Land/Territory

Legal and political strategies for “protecting” traditional environmental knowledge in Penticton, Okanagan Nation (British Columbia)

Sean Robertson

Vandana Shiva, Peace Review, 12:4 (2000), 501-508

Western intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes have emerged as major
instruments of North–South inequality. Not only do they block technology
transfer, they facilitate piracy of the indigenous knowledge and biodiversity of
Third World countries. They could, if not revised and reviewed, make northern
countries into the monopoly owners of knowledge, including knowledge that has
evolved cumulatively and collectively in indigenous cultures, selling it at high cost
to already impoverished and indebted countries of the South, pushing them
further into poverty and debt. Since the majority of the people in the South
depend on biodiversity for their livelihoods and survival, the hijack of their
resources and knowledge through IPRs is the hijack of their lives and livelihoods.

Prepared by Dawn R. Morrison

for The Forum on Privatization and the Public Domain, May 2006

With due respect for the dedication and commitment shown by the various Indigenous groups in B.C. (i.e. Haida, Taku River Tlingit, Gitskan and Wet’su’weten) who were successful in recent court cases, there is still a need for new policies at all levels of local, provincial and national government to solidify the courts' recognition of Aboriginal title and rights. Despite the recognition gained in the recent court rulings, policies designed to extinguish Aboriginal title and rights continue to maintain the status quo where Indigenous peoples’ knowledge, values, wisdom are disregarded or appropriated by government, corporations and other economic institutions. Decision making structures and processes established in the various land and resource management agencies perpetuate the “business as usual” approach characterized by the exclusion of Indigenous peoples from decision making processes in land and resource management. Indigenous peoples must be given greater control in decision making processes, and governing structures must be redesigned to accommodate the complex web of location and culture- specific traditional land and resource management strategies and practices that are unique to each of the many diverse nations of indigenous peoples in B.C. and Canada.

This interview with Also Gonzales was given to Carlos Santos in May 2004, when Aldo was participating in the seminar on “Food Sovereignty and Biodiversity,” in Montevideo, to mark Biodiversidad’s tenth anniversary. Biodiversidad (www.grain.org/biodiversidad) is GRAIN’s sister magazine. It is published in Spanish and has a Latin American focus. It is published in the January 2005 issue of SEEDLING (www.grain.org).

Aldo Gonzalez is a Zapotec indigenous and community leader from Guelatao in the Sierra Juarez mountain range of northern Oaxaca, Mexico. Aldo is director of UNOSJO, a grassroots campesino organisation in the Sierra Juarez. UNOSJO provides technical assistance and consultation to small farmers with the goal of promoting sustainable rural economies that are based on respect for indigenous culture. It plays a vital role in educating local communities and collaborating with national and international organisations about the threat of GM maize.

By Philippe Rekacewicz

Earlier this year, Le Monde diplomatique published the [second edition of its atlas (1), and the United Nations Environmental Programme (2), in partnership with the paper, published a translation of the part of it that focuses on environmental issues (3). It’s a difficult business being a mapmaker. Maps, as mere visual representations of the idea of the world, are just as subject to diplomacy, border disputes and international struggles as real geopolitical territory.

In 2002 I was at a meeting in Prague at the end of an international economic forum on the management of water resources in Eurasia. The Azerbaijani delegate suddenly spoke: “This is not acceptable. Mr Chairman, I refuse to continue if our work is to be based on the document you have just submitted.” He had just spotted a map of the Caucasus which suggested that Nagorno-Karabakh, the cause of a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, was a part of Armenia. For Baku, it is occupied territory and an integral part of Azerbaijan. Any other representation is unacceptable. The chair proposed a break in proceedings so that the offending document could be removed. But the Armenian delegate protested and the meeting degenerated into a slanging match. Only hours later, after the offending borders had been blanked out and the maps reprinted, was it possible for work to resume.

Prepared by Dawn Morrison

“. . . the health and integrity of Secwepemc communities is inextricably linked to continued and improved access to the traditional resources that are needed to supply the Secwepemc with the means to practice healthy traditional lifestyles in the modern world. The driving economic force of capitalism in Secwepemcul’ecw has resulted in limited access and has infringed upon the collective nature of Secwepmec traditional resource rights. The process of privatization has also been a major contributing factor to the economic marginalization of the Secwepemc, as well as the over-exploitation of the land and collective sources of Secwepemc foods, medicines and technologies.”

Jeff Kirkpatrick
(Former Communications Director for Nebraska Farmers Union, currently an attorney with McHenry, Haszard, Hansen, Roth, & Hupp, P.C. in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA)
1995 (not previously published)

Garrett Hardin's article The Tragedy of the Commons1 has spawned a rash of essays and articles since its publication in 1968. In many of those articles free market and private property advocates have pointed to the "Tragedy" as a clear example of how a communal property system failed, overcome by its inherent inefficiency and the obvious superiority of a private property system. There have been occasional scholars, most notably Susan Cox2, who have pointed out the historical record does not show a "tragedy" in the European "commons" farming system. I would go a step beyond Cox. Not only does the historical record fail to support the lessons which private property proponents cite, the record can teach us some valuable lessons about how community property ownership can succeed, lessons which can be applied to modern commons situations.