Our Right to Protect our Knowledge

Our Right to Protect our Knowledge

Tom Calma

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social
Justice Commissioner

Australian Human Rights Commission

Launch of the Aboriginal Knowledge and Intellectual Property
Protocol Community Guide

Parliament House,
Canberra



Thursday 24 September 2009

I begin by paying my respects to the Ngunnawal peoples, the traditional
owners of this land. I pay my respects to your elders, past, present and
future.

I also wish to acknowledge all Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders
today, the owners of a vast body of knowledge and wisdom about this land
Australia and how to live in it, that goes back many, many thousands of
years.

I would also like to thank the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre
for inviting me to launch the Aboriginal Knowledge and Intellectual Property
Protocol Community Guide, and to offer my support to the Cooperative Research
Centre for Remote Economic Participation.

I also acknowledge and congratulate Isabelle Gorey Nam pat jimpa
and Topsy Nap alt jari who are both here today and who contributed to the
Aboriginal Knowledge and Intellectual Property Protocol Community Guide.

The protection of our knowledge is an important issue that I have also
paid particular attention to in my Native Title Report 2008. And I believe that
our ability to use our knowledge’s to secure sustainable futures for our
people and our communities, is crucial to our self determination.

Our ancient land is made up of vast bio-regions that have adapted to
unpredictable natural forces. Our lands are characterised by drought and
flooding rains, of famine and plenty, of fierce heat and bitter cold, of fertile
soils and barren deserts. Everything that lives here, including us, has had to
learn to cope with extremes, with unpredictability – or perish. Despite
this, Australia has extremely high bio-diversity value. Our lands include
bio-regions that are of global conservation significance, with many plants and
animals found only on our continent and in our marine areas. It is because of
this uniqueness and our tens of thousands of years of caring for our country,
that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as custodians, have a
responsibility to ensure the integrity and maintenance of ecosystems on our
lands and waters. Our knowledge about these places is integral to the future of
this country and our planet.

Another unique characteristic of ancient Australia, is the ability of its
Indigenous people to draw thousands of years of lived experiences into a vast
body of tradition, law, knowledge and wisdom that has guided, and will continue
to guide the generations to come, about living on and caring for this land.

They passed this knowledge and responsibility on to others, so it never died.
They sang its songs, so they would never forget. They recorded this wisdom in
their memories. Some of these memories, we know, were laid down long before the
first stones of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt or Britain’s Stonehenge
were placed. Maybe millennia before. Yet they were kept alive all that time,
passing from ours Elders to our young people.

While non-Indigenous people consider our world to be one of oral transfer of
knowledge, our elders have recorded their wisdom through their songs, and their
art work, like that included in the Aboriginal Knowledge and Intellectual
Property Protocol Community Guide. And the ability to interpret and learn this
knowledge was also passed down through the generations. We share with our
ancestors over many generations – their insights into the land, how to
care for it, respect and prosper from it. This wisdom and knowledge provides
our peoples with a sense of how we belong to this land and abide by its
unwritten rules for life.

This knowledge is immeasurably precious to us. It is also precious to
non-Indigenous Australia too, though perhaps many do not yet realise how much.
While you wonder about climate change, we have lived it. Our people witnessed a
one-in-a-thousand year drought. Not with our own eyes, it is true; but with
the eyes of our ancestors whose words and understandings of such events are
still with us today.

The chain of knowledge, though weakening, remains unbroken. However,
mechanisms that protect and maintain Indigenous knowledge remain inadequate at
both the international and national level in Australia.

Today we come together to celebrate an important moment in the story of
Aboriginal knowledge. Through the leadership of the Desert Knowledge
Cooperative Research Centre and the Aboriginal people of Central Australia, we
celebrate and ensure the continuing protection of our knowledge and our
intellectual property.

We need a common understanding of what we mean by property, ownership, and
the rights people have over certain objects, places, stories or ideas.

The Aboriginal Knowledge and Intellectual Property Protocol Community Guide
was developed by the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre because their
researchers wanted to share Aboriginal knowledge respectfully, for the
betterment of Australia.

The Aboriginal Knowledge and Intellectual Property Protocol Community Guide
provides a plain-language community guide that explains the sometimes complex
issues of intellectual property rights in clear, transparent language and
illustrates the process of reaching agreement about knowledge sharing in five
vivid dot paintings by noted Aboriginal desert artists.

But more than that, the Aboriginal Knowledge and Intellectual Property
Protocol Community Guide provides a mechanism that creates a bridge, a
relationship between our ancient tradition, our law and our culture, with a
different law and culture owned by people that rely on our knowledge to secure
their future but struggle to understand our world view. A way that enables us
to share our knowledge with others without fearing its loss, misuse or abuse. A
way that protects its integrity, and its Aboriginal ownership. Which sets fair
rules for those who wish to access it and benefit from it. Which requires them
to respect it.

The Protocol Community Guide states that:

• Aboriginal people own their knowledge.
• All research that concerns Aboriginal people must respect Aboriginal
  culture and knowledge.
• Everyone should be equal in the research and have shared
  understandings.
  

This Protocol makes sure that researchers who work with Aboriginal
people and the Desert Knowledge C R C - do the right thing.

It also sets out some pretty useful principles – which I’d be
happy to see in other parts of Australian public life – like
‘being respectful of everyone involved’. Like working together
constructively. Like meeting face-to-face. Like understanding that every place
is different and has its own way.

Importantly, it recognises that some knowledge must be withheld: ‘Not
all stories can be shared.’ And some can be shared, but not passed on or
publicised.

It accepts that Aboriginal knowledge should only be shared on a basis of
informed consent – that permission has to be fairly asked and fairly
given, for the sharing to take place.

That it is OK to say ‘No’ – and it is OK for an Aboriginal
person to change their mind about sharing.

Most importantly, Aboriginal cultural knowledge passed to a researcher should
not be used in any way without the full agreement of the traditional owners.

This protocol binds researchers to observe Aboriginal law and culture when
they keep and access the knowledge. And it provides that if requested, they
must destroy any record of it.

And if there is to be any commercial use of the knowledge, there must be a
legal agreement and the benefits must flow to traditional owners involved in the
research.

This is a document designed to help both peoples – the researchers who
are trying to understand Aboriginal culture, solve problems faced by Aboriginal
people and their communities and understand the nature of Australia; and the
traditional knowledge owners themselves.

It acknowledges us. It validates our wisdom. It is, in a way, a part of our
reconciliation – of coming to understand and value one another’s
beliefs.

The Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre has, in my eyes, played a
vital leadership role in helping to build these bridges which allow knowledge
and mutual understanding to flow between our cultures. And I congratulate you
all today on the launch of your Aboriginal Knowledge and Intellectual Property
Protocol Community Guide.

However, the process of sharing our ancient wisdom and applying it anew in
the contemporary world has only just begun.

Today we all understand clearly the gap that separates many Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people from most Australians – a gap in health,
employment, education, opportunity and often, hope.

This gap exists because many of the solutions proposed until now have not
worked, or have not worked as well as they should have.

When something doesn’t work, it is generally because you do not
understand the nature of the problem.

You have made some wrong assumptions, or not troubled to acquire all the
essential data in order to make a good decision. Worse, you may have neglected
to speak to the people most affected, thinking you knew best.

All of these things have contributed to the gap between Aboriginal peoples
and Torres Strait Islanders and non-Indigenous Australia. Between coastal and
desert Australia. Between the outback and the suburbs.

And these gaps can all be addressed by the same means: through acquiring
knowledge and understanding of the true nature of the problem, the measures
which can solve it and the things most needed and desired by the people
concerned.

It is in this context that I promote the Desert Knowledge Cooperative
Research Centres proposed Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic
Participation, and I urge the Federal Government and others to support this
initiative. As I said earlier, it is my view that our ability to use our
knowledge’s to secure sustainable futures is crucial to our self
determination and it is our human right. Indigenous peoples must be at the
forefront of this journey. We must be given the opportunity, supported by
others, to develop culturally, socially and economically.

Remote Australia is critically important, not only to our economy but also to
our society. To who we are; as Australians.

The main goal of the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic
Participation, quite simply is to conduct research that contributes directly to
closing the gap between Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders and
non-Indigenous Australians. Its aims are:

• To develop new ways to strengthen regional economies across remote
  Australia
• To build new enterprises that provide jobs and livelihoods in remote areas,
  and
• To improve the education and training pathways for people living in remote
  areas.
  

More than sixty partners, from federal and state government
agencies, from Aboriginal organisations and communities, from the private sector
large and small, have committed their support to the C R C for Remote Economic
Participation. That alone is testament to the importance of this
initiative.

The CRC for Remote Economic Participation can build on the important work of
the Desert Knowledge CRC. It can ensure that the understanding of how to do
things – like sharing one another’s knowledge respectfully –
is not lost. It can build on a research foundation about the issues, industries
and opportunities of remote Australia that is already firmly laid.

For Aboriginal people in particular it means a chance to turn our ancient
knowledge and wisdom into fresh opportunities, into real livelihoods, new
enterprises, into good health and learning, into the preservation of our culture
and languages while living in the modern world.

Into renewed self respect.

Because, as you’ve maybe heard me say before, from self-respect comes
dignity and from dignity comes hope.

Thank you.

DKCRC links

• Desert Knowledge CRC Protocol for Aboriginal Knowledge and Intellectual Property
• Aboriginal Knowledge and Intellectual Property Protocol: A Community Guide
• DKCRC Media Release September 24 2009: Guide to sharing Aboriginal knowledge