Copyright © 1999 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

As debates continue over problems such as bio-piracy and cultural appropriation, more international organizations are trying to engage indigenous people and address their concerns. This trend has a long history, but recently it has accelerated, with policies and conventions being elaborated by the International Labor Organization, the World Bank, and various bodies of the United nations. This past summer another organization moved tentatively in this direction, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which forms policy on issues of copyright law, trademarks, and patents. The WIPO held a two-day meeting (July 23-24, 1998) to establish dialogue with indigenous people.

After years of being cool towards the concerns of indigenous people, WIPO convened this roundtable of experts and representatives from governments, indigenous communities and NGOs to discuss a new initiative within WIPO to address the particular concerns of indigenous people as "potential new beneficiaries of intellectual property" as Deputy Director-General Roberto Castello stated in his opening address. The roundtable was to serve as both a place for WIPO to "listen" to indigenous people, and for WIPO experts to discuss how the existing intellectual property system could be used to help indigenous people.

The format was designed to elicit "full participation" of indigenous attendants, but the rules of procedure also constricted the ways in which they could participate. A series of presentations on the intellectual property system by WIPO experts started off the roundtable, followed by an afternoon session where indigenous representatives could make presentations. The next day was composed of more presentations, this time by mostly indigenous experts, and was to end with a synthesis of the presentations.

But indigenous participants throughout had to bend these rules and try to insert their often difficult questions into a highly-regimented schedule. By the end of the first session it was becoming obvious that WIPO has a long way to go to really hear what the indigenous representatives were saying.

Despite the polished nature of their presentations the WIPO experts had to field many tough questions. When a North American representative asked a WIPO official what the definition of indigenous knowledge was, she replied "You've asked a difficult question" and admitted that there was no legal definition.

Two things soon became clear; the WIPO presenters assumed that indigenous concerns could be assimilated into the existing system, and that this was grossly insufficient to meet the needs of indigenous communities.

On a number of occasions indigenous participants asked about various methods of redress, only to be informed that redress for past abuses was generally not possible. Given the underlying assumption that knowledge was "discovered" and had to be "new" to be protected, large amounts of indigenous knowledge would continue to be up for grabs unless that knowledge could be shaped into a commodity that could fit into the existing intellectual property framework.

This dilemma was taken up in the afternoon in a number of presentations, where indigenous people asked for more than protection; in the words of one Latin American speaker, they wanted "reassessment of the value of our knowledge." Many speakers pointed to the fact that the prevailing system was designed to benefit governments and private enterprise, at the expense of local communities.

The next day, the presenters tried to highlight both the problems and possibilities of the new WIPO initiative. One presenter called the roundtable "a milestone" in the struggle for indigenous rights, but also pointed out that marginalization of indigenous people was ongoing and that the current system assisted in the pillage of indigenous knowledge. The presenter urged that indigenous people explore "alternatives" such as national-level agreements.

An indigenous representative also suggested a formal resolution or document to codify the issues that arose and the solutions that indigenous people were proposing (no official release of this document was found as of press time).

A cavalcade of suggestions were passed on to the, sometimes bewildered, WIPO officials but were not being officially recorded. A search of the WIPO web site found no new documentation stemming from this roundtable, and little discussion of its implications has surfaced. A number of participants felt that the roundtable was valuable, but what impact it will have on the continued theft of indigenous knowledge remains to be seen.