Nations meet to protect Indigenous knowledge

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Delegates from 182 countries will meet in the Netherlands in April to study recommendations made at a recent Montreal meeting on ways to protect the world's Indigenous knowledge.

It will be the sixth gathering of the countries that signed the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) announced at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Article 8(j) of the Convention is designed to protect Indigenous knowledge and ensure that any benefits from its use are distributed fairly.

In 2000, a working group was created to determine how to bring Article 8(j) to life. In the first week of February this year, 300 members of that group, which included government representatives, academics and Indigenous people from Canada, Africa, Asia, Europe and the central and south Americas, met in Montreal.

It was Earl Stevenson's first experience at an international forum.

"If we're not involved, we have no right to complain," he said. "If we're involved, at least we can bring our concerns across and try and have this policy drafted in a way that's sensitive to Indigenous people," said Stevenson of Manitoba's Peguis First Nation.

"Legislation as it stands today does not respect or enhance the treaty and Aboriginal rights that First Nations people hold, so this was sort of a personal crusade to bring to light to bureaucrats and to people with decision-making power the perspectives of Indigenous peoples. For me it was a very positive step to be involved in this process."

The meeting studied four tasks of the Working Group: Guidelines for cultural, environmental and social impact assessments for developments on sacred sites or on lands occupied by Indigenous and local communities; the recommended outline of a report on the status and trends of the knowledge, innovations and practices of Indigenous people; an assessment of existing laws and other instruments that touch on the protection of traditional knowledge, particularly on intellectual property rights; and how to strengthen the involvement of Indigenous people in decision-making about their traditional knowledge.

Indigenous participants and countries, including Canada, disagreed over a number of basic principles, including whether the working group's suggestions on impact assessments should carry the weight of guidelines or be considered only as principles. They also disputed whether the "free and prior informed consent" of Indigenous people is required before assessments or development can begin.

In the end, the working group agreed to submit "recommendations" on impact assessments, but on Canada's insistence, it was left to the countries meeting in April to decide whether prior consent is required.

Canada signed the CBD at the Earth Summit in 1992 and ratified it in 1993. The convention requires countries to draft national legislation to protect biodiversity, but it has no specific enforcement mechanisms. Article 8(j) clearly states that its provisions are "subject to national legislation."

Still, it's important to be involved in the process, said Shuswap Nation Tribal Council Chairman Arthur Manuel in Montreal. "All this is dealing with land ... the reason they (Canada) are here is because of their competing interest over our land and (their) wanting to have 100 per cent jurisdiction over it.

"For the countries, it's about how much money they give us for the knowledge. For us, it's about how you use the knowledge," added Manuel, whose Neskonlith First Nation is fighting plans to expand the Sun Peaks Ski Resort on its traditional lands near Kamloops, B.C.

Indigenous languages and crop diversity are only two examples of traditional knowledge losing out to globalization, according to the United Nations. Of the 500 varieties of lettuce known worldwide at the turn of the 20th century, only 36 survive; of 287 types of carrots, 21 remain, said the UN in a 2001 report.

About one-half of the world's 5,000 Indigenous languages are "in danger of immediate extinction," itreported. According to Manuel, only about 50 of the 7,000 members of the Neskonlith First Nation speak their language fluently.

Fred Fortier said he fought to ensure that the working group's guidelines on impact assessments (which became known as 'recommendations') consider social and cultural impacts rather than just economic effects.

That would mean, for example, that to gauge the impact of the flooding that occurs when a new dam is built would mean looking beyond the cost of moving people to a new site and include the collective impact on a people.

Indigenous people "are quite different than other people. If something goes wrong, we don't just pack up and go to another town," said Fortier of the Indigenous Peoples' Biodiversity Information Network.

"To us the loss of culture related to land and fishing, spiritual activities (would be) a huge loss. There's also the loss of future innovations in fishing, hunting, trapping," he added.

The national Inuit women's organization looks to Article 8(j) as a way to help Inuit protect the knowledge embodied in traditional clothing. Existing patent laws do not recognize collective ownership and would not stop someone from copying the designs of items like the amauti (women's parka) and selling it, said Tracy O'Hearn, executive director of Pauktuutit Inuit Women's Association.

Her group is also working closely with the World Intellectual Property Organization and has developed contacts with other Indigenous women in Central and South America, as well as with other Inuit groups in Canada.

O'Hearn thinks that more Aboriginal groups should be examining the role that the CBD could play in protecting traditional knowledge here.

"If we are looking at, for example, either amending national legislation or new national legislation, it's going to have to be a much broader process in Canada among Aboriginal peoples," she said.