Navigating knowledge and intellectual property

I thank Ouzman for his contribution, and echo the call for Indigenous partners, communities, and Country to be recognised as authors in research. This recognition of authorship shifts the dynamic from Aboriginal people as subjects to collaborators. It has been often claimed that the sheer volume of research on Aboriginal peoples and our lands and waters have led to us being the most researched peoples on the planet (Martin and Mirraboopa 2003:203). Research has, and continues to, occur about Aboriginal people and Country without fair consultation or invitation. Calls for authorship rights should be welcomed, and this conversation can be enriched through the understanding and application of Indigenous cultural and intellectual property (ICIP) rights within archaeology and related disciplines. Indigenous cultural and intellectual property refers to the intangible and tangible elements of cultural practice, resources and knowledge systems that express cultural identity (Janke 2005). It recognises the living and adaptive nature of Indigenous knowledge and cultural expression and includes contemporary and future expressions. Janke argues that when Indigenous knowledge is separated from Indigenous communities, those communities lose control over how their knowledge, customs, traditions, and beliefs are represented and used. Some sources, particularly earlier colonial records, published information that would be considered restricted within community and were recorded when people could not exercise prior and informed consent. This knowledge is further appropriated through modern literature and educational resources without repatriation to the communities from which it belongs. Indigenous researchers are well versed in navigating the cultural safety minefield that is historical research. We are often confronted with closed practice knowledges written about as a curiosity. Within our communities, lore dictates whether that knowledge be held communally or by particular knowledge holders, and how that knowledge is shared outside of community. Our lore is disrespected and dismissed through the disassociation of our knowledges from the rich social fabric in which they emerge and belong. Concepts of stewardship and guardianship sit outside Western legal systems’ understanding of intellectual property as a thing to be owned (Lai 2014). In a Western worldview, humans and nature can be separated, whereas in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander worldviews we are Country. As Ouzman points out, Western legal processes do not handle well collective authorship, intergenerational knowledge, and more-than-human knowledges. The authorship of Country is one way in which we see researchers trying to recognise the knowledge held and shared by Country. Inter and transdisciplinary practice within archaeology begins to paint a social, environmental, and cultural picture of the past. Our understanding of the past is only enriched through Indigenous knowledge systems, which hold deep time remembering. I often hear repeated from other Indigenous researchers and organisations that Indigenous knowledge is seen as a sprinkle on top of Western research methods, that it is not an equal, but merely something nice to have. By addressing ICIP, accepting the agency of Country, and recognising Indigenous peoples as knowledge holders, we can start to shift assumptions about the superiority of Western knowledge systems and move towards multiple ways of knowing that respect holistic Indigenous knowledge systems. As a Darug researcher, it is not only for the cultural safety and sovereignty of the communities that I work with, but for my own cultural safety, that I must consider ownership of knowledge. I do not want to own others’ cultural knowledge, and in the circumstances that knowledge is shared with me, it is not the intention of those communities or individuals that I become the copyright owner of that knowledge. In my research and art practice I work with stories and bringing together Western science knowledge with Indigenous knowledges. In the collecting of stories, copyright law dictates that as the person recording the stories, I hold the rights to that material. As I transcribe the stories told to me