News

A group of IPinCH team members from across the globe spent the afternoon of December 10th together for our “Next Generation” webinar. The idea behind the video conference was to showcase some of the innovative projects and programs that are picking up where IPinCH is letting off.

December 10th marks the one-year anniversary of the IPinCH Declaration on the Safeguarding of Indigenous Ancestral Burial Grounds as Sacred Sites and Cultural Landscapes. 

Over 70 people attended the IPinCH DNA and Indigeneity public symposium held last week in Vancouver. The symposium focused on current and prospective applications of genomics in archaeology and anthropology. 

IPinCH team members Kate Hennessy, Sue Rowley and Jordan Wilson recently co-authored a paper (with R. Muntean, A. Antle, B. Matkin, R. Eckersley, P. Tan, and R. Wakkary), entitled "Belongings: A Tangible Interface for Intangible Cultural Heritage." 

By George Nicholas

The IPinCH Steering Committee recently met for a four-day retreat in North Saanich, BC, July 10–13, to focus on planning out the final nine months of the project. Attending the retreat were Kelly Bannister, Cathy Bell, Brian Egan, Julie Hollowell, Joe Watkins, John Welch and myself. 

We are very pleased to share the news that Alexa Walker, one of our core Research Assistants, triumphed at her M.A. thesis defence in early July. Her thesis, titled "Ancient Human DNA Research in North America and Abroad: Challenges and Opportunities,” explores the social, ethical, and political challenges facing ancient DNA researchers internationally. Alexa also holds a B.A. in Archaeology, with a minor in Health Sciences, from Simon Fraser University. 

We are pleased to announce that Robin R. R. Gray successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her dissertation, titled “Ts’msyen Revolution: The Poetics and Politics of Reclaiming,” investigates the motivations, possibilities and obstacles associated with Ts’msyen reclamation. 

George Nicholas and Suraya Afiff (Anthropology, University of Indonesia) were the featured panelists in a recent discussion on how and why local knowledge must inform university-based research practices, held at the University of Washingon, Seattle, in early April.

Congratulations to IPinCH Fellow Mique’l Dangeli who recently completed her Ph.D. in Art History at the University of British Columbia. Her dissertation, titled Dancing Sovereignty: Politics and Protocols of Northwest Coast First Nations Dance, focuses on the work of “dance artists” (choreographers, composers, and dance group leaders) and the way in which they enact "dancing sovereignty"--a concept she coins in her work--through dynamic assertions of protocol (Indigenous laws).

By Alexa Walker

In the recently published final report for the IPinCH-supported project, Treaty Relations as a Method of Solving Intellectual Property and Cultural Heritage Issues, Michael Asch (Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta), Allyshia West, Neil Vallance, Aimee Craft, and Kelsey Wrightson look at historical treaty relationships as a potential tool for solving current issues between Indigenous groups and settlers. 

By Emily Benson

Twenty-five IPinCH students and emerging scholars participated in a day-long workshop on Thursday, November 6th in Vancouver, in advance of the IPinCH Fall Gathering. 

By George Nicholas

The Ilaa kati (“few words, big meaning”) Traditional Knowledge event in Yellowknife was an outstanding gathering, and I am very glad to have participated. There were about 250 attendees, mostly from the north, with very strong Aboriginal community representation. 

By Karolina Kuprecht and Torsten Diesel (Inuit Heritage Trust)

The research project “Certified Trade with Indigenous Peoples” was devoted to the question: How can a voluntary certification system contribute to fairer sustainable trade with Indigenous peoples?  

By Sarah Carr-Locke

The goal of the Cultural Tourism Working Group (CTWG) is to explore intellectual property issues that emerge from heritage tourism around the world. Since the last update, the group has gathered for two team meetings, participated in two conferences and begun planning our Cultural Tourism Resource Reader in earnest.

The final IPinCH team gathering, “Weaving Us Together,” will take place at the Musqueam First Nation Cultural and Community Centre in Vancouver, on Friday and Saturday, November 7th  and 8th. 

We are pleased to announce that the final reports from two IPinCH-supported projects are now accessible online. These are the first of the long-anticipated series of Community-Based Initiative (CBI) reports to be completed and shared by IPinCH team members. Each is accompanied by a two-page project summary.

Traditional knowledge (TK) is broadly defined as the collective body of knowledge, experiences, traditions, and values held by societies that explain, record, and perpetuate their relationship with the world. The compatibility of TK with Western knowledge is hotly debated. An upcoming international conference, Itàà kati Traditional Knowledge Festival in Yellowknife, NWT, will explore the many dimensions of TK from a variety of perspectives.

What if we could shift from “codification” to “embodiment” of research ethics? That is, move from words on a page that describe how we ought to conduct ourselves, to connecting with the intention of those principles and practices in concrete, meaningful ways. 

By Claire Poirier and Ruth Aloua

At the 2014 meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology (March 17-22 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) five IPinCH graduate student Fellows presented their work in a panel titled Looking to the Past, Negotiating the Present, Informing the Future: Student Destinations in Engagement with Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage.

By Alvaro Higueras

I recently attended a very special meeting in Lima, Peru—my birth town. I found out about it from George Nicholas who I saw at SFU on my way to my annual family visit to Lima. I had not planned to do anything "academic" this time around, intending only to revisit the beaches and deserts near the city where I used to do field work decades ago.

In early December, the IPinCH Steering Committee gathered in person, and via Skype, at the Abercorn Inn in Richmond, B.C., where the group spent two days in deep discussion about project design, outcomes, and dissemination strategies.

By George Nicholas

Earlier this month, a group of IPinCH team members, including myself, Joe Watkins, Hirofumi Kato, Dave Schaepe, Rachel Giraudo, Carol Ellick, and Mayumi Okado, participated in a symposium on cultural heritage issues affecting Ainu and other Indigenous peoples. 

Many Indigenous groups around the world are struggling to come to terms with the issues an online environment poses to the presentation of the Indigenous past and cultural present.

The newest issue of our print newsletter is now available, with features on our work in Kyrgyzstan and Nunavik, updates from our case studies, team member profiles and more!

In the spring, our Work-Study student Aynur Kadir brought up the idea of using a signature sound to introduce our audio and video productions, one that reflected our dedication to the protection of cultural heritage. Naturally, we thought to ask IPinCH Fellow, Mique’l Dangeli, who, with her husband Mike, co-direct the Vancouver-based Git Hayetsk, an internationally renowned mask-dancing group. 

Ellen Frankenstein, IPinCH Associate and director of the non-profit organization, Artchange, Inc., is currently working on a film in collaboration with Haida culture bearer and Elder, Delores Churchill. The film follows Delores, a master weaver, on a journey to understand and replicate the spruce root hat found with Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi, also known as the Long Ago Person Found. 

George Nicholas and the IPinCH project have been shortlisted for a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Impact Award, in the Partnership Award category. This is the first year of this award program.

We have a strong Japanese presence in the IPinCH project: not only are there a number of Japanese team members, but we also support a community-based initiative on Ainu Conceptions of Cultural and Natural Heritage in association with the Center for Ainu and Indigenous Studies at Hokkaido University.  

Gwich’in Place Names Officially Recognized by Northwest Territories Government

Traditional place names can point not only to significant physical sites for Aboriginal peoples, but can also embody important intangible cultural values. Last month, the Gwich’in people celebrated the restoration of 414 of their traditional place names, which were officially recognized by the government of the Northwest Territories.

In November 2011, IPinCH partner organization, Hokotehi Moriori Trust, organized the Me Rongo Congress. Me Rongo is a Moriori term for “in peace” and the core themes of the Congress were sustainability, respect for the sacred, and cultural continuity.

The work of ELOKA, or the Exchange for Local Observation and Knowledge of the Arctic, is demonstrating the value of traditional oral history and community participation in scientific research. Since its beginning in 2007 as an NSF Arctic Observing Network project, ELOKA has worked closely with local Indigenous peoples of the Arctic to document traditional knowledge and to share data gathered through community-based monitoring (CBM).

By Alexa Walker

IPinCH team member Alison Wylie has been named the 2013 Distinguished Woman Philosopher by the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP). SWIP aims to provide support and promote collaboration between women in philosophy and to raise awareness about the contributions of women to philosophy, as well as the discrimination faced by women in this field of study. 

Written by Alexa Walker 

On May 28, 2013 the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) announced the release of the First Nations Heritage Planning Toolkit, a document designed to support First Nations in the development of heritage related capacity, to provide information to First Nations on developing a heritage plan or policies, and to assist First Nations in responding to development referrals associated with heritage.  

The IPinCH-hosted symposium, Cultural Commodification, Indigenous Peoples, and Self-Determination, organized by Solen Roth and held in Vancouver in early May, made the front cover of the SFU-based newspaper, The Peak, this week.

By John Welch

On a particularly busy (not to mention sunny and sultry) Friday afternoon (April 5), moderators, discussants, and audience members gathered at the Honolulu Convention Center at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, to discuss how archaeologists are taking up the challenges being presented by the growing corpus of international policy pertaining to the rights of Indigenous peoples and the just and proper conduct of large-scale land management projects.

IPinCH is working with the Inuit Heritage Trust (IHT), an IPinCH partner since 2008, on an initiative designed to enhance the management and protection of Inuit Cultural Heritage in Nunavut. In late March, IPinCH representatives met with IHT trustees and staff in Yellowknife to begin developing an initiative that addresses IHT concerns around intellectual property and cultural heritage and that would fit with IPinCH’s mandate. 

By Heather Thompson

On Friday, January 11, 2013, Professor Catherine Bell hosted a small group dinner at the University of Alberta Law Centre. The purpose of the event was to gather Catherine’s current and former students in Edmonton who have been involved with the IPinCH Yukon First Nations (YFN) case study, to celebrate two publications in which students were involved as researchers and co-authors. 

Solen recently completed her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Her dissertation, titled Culturally Modified Capitalism: The Native Northwest Coast Artware Industry, is an examination of “how Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal individuals who are currently participating in the Native Northwest Coast artware industry of Vancouver (B.C.) view this market’s present configuration and envision its future."

IPinCH is pleased to announce the awarding of five new graduate student fellowships, three for doctoral students and two for students undertaking MA studies. 

Led by principal investigators Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma, the Director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office (HCPO), and Justin B. Richland, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, this study, which was recently approved by the IPinCH Steering Committee, will investigate how the HCPO manages Hopi cultural knowledge resources, given the differences between Hopi notions of navoti (‘traditional knowledge’) and Euro-American understandings of intellectual property. 

Over the past few months, the IPinCH Steering Committee has been working hard to establish priorities and to make and implement plans for the remaining years of the project. 

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Kristen Dobbin as the new IPinCH Communications Specialist. Kristen brings an impressive set of skills and experience to this new position, including technical abilities in a wide range of communication technologies and an in-depth knowledge of the IPinCH project. 

By Dr. Alexis Bunten, IPinCH Project Ethnographer

Between July 25 and August 9, I traveled to South Africa and Botswana to shadow IPinCH Researcher, Sven Ouzman, and Associate, Rachel F. Giraudo, as they made plans to collaborate with members of several San communities on heritage and IP issues through their IPinCH projects. 

The Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) project is pleased to announce that Jenny Lewis is the most recent recipient of an IPinCH Graduate Student Fellowship. Jenny is a PhD student (2015 expected graduation) in the Department of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University. Her research examines various stakeholders’ use, commodification, and rehabilitation of archaeological heritage associated with Fort Apache-Theodore Roosevelt School (FA-TRS) in Arizona.

IPinCH team member Emma Feltes has been awarded Dalhousie University's Governor General gold medal in the Humanities and Social Sciences for her work on the Laurier Memorial, a letter that sets out a vision for just relations between Indigenous Peoples and Canada that was given to Sir Wilfrid Laurier by the Interior Chiefs of British Columbia in 1910, and commemorated again in 2010.

The Ngaut Ngaut Interpretive Project: Providing Culturally Sustainable Online Interpretive Content to the Public

The Nguat Ngaut rock shelter was the first “scientifically” excavated site in Australia in 1929, but it has much deeper meanings for local Indigenous people. 

This jam-packed issue includes our new Community-Based Research working group, introduces our Project Coordinator, tells of an IPinCH visit to the Ziibiwing Centre and the ezhibiigaadek asin petroglyphs, profiles legal anthropologist Rosemary Coombe, and offers progress updates on our fantastic case studies...and much more! 

Indigenous people are under-served by both traditional all-rights-reserved copyright and Creative Commons licenses.

Following the World Archaeological Congress' "Indigenous People and Museums: Unravelling the Tensions" InterCongress in Indianapolis, members of the IPinCH team were invited to the Ziibiwing cultural center in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. 

Videos are a great format for documenting and sharing research experiences, knowledge, and progress, and for generating discussion in interactive and creative forums.

IPinCH Cultural Tourism Working Group Co-chair Lena Mortensen and Project Director George Nicholas were sparked to write an article for Anthropology News, November 2010, by the opening of a “traditional First Nations Village” operated for tourists by the Aboriginal Tourism Association of British Columbia in a municipal park in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

The IPinCH Steering Committee is pleased to announce funding for two new community-based initiatives/case studies based in Canada, but exploring issues of global concern.

Congratulations to IPinCH Associate Kate Hennessy, who says, “I have now defended/finished my doctoral program,” in Anthropology at UBC, “and my dissertation is already out in the world!"

Thanks to IPinCH Co-investigator Alison Wylie, the public panel discussion “Constructive Engagement: Scientific and Aboriginal Communities in Collaboration” brought together speakers in the fields of archaeology, health, and agriculture at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus on June 18, 2010.

‘Beyond the Tangible: Repatriation of Cultural Heritage, Bioarchaeological Data, and Intellectual Property’ can be found in the special section on repatriation in the March 2010 issue of Anthropology News. IPinCH team members George Nicholas, John Welch, Alan Goodman and Randall McGuire discuss repatriation of intangible aspects of cultural heritage.

Our newest project newsletter is now available and features IPinCH in Japan, the Genographic Project, anthropologist Michael Asch, a new treaty relations case study and more! 

Last spring IPinCH Project Director George Nicholas was invited to prepare a piece on IP in heritage management for the “Resources” section of the journal Heritage Management. George subsequently invited members of the Steering Committee and Working Group Co-chairs to join him in that endeavor.

The Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish Nation) welcomed Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants from across North America and Japan to their Elder’s Centre and Chief Joe Mathias Community Centre, nestled at the foot of Grouse Mountain near Vancouver, for our IPinCH Community-Based Heritage Research Workshop in October. 

Attending a meeting at the beautiful Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana from April 19 – 21 were Case Study Research Working Group co-chairs Brian Noble and Larry Zimmerman; along with IPinCH team members Jane Anderson, Cathy Bell, Julie Hollowell (workshop organizer), Stephen Loring, George Nicholas, Claire Smith, and Martin Wobst; Bonnie Newsom and Julie Woods, who are working with the community-based study initiated with the Penobscot Nation; and IPinCH Advisory Board members Anne Pyburn and Rick Wilk.