Critical Inquiry Update: Local Contexts and Traditional Knowledge Labels

During my inquiry into sharing Indigenous Knowledge in OERs, I came across an initiative called Local Contexts. This initiative is committed to helping Indigenous communities gain cultural authority over their heritage and data. Globally, people outside Indigenous communities are writing about Traditional Knowledge that is shared with them, for example through research, and publishing that knowledge. This results in a situation where researchers or institutions hold the copyright of that knowledge over the community in which it originated due to copyright laws (Local Contexts, 2023). Because Traditional knowledge is accumulated over time, no intellectual property is granted over it. 

In an effort to address this issue in the digital space, Local Contexts has developed ‘digital tags’, including Traditional Knowledge (TK) labels and Biocultural (BC) labels, that help Indigenous communities reinforce their rights to their data while also allowing researchers and institutions to disclose their interests. TK labels, in particular, act as a digital cultural protocol for sharing knowledge translated from traditional practice to sit within a digital infrastructure (Bourdages, n.d.). 

According to Canadian copyright law, once something becomes ‘fixed’ or recorded in the case of podcasting, it becomes automatically copyrighted to the owner of the podcast (Simmons & Kaplan-Myrth, 2007). It is the responsibility of the Interviewer to gain at least verbal permission from the interviewee to participate in the podcast interview. This is problematic for Indigenous knowledge sharing as cultural beliefs are that knowledge belongs to the community in which it originated, and for non-indigenous people, organizations, or institutions to become owners of shared knowledge reinforces colonial structures and practices. 

I am interested in learning more about how TK labels could be used in a podcasting context, as examples of TK labels in use are limited. Unfortunately, even with the use of a TK label on a podcast, the podcast owner would still own the content due to Canadian copyright law and can do as they wish with it. Ultimately, it might come down to altruism and individual action of the podcast owner to simply ‘do the right thing’ until our systems change to be inclusive of Indigenous worldviews on knowledge and ownership.

References

Bourdages, L. (n.d.). Can TK labels ease IP concerns around using Indigenous Traditional Knowledge in OERs? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RES1fOgjGzE&t=360s 

Local Contexts. (2023). Grounding Indigenous rights. https://localcontexts.org/ 

Simmons, K., & Kaplan-Myrth, A. (2007). Podcasting legal guide for Canada: Northern rules For the revolution.  https://cippic.ca/sites/default/files/Podcasting-LegalGuide-Canada.pdf

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