimed at providing original, open-access and subscriber-based news and analysis on international IP policy making.
The site includes a number of posts on various issues of Indigenous Intellectual property rights.  Some highlights from these include the following:

3 March 2008: Indigenous Groups Express Concerns On IP Protection Of Their Knowledge

This post discusses an informal meeting held by Indigenous groups in February, during the meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Intergovernmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC) in Geneva.  The informal meeting was to develop an approach on how the WIPO should proceed in protecting indigenous and traditional knowledge.  Discussion includes whether patents can protect Indigenous knowledge, and how to rationalize western concepts not found in indigenous cultures, for example, concepts such as ownership and stewardship.

7 March 2008:  Inside Views: Interview With Debra Harry, Indigenous People’s Council on Biocolonialism

This link includes a video interview with Debra Harry, a member of the Northern Paiute from Pyramid Lake, Nevada, and founder and executive director of the Indigenous People’s Council on Biocolonialism. The interview was recorded at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Intergovernmental Committee on Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, and Folklore in Geneva.  In the interview, the WIPO interviewer asks the questions: “What needs to be done to protect traditional knowledge and genetic resources in a way acceptable to the indigenous peoples who own them?   What rights are in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples?”

Harry argues that the indigenous peoples hold inherited prior rights to the knowledge and resources. She argues that traditional knowledge represents the cultural heritage of the indigenous peoples and is very specific to them.  As outsiders have begun to mine this knowledge for commercial benefits, regulations need to be developed to help protect rights of indigenous peoples. Regulations are currently aimed at protecting inventions and market commodities.  Cultural heritage is not a commodity rather is part of cultural people and cultural heritage.

6 December 2006: Inside Views: Indigenous Groups Tell WIPO, ‘Don’t Patent Our Traditional Knowledge’

This post presents the interesting argument by Indigenous groups that attempts to patent their Indigenous Knowledge will pose more threats rather than provide protection.

Our ETEC 521 Vista discussion forum the last couple of weeks has raised issues around trademarks, permission, and ownership of native imagery.  In one of our readings, Rachel Grad (2002) provides a comparison of indigenous rights in intellectual property law in the US and in Australia.  Philip Bellfy (2005) presents a number of examples of appropriation of native imagery and symbols for corporate logos in the US.  One of those examples appeared in a trademark dispute that eventually found in favour of the use of the Redskins trademark by the Washington sports team franchise.  The dispute and the eventual ruling are discussed in the following articles:

Petition seeks to cancel ‘Redskins’ trademark, article by Sarah Moses  published on MSNBC Aug. 9, 2006.

• http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14273097/

• http://www.drinkerbiddle.com/files/News/6422f027-e6e8-4e6a-8ff8-01c3ffff7d5d/Presentation/NewsAttachment/84e3f691-c80e-4058-bc36-07d92347a7d6/Redskins_Trademark.pdf

The court ruling from July 13, 2008 is discussed in the article “Pro Football v. Harjo — Trademark Claim Against Redskins Dismissed”

• http://turtletalk.wordpress.com/2008/07/13/pro-football-v-harjo-trademark-claim-against-redskins-dismissed/

This blog claims to highlight contemporary issues facing indigenous peoples from around the world.  The site includes a discussion about intellectual property rights.  The author describes intellectual property not as knowledge gained by scientific means, but rather knowledge that is “earned”, through experience in time and place.

The blog also provides links to sites offering different perspectives on the intellectual property issue.  For example, the link to the Alaskan Native knowledge Network has its own links to a page entitled “Guidelines for Respecting Cultural Knowledge”,   and another entitled “Principles for the Conduct of Research in the Arctic“.  As another example, the site links to an Australian Government research paper entitled Indigenous Peoples Intellectual Property Rights.  This paper seeks to identify the issues, describe the impacts, and analyse international developments.