Tag: law

Reading Indigenous Intellectual Property

I’m still on med leave from my interesting job, so I figured I could at least read some interesting work-related books. First up: Indigenous Intellectual Property.

Book cover. Indigenous Intellectual Property: An Interrupted Intergenerational Conversation, by Val Napoleon, Rebecca Johnson, Richard Overstall, and Debra McKenzie. There is an illustration of a red octopus in a contemporary west coast Indigenous formline style.

I finished chapter 1, and Val Napoleon’s framing of Indigenous intellectual property law is rearranging my brain. Here she is referring to laws as a set of knowledge about solving conflicts and problems. Just plopping the reader in the center of a vision about self-determined people supported by a vibrant legal system. Made my little anarchist heart wish for… laws?

Photo of text from a book: We know that enforcement on its own is never adequate to ensuring societal lawfulness or adherence to law, whether intellectual property law or any other area of law. It is necessary to expand the thinking of Indigenous law beyond the limiting notions of "law as enforcement" and "law as rules" towards "law as lived" to empower people to see themselves as legal agents and so act accordingly. Again, one of the future key pedagogical questions is how Indigenous peoples internalize the law from their legal order so that they can take part in its legal problem solving as effective, self-determining legal actors. Law, in its best sense, creates and enables healthy citizenries and communities.

Eternal meme.

Meme of Mr Bean copying test answers from a neighbour. Mr Bean is labeled "anarchists", the neighbour is labeled "Indigenous peoples"