Suchergebnisse

Northern organizations, governments, and governments-in-waiting have been formally and informally attempting to incorporate "traditional knowledge" into policy deliberations for some time. A public debate about this practice began in fall 1996, when Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard published criticisms of the Government of the Northwest Territories" (GNWT) Traditional Knowledge Policy and of the requirement that traditional knowledge be incorporated into environmental assessments. Widdowson was at the time a contract employee of the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development (Howard and Widdowson, 1996). As the controversy developed, she was suspended for one week as punishment for her public criticism of government policy. In the Canadian parliamentary tradition, public servants do not have the right to publicly disagree with the policies they are hired to implement. Employees who find themselves in fundamental disagreement with the decisions of elected officials have two options: they may work from within to bring about a change of policy; or, failing this, they must resign. As private citizens, they may - and should - criticize government policy freely. Widdowson should have resigned before speaking publicly, but at least her action stimulated public discussion of some very important questions (GNWT, 1993; Howard and Widdowson, 1996; Berkes and Henley, 1997; Howard and Widdowson, 1997; Laghi, 1997; Stevenson, 1997). The GNWT has adopted what is probably the first formal traditional knowledge policy in Canada, in an attempt to improve democratic representation in the North by moving the policies and practices of territorial government closer to reflecting the values and needs of all northern residents. The Traditional Knowledge Policy is only one aspect of this endeavour, but it is a potentially far-reaching one that deserves intelligent discussion and debate. .

This paper is devoted to the analysis of possible options to ensure the protection of traditional knowledge through existing laws and legal systems in the field of intellectual property. For this purpose, the common problems that indigenous peoples and local communities face, when trying to ensure the protection of their traditional knowledge with the help of intellectual property law tools, are addressed. Separately, the possibility of using copyright, patents, industrial designs, trademarks, geographical indications, legislation on trade secrets and unfair competition are analyzed in detail. Examples are given for the implementation of traditional knowledge protection through intellectual property rights at the national level in selected countries, such as Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Ethiopia. Considerable attention is paid to the interpretation of the provisions of existing international legal acts in the field of intellectual property, in particular, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), as well as the Bern Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. It is concluded that traditional intellectual property regimes do not provide adequate protection for traditional knowledge since contractual intellectual property rights are based on the concepts of an individual property.

Tracking Change… is a new research initiative funded by the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada and led by the University of Alberta, the Traditional Knowledge Steering Committee of the Mackenzie River Basin Board, the Government of the Northwest Territories and many other valued partner organizations. Over six years (2015-2022), the project will fund local and traditional knowledge research activities in the Mackenzie River basin and sister projects in the Lower Amazon and Lower Mekong River Basins, with the long term goal of strengthening the voices of subsistence fishers and Indigenous communities in the governance of major fresh water ecosystems. The project developed in recognition that river systems are important social, economic, cultural and ecological places that contribute to the well-being of communities in diverse ways. River peoples, particularly Indigenous peoples who have well developed fishing livelihoods can offer extremely valuable insights about long term (historic and current) patterns of social and ecological change and the interconnections between the health and dynamics of these river systems and that of river communities. Although based on oral traditions, this system of observation or "tracking change" is much like monitoring. Like those who live on Canada's east and west coasts, the ability of Indigenous communities in the Mackenzie River Basin to maintain fishing as a livelihood practice is of social, economic and cultural importance to all of Canada; if this river system is not healthy, how can we be?

In Canada, the water crisis increasingly felt around the world is being experienced primarily in small, usually Indigenous, communities. At the heart of this issue lies an ongoing struggle to have Indigenous voices heard in the decision-making processes that affect their lives, lands, and waters. As part of ancient systems of Traditional Knowledge (TK), Indigenous people bear the knowledge and the responsibility to care for the waters upon which they depend for survival. A series of internationally developed documents has supported Indigenous peoples' calls for increased recognition of the importance of TK in resolving environmental crises, including those involving water. Ontario provincial and Canadian federal governments have been developing legislative and regulatory documents to help fend off further water-related catastrophes within their jurisdictions. Despite such efforts, a number of barriers to the successful and appropriate involvement of TK in water management remain. Based on years of community-based and policy-related research with First Nations people involved in water-related undertakings, this article highlights progress made to date, and provides Indigenous viewpoints on what further steps need to be taken. Key among these steps are the need to restore and maintain Indigenous access to traditional territories and ways of life, and the requirement for mutually respectful collaboration between TK and Western science.

I examined the social content of the United Nations (UN) policies that aim at the protection of "traditional knowledge" (TK) of populations classified by international law as indigenous peoples. The UN category "traditional knowledge" embraces a wide range of products of the indigenous cultural and intellectual activities. I conjectured that while the TK policies were ostensibly aimed at protecting indigenous peoples from the misappropriation of these products, the major factor leading to creation of TK protection measures were the interests pursued by the third parties to benefit from indigenous intellectual resources. I examined the policies produced since 1992 by the UN agencies working on the issues of (1) economic development and conservation (CBD, UNEP, FAO, World Bank, UNCED, UNDP), and (2) protection of intangible heritage (WIPO, UNESCO, WGIP) to test my conjecture. I complemented this examination by a study of 100 conservation projects conducted on the territories of indigenous peoples (2002-2012). Informed by the archival theory perspective I learned that the TK protection measures focused significantly on a necessity to develop indigenous expertise as tools of sustainability/conservation. Despite the use of indigenous practices in conservation projects only certain indigenous groups benefitted from these projects, where most groups experienced negative consequences. The TK policy approach remained foreign to indigenous positioning on the TK protection issues: indigenous collective rights claims received little political recognition; currently proposed mechanisms of protection -"the prior informed consent" and "fair benefit sharing"- responded to the indigenous needs only partly. Next I examined indigenous participation at the UN drawing on the sociology of knowledge perspective, and used the history of indigenous engagement with WIPO IGC (2001-2012) as a case study. Although the degree of indigenous political influence at IGC was low, the positive changes indigenous work produced in the positioning of the indigenous caucus at IGC could be considered unprecedented in the history of the UN agencies. I concluded that despite that the work on the TK protection can be considered to some extent as the step toward easing the access to indigenous forms of knowledge by interested parties, such as scholars and researchers working in the area of development and conservation (vs. address needs and interests of indigenous peoples), it had the unintended consequence of the growth of indigenous engagement in making these policies. Substantively the study advances scholarly understanding (1) of the social context of the UN policy making and the significance of records as tools of institutional and political practices; and (2) of the forms of indigenous advocacy. Methodologically it complements research across sociological and archival studies of records and political settings. As a praxis-oriented endeavor it may contribute to more effective indigenous advocacy.

Given the limits of resources and time established for this project, this report should not be considered a comprehensive overview of all available documented Traditional Knowledge for this watershed. The Athabasca River Watershed comprises both Treaty #8 and Treaty #6. There are at least nine Aboriginal groups with historic or contemporary connections to this watershed. Many of these groups relocated to British Columbia with the settlement of Alberta in the 19th century. Definitions, methods, and formats of documented Traditional Knowledge vary significantly. While libraries, the internet, and scholarly journals house some sources of knowledge, there are many kinds of reports prepared by and for Aboriginal communities that are not available to the public for political, cultural, and socio-economic reasons. There are many kinds of Traditional Knowledge indicators of ecosystem health and ecological change; some of these indicators are synergistic with Western Science. Other kinds of indicators are unique to Traditional Knowledge and may be difficult to integrate into a standardized 'State of the Watershed Report.' There is significant spatial differentiation related to where such knowledge is documented; some communities in the lower Athabasca have been more active in documenting Traditional Knowledge due, in part, to the resources and pressures to do so that have come with planning, assessment, and monitoring of oil sands mining and its impacts.

. The Gwich'in are the most northerly of the Athapaskan peoples occupying parts of the Yukon River drainage in Alaska and the Yukon Territory, and the northern Mackenzie Basin of the Northwest Territories. The project described here was sponsored by the Gwich'in who reside in the Northwest Territories. Traditionally their lands extended from the interior of the Yukon into the Mackenzie Basin and included the watersheds of the Peel, Mackenzie, and Arctic Red Rivers. Today, most NWT Gwich'in live in the four communities of Aklavik, Fort McPherson, Inuvik, and Tsiigehtchic (formerly called Arctic Red River). These communities all fall within the Gwich'in Settlement Area that was established by the Gwich'in Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement signed in 1992 with the Government of Canada. People in the Gwich'in Settlement Area are greatly interested in materials that were collected in earlier times and are now housed throughout the world in museums, archives, and private collections. These items represent a bygone era and have great historical, cultural, and sometimes spiritual meaning. Of particular interest is traditional Gwich'in summer clothing made of white caribou hides, sewn with sinew, and decorated with porcupine quills, trade beads, silverberry seeds, finges, and ochre. Distinctively styled and striking to look at, these garments are a testament to Gwich'in women's great skill and artistic expression. . It has been well over 100 years since Gwich'in traditional caribou skin clothing was made, and there are no examples of this clothing in either the Gwich'in communities or the Northwest Territories today. It has been over 50 years since porcupine quillwork was used as the primary decorative motif on Gwich'in jackets, slippers, and gloves. For the past two years, the Gwich'in Social and Cultural Institute (GSCI) has worked in partnership with the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre (PWNHC) to create five replicas of a multipiece 19th-century Gwich'in traditional summer outfit that is housed at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC). The project has given us an opportunity to document, understand, and appreciate how this clothing was manufactured and the extraordinary amount of time, knowledge, and skill that Gwich'in women needed to clothe their families and protect them from the elements. It has also helped to repatriate skills and knowledge no longer practiced in the Gwich'in Settlement Area.

Workshop Biodiversity in Oceania, Nouméa, NCL, 24-/06/2019 - 25/06/2019 ; The diversity of life in Oceania is rich and exceptional in many ways, but is increasingly vulnerable to many risks of natural or anthropogenic origin. An effective and efficient legal framework for the conservation, access and valorization of this biodiversity requires taking into account the plurality of social, political, economic, cultural and legal situations. Although all Pacific Island Countries and Territories have more or less elaborated environmental legislation, it is worth highlighting, as shown in the IPBES 2019 report, that biodiversity degradation is still ongoing.

Workshop Biodiversity in Oceania, Nouméa, NCL, 24-/06/2019 - 25/06/2019 ; The diversity of life in Oceania is rich and exceptional in many ways, but is increasingly vulnerable to many risks of natural or anthropogenic origin. An effective and efficient legal framework for the conservation, access and valorization of this biodiversity requires taking into account the plurality of social, political, economic, cultural and legal situations. Although all Pacific Island Countries and Territories have more or less elaborated environmental legislation, it is worth highlighting, as shown in the IPBES 2019 report, that biodiversity degradation is still ongoing.

Workshop Biodiversity in Oceania, Nouméa, NCL, 24-/06/2019 - 25/06/2019 ; The diversity of life in Oceania is rich and exceptional in many ways, but is increasingly vulnerable to many risks of natural or anthropogenic origin. An effective and efficient legal framework for the conservation, access and valorization of this biodiversity requires taking into account the plurality of social, political, economic, cultural and legal situations. Although all Pacific Island Countries and Territories have more or less elaborated environmental legislation, it is worth highlighting, as shown in the IPBES 2019 report, that biodiversity degradation is still ongoing.

In Canada's Northwest Territories, governments, industrial corporations, and other organizations have tried many strategies to promote the meaningful consideration of traditional knowledge in environmental decision making, acknowledging that such consideration can foster more socially egalitarian and environmentally sustainable relationships between human societies and Nature. These initiatives have taken the form of both "top-down" strategies (preparing environmental governance authorities to receive traditional knowledge) and "bottom-up" strategies (fostering the capacity of aboriginal people to bring traditional knowledge to bear in environmental decision making). Unfortunately, most of these strategies have had only marginally beneficial effects, primarily because they failed to overcome certain significant barriers. These include communication barriers, arising from the different languages and styles of expression used by traditional knowledge holders; conceptual barriers, stemming from the organizations' difficulties in comprehending the values, practices, and context underlying traditional knowledge; and political barriers, resulting from an unwillingness to acknowledge traditional-knowledge messages that may conflict with the agendas of government or industry. Still other barriers emanate from the co-opting of traditional knowledge by non-aboriginal researchers and their institutions. These barriers help maintain a power imbalance between the practitioners of science and European-style environmental governance and the aboriginal people and their traditional knowledge. This imbalance fosters the rejection of traditional knowledge or its transformation and assimilation into Euro-Canadian ways of knowing and doing. ; Dans les Territoires du Nord-Ouest du Canada, les gouvernements, les sociétés industrielles et autres organisations ont essayé de nombreuses stratégies pour promouvoir une prise en considération sérieuse du savoir traditionnel dans le processus décisionnel visant l'environnement, reconnaissant qu'une telle prise en considération peut favoriser des relations plus égalitaires sur le plan social et plus durables sur le plan écologique entre les sociétés humaines et la Nature. Ces initiatives ont pris la forme de stratégies «descendantes» (préparant les autorités de gouvernance environnementale à accepter le savoir traditionnel) et de stratégies «ascendantes» (favorisant la capacité des Autochtones à peser sur la prise de décisions visant l'environnement). Malheureusement, la plupart de ces stratégies n'ont eu que des effets bénéfiques marginaux, en raison surtout de leur échec à surmonter certains obstacles cruciaux, dont les entraves à la communication, nées de la diversité des langues et styles d'expression propres aux détenteurs de savoir traditionnel; les obstacles d'ordre conceptuel, issus des difficultés qu'ont les organisations à saisir les valeurs, les pratiques et le contexte sous-jacents au savoir traditionnel; et les obstacles politiques, découlant du manque de volonté à reconnaître les messages du savoir traditionnel qui pourraient être incompatibles avec les plans du gouvernement ou de l'industrie. Il y a aussi d'autres obstacles émanant de la cooptation du savoir traditionnel par les chercheurs non autochtones et leurs institutions. Ces barrières contribuent à maintenir un déséquilibre de pouvoirs entre, d'un côté, les adeptes de la science et de la gouvernance environnementale de style européen, et de l'autre, les Autochtones et leur savoir traditionnel. Ce déséquilibre favorise le rejet du savoir traditionnel ou sa transformation et assimilation à la façon d'apprendre et de faire euro-canadienne.

The success of the Inuit people of Canada in seeking political autonomy resulted in the creation of the Nunavut territory. The new Government of Nunavut (GN) has instituted Inuit Quajimajatiqangit (IQ), the values, norms, and traditional knowledge of the Inuit, as formal policy to guide the delivery of health, social, and civil services in order to ensure their cultural sensitivity. This paper discusses four Inuit IQ principles adopted by the GN that directly relate to the counselling process: Pilimmaksarniq (the importance of felt or revealed truth), Pijitsirniq (community orientation), Inuuqatigiitiarniq (respect and non-interference), and Aajiiqatigiingniq (inclusive decision-making). The paper also describes how non-Aboriginal counsellors working in the Nunavut context can apply these principles in their professional practice with Inuit clients. ; La revendication réussie, de la part du peuple inuit du Canada, d'autonomie gouvernementale a entraîné la création du territoire du Nunavut. Le nouveau Gouvernement du Nunavut a institué en tant que politique officielle les principes Inuit Quajimaatiqangit (IQ), constituant les valeurs, les normes et les connaissances traditionnelles des Inuits. Cette politique IQ guidera les services sociaux et de santé, ainsi que d'autres services gouvernementaux, afin d'assurer que ces prestations soient adaptées à la culture des Inuits. Cet article examine quatre principes IQ des Inuits adoptés par le Gouvernement du Nunavut et liés directement au processus de counseling : Pilimmaksarniq (l'importance de la vérité ressentie ou révélée), Pijitsirniq (l'orientation communautaire), Inuuqatigiitiarniq (le respect et la non-ingérence) et Aajiiqatigiingniq (la prise de décision inclusive). Les auteures décrivent également comment les conseillers et conseillères non autochtones travaillant dans le Nunavut peuvent appliquer ces principes dans leur pratique professionnelle auprès de la clientèle inuit.

The Peel River Basin is an important trans-boundary watershed that sits within the jurisdictions of the Government of the Yukon and the Government of the Northwest Territories. The watershed is recognized internationally as an important area of ecological biodiversity, but it is also home to many Gwich'in as well as northern Tutchone peoples, and is thus an important landscape with many integrated socio-economic, cultural, and ecological values. The Peel River Watershed is a mountainous area that boasts numerous tributaries, such as Bonnetplume, which are currently valued and recognized by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples for their beauty, pristine waters, and biodiversity. Unlike many other sub-basins of the Mackenzie, the Peel River Watershed has, until recently, been little disturbed by resource development. The recent decision of the Yukon Government to open up the area for mining exploration and development has thus been met with significant concern and opposition by those living in the region and internationally. Early ethnographic work describes the importance of the Peel to local Indigenous communities, including the importance of many of the rivers as transportation corridors and the fish within these rivers as critical to the food security of families who lived and traveled throughout the area. A significant body of local and traditional knowledge has been documented by the Gwich'in Social and Cultural Institute that stems from the livelihood practices, observations and experiences of the Teetł'it t Gwich'in peoples, including place names, ethnographic material. The Gwich'in Renewable Resources Board, also has also produced many reports which speak to the health of the aquatic ecosystem. With growing recognition of the importance of the Peel River Watershed as a critical area of biodiversity, there are more opportunities for local Indigenous communities from both the Yukon and Northwest Territories to document their knowledge of this area. However, many gaps exist with respect to the availability of documented local and traditional knowledge in respect of all indicators of aquatic ecosystem health defined in this report.

In the wake of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 'traditional knowledge' became a recurring theme in global environmental governance. The emergence of traditional knowledge in a governance field marked by global science begs the following question: how is it that a particular set of intellectual activities other than science came to be perceived as a form of knowledge whose attributes are valuable for governing the global environment? This paper aims to grapple with this question by tracing the emergence of the category of traditional knowledge in global environmental governance. The main argument is that traditional knowledge came to be conceived of as a cognitive resource with utilitarian and 'glocal' properties through a series of interventions on the part of public scientists and landmark environmental reports that blurred the boundaries between science and nonscience. Building upon the concept of boundary work in Science and Technology Studies, this paper puts forth the concept of boundary blurring to analyze how aspects of science are attributed to traditional knowledge, thus attenuating the demarcation between science and other forms of knowledge. Boundary blurring works as a form of legitimation of traditional knowledge and, through the attribution of knowledge to nonscientific actors, opens up a space for these to make knowledge claims in global governance processes. Ultimately, the analysis throws light on the constitution of unconventional 'knowledge actors' in global governance, in particular indigenous peoples and local communities.

This article analyzes India's Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) as a potential intervention in the administration of patent law. The TKDL is a database including a vast body of traditional medical knowledge from India, aiming to prevent the patenting and misappropriation of that knowledge. This article contextualizes the TKDL in relation to documentation theory as well as to existing research on the uses of databases to protect traditional knowledge. It explores the TKDL's potential consequences for India's traditional medical knowledge and the wider implications that traditional knowledge databases can have for the safeguarding of traditional knowledge in general. The article concludes that on the one hand the TKDL bridges the gap between the main branches of Indian traditional medicine and the formal knowledge system of International Patent Classifications. Furthermore, it has also inspired revisions of the International Patent Classification system, which makes it better adapted to incorporate traditional medical knowledge. On the other hand, critical research on traditional knowledge documentation argues that traditional knowledge databases, like the TKDL, can decontextualize the knowledge they catalogue and dispossess its original owners. The TKDL, however, also fits into a national, Indian agenda of documenting and modernizing traditional medicine that predates the formation of the TKDL by several decades and challenges the dichotomy between traditional and scientific knowledge systems that originally motivated the formation of the TKDL. ; Funding: European Research Council (ERC) under the European UnionEuropean Research Council (ERC) [741095-PASSIMERC-2016-AdG] ; Passim: Patents as Scientific Information 1895-2020