Cultural Appropriation
From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:
Indigenous advocates from around the world are calling on a UN committee to make appropriating Indigenous cultures illegal — and to do it quickly.
Delegates from 189 countries, including Canada, are in Geneva this week as part of a specialized international committee within the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a United Nations agency.
Here’s more:
Speaking to the committee Monday, James Anaya, dean of law at the University of Colorado, said the UN’s negotiated document should “obligate states to create effective criminal and civil enforcement procedures to recognize and prevent the non-consensual taking and illegitimate possession, sale and export of traditional cultural expressions.”
Anaya said the document should also look at products that are falsely advertised as Indigenous made or endorsed by Indigenous groups.
Canadians often aggravate peaceful and reasonable people all over the world. Because of that, it is no surprise to find Canada among the worst offenders when it comes to abuse of the indigenous population:
There are Indigenous groups from around the world taking part in this round of negotiations, including groups from New Zealand, Kenya, Mexico, Colombia and the United States.
There is no Indigenous representation in the Canadian delegation.Officials with Global Affairs Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and Canadian Heritage are taking part in this round of negotiations, but the lack of Canadian Indigenous representatives is drawing criticism from the Assembly of First Nations.
In any scenario in which property rights are being assigned, there are always eager claimants. Fortunately, when it comes to the Canadian First Nations, one of the tribal elders and knowledge keepers can tell us precisely who are the authorities who should oversee the creation of guidelines and a process for utilizing Indigenous knowledge in any activities:
“The elders and knowledge keepers are the authorities who should oversee the creation of guidelines and a process for utilizing Indigenous knowledge in any activities,” Assembly of First Nations national chief Perry Bellegarde told CBC in a written statement.
But once again there is the issue of the exploitative nature of the Canadians:
There was no word on whether the federal government plans to consult with the AFN after this round of negotiations wraps up on Friday.
Now, I am not an attorney, but I cannot understand how this could work separately from the copyright and patent process. And to my knowledge, copyrights and patents don’t touch on culture. Nor to my knowledge do they get assigned to large groups of people and administered by a council of elders.
Culture, from what I can tell, is a tough thing to assign. For example, the Navajo (mentioned in the CBC article) are well known for their blankets, suggesting that production of anything resembling such blankets and their design should involve royalties paid to the Navajo. And for a new design, copyright laws work fine. But my reading of the UN’s intent is that older designs (say those that have been in use for a long time) or even the very concept of a “Navajo design” rate protection and payment to the Navajo tribe.
However, there is some evidence that the creation of those blankets is a recent phenomenon. It may be that a Spanish trader came up with the whole idea. It hasn’t, so far, been in anyone’s interest to dig very deeply into the issue. But, if it turned out that the concept of Navajo blankets is, in fact, the brainchild of some unwashed and forgotten Spaniard of a few centuries back, what then? Would the Navajo owe the Spanish three hundred years worth of royalties? And which Spanish people are owed? No doubt among the various claimants to the Spanish empire, a council of elders could be assembled. And of course, the council of elders would decide that the council of elders should decide.
If the UN goes the route it’s headed, someone will have to tackle problems like these. Plus, it isn’t going to stop with the rights of what tend to be called indigenous people. After all, the First People seem to actually be the second people, having mostly wiped the actual first people out. That, of course, is a sadly consistent feature of human history. With the possible exception of the San, every one of us descend from butchers who engaged in genocide and other atrocities.
In a world where “indigenous” seems to simply mean “former conquerors who have since been vanquished” here’s the sort of issue that will eventually come up: is it cultural appropriation for non Jews to treat Jerusalem as a Holy City? Even accounting for the UN’s anti-Semitism, that question alone will result in quite a show. So when it comes, get comfortable. Take out your mouth-plate, loosen up your piu piu, adjust your koteka, kick off your moccasins, put up your feet and enjoy.
Being white and doing a bunch of things is considered cultural appropriation these days….
https://www.tastingtable.com/dine/national/portland-kooks-burritos-cultural-appropriation-restaurant-list
Mr. Kimel, I appreciate your concern and posting of this issue. But I think you’re constrained by your own culture (our culture) to recognize the real issue.
Our culture, unlike most North & South American, African, and Australian cultures who lived in hunter/gatherer, or slightly advanced stone-age societies had very little in their culture considered to be personal property. Individual property was as foreign to their concepts as it could get. Our culture is derived from Greek culture in which a tiny fraction of people were owners and 90% of all others were their slave property.
The concepts of patents and copyrights are founded on individual property rights. They’re constrained to that paradigm by concept of individual ownership. Certainly even in hunter/gather and stone age societies some things might have been considered personal property at least temporarily, or under limited circumstances and conditions, but most things and especially anything that was necessary for the benefit of the group, including cohesion, and defense, and common needs.. water, fertile ground, materials to construct dwellings, firewood for fuel, wild game without ownership “fences”, etc. were commonly owned.
So I think you’re missing the entire point of the issue being raised in the UN. Can somebody or a private entity take something created and used by a specific culture as an identity of that culture be profited from by private parties who were not part of that culture?
Your anecdote of a Spanish entrepreneur (some lower ranking officer in the conquering Spanish army) use the likeness or actual Navajo blankets they made for self profit?. .. traded for virtually worthless beads? Taken to the modern era the issue is the same, just under a new set of laws prescribed by the conquering forces with a culture of private ownership for their own benefits at the direct cost and expense of the culture not their own.
The overall issue is whether might-makes-right equates to any kind of justice. It doesn’t of course, so then the issue becomes compensation for being unjustly suppressed and taken advantage of. That’s the underlying issue here. I think you known that though.
Identity politics will kill us all
Jay,
Not just white people. Anyone doing anything.
Nubbin,
Agreed.
Longttooth,
Thank you for the relatively reasonable comment. It merits a response.
Property rights (here is my stab at a definition) are society’s view of an individual’s ability to exercise control over assets relative to his/her society’s overall ability to exercise control. (Assets could be a pot, a house, hunting grounds, a port, etc.). Historically, say through the year 1500, being at the bottom of the pecking order conferred few rights wherever you were in the world. Sure, there were occasional exceptions of a slave or serf or pariah or untouchable made good. However, as a general rule being at the bottom 10% of society got you the same property rights and ability to control your own fate whether you were in Rome or Peru or New Guinea or Mauritania in 1100 AD.
Similarly, being in the middle rung of society in any of these societies gave you more rights. But did the median Han enjoy significantly more control over assets than the median Tupi or the average Maori in whatever year pre-1500?
I can ask the same question about those at the top and I imagine the answer is the same.
Rights have never been equal across an entire community and in every community they have gone to individuals, not the entire group. This is just an attempt by some people at the top of some underperforming communities to extend their own power based on a fiction they have successfully peddled to people who aren’t paying attention. If it wasn’t a fiction, decisions wouldn’t be made by a council of elders, would they?
Gotta go. Gotta polish up my koteka. I have meetings today and I want to look good.
On this one I agree with Mike K. Without so-called “cultural appropriation” there would barely be any culture in the US. Period.
Good to know that anti-Zionism is now automatically labelled Antisemitism, and that apologists for the long list of Israeli crimes can feel free to so smear those who actually care about the wanton butchery of innocent human beings. May you awaken in your next life to discover that you’ve become a helpless Palestinian child living in constant terror in the Gaza trip concentration camp.
Barkley,
Very true. And without cultural appropriation, many countries wouldn’t have electricity or vaccines.
Karl Kolchak,
I was very precise about what I meant. I wasn’t referring to anti-Zionism. I was referring to anti-Semitism. When a UN organization regularly publishes or otherwise pays for material that makes negative comments about Israel that are not supported by facts, you can make an argument that it is anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic. But when a UN organization regularly publishes or otherwise pays for materials that makes negative comments about Jews that are not supported by facts, you can’t argue that isn’t anti-Semitism.
Now, it turns out that in general, those who are anti-Israel are also anti-Jews. For example, here was a report by UN Watch (https://www.scribd.com/document/338677749/Poisoning-Palestinian-Children-UNW-Report-on-UNRWA-Incitement) noting opinions and material disseminated by people being paid by the UNRWA to teach children. It isn’t difficult to spot the bleed over from anti-Israel to anti-Judaism but for the sake of this comment, I’m willing to pretend that it isn’t there.
Instead, I want to note the very large amount of praise for Hitler and comments about Jews (as distinct from Israelis – for the sake of this comment). If someone documented that a whole bunch of teachers and principals of the Los Angeles Unified School District were praising Hitler on their Facebook pages, most of us would conclude at a minimum that LAUSD needed something akin to a serious exorcism.
So there you have it. It took me about a minute to find evidence that at a UN Agency is paying a not very small number of people with virulently anti-Semitic views (above and beyond anti-Zionist views) to teach children. At a minimum, there is no vetting going on, but the number of examples would suggest people with those opinions are being sought out. Do a very small amount of digging and you will find this isn’t the first, or the second, or the third example of the same problem.
Conversely, I don’t think you’ll find anything that can be defined as “the opposite” view being supported by UN funding. Which leads to only one conclusion: at a minimum, the UN as a whole doesn’t care enough to weed out this sort of view. If that doesn’t make it anti-Semitic, the term doesn’t have much meaning.
But then, I my guess is that you knew all of that when you posted your comment.
Adoption of American Indian Child by Non-Native Parents! Cultural Appropriation police where are you?
http://reason.com/blog/2017/06/15/arizona-supreme-court-clears-way-for-ado
I would be the last to try to pretend that my liberal friends do not sometimes overreach.
But I would be happier if this was pointed out by someone who had not made a reputation for himself on AB as a despiser of “underperforming communities,” this without regard to the fact that those communities may be underperforming because everything they had was stolen from them. Even after the land was taken and the treaties signed, agents of the government have stolen what belonged to the indians under those treaties. or by any understanding of common decency.
Of course it might be argued that the council of elders is attempting to appropriate the intellectual property of the Anglo’s by adopting the Anglo understanding of intellectual property and patent rights.
I think I remeber that the Seminole (indians) “sold” the right to use their name to Florida State University for their football team. Well, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, I guess.
But as for the Navajo rights to claim a right to their “brand,” against those who imply that rugs made in China are “made by or endorsed by” the Navajo… that is not quite the same as Kimel implies as a “right to collect royalties from anything that “looks indian.”
And as for the supposed Spanish origin of the “navaho blanket,” that may be (i doubt it) but as we all should know, property rights do not have to be traced back to something decided by God in the Garden of Eden. It would be enough for the Navajo to show that “Navajo blanket” is understood by the buyer as something made or licensed by Navajos. Some three (or five?) hundred years of use of the “label” might be considered sufficient.
And since somehow the Jews got drawn into this, there are two thoughts: First “the land between the sea and the river” was promised to the children of Abraham. The Arabs are children of Abraham. Second, at least one Israeli scholar believes the “true” jews of the covenant are the present day Palestinians: jewish farmers left behind when their upper classes were deported to Babylon. and easily converted to Islam by well known Mafia offers you can’t refuse. (Speaking of non underperforming communities). Present day “Jews” appear to be conversos… Russians, or maybe Spanish Moslems who converted to Judaism and then got treated like Indians. In any case one should not be surprised if ordinary people (in underperforming communites) don’t make nice distinctions between “Zionist” and “Jew.”
And this by Kimel:
“Rights have never been equal across an entire community and in every community they have gone to individuals, not the entire group. This is just an attempt by some people at the top of some underperforming communities to extend their own power based on a fiction they have successfully peddled to people who aren’t paying attention. If it wasn’t a fiction, decisions wouldn’t be made by a council of elders, would they?”
This is simply ignorance piled on stupidity. Even in underperforming communities a “council of elders” will make decisions without despoiling the rights of individuals not elders. And at least my poor reading of cultural anthropology suggests that “equal rights” and “community property” were more the norm than the exception among “primitive” hunter gatherer societies… for obvious reasons.
i’d add that some of those underperforming communities are actually trying to plan for the long haul. Kimel’s worship of GDP may turn out to be not the best plan for the planet.
On the other hand, the Navajo have to live with what we’ve left them, so I can understand their concern whatever profit they can make from real Navajo blankets without having their brand identity stolen by organ donors across the sea.