An Act to confer power to return certain cultural objects on grounds relating to events occurring during the Nazi era. [12th November 2009]

In May 2007, I gave a talk at the Institute for Public Health Genetics (IPHG) at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle. My topic was the Genographic Project, specifically the colonial history and racial narratives that I see as shaping the work of the project. I left IPHG encouraged by my conversations with UW researchers, including native researchers and program administrators who organize collaborative and ethically rigorous research. The individuals I met work in multiple native communities, especially those in the Pacific Northwest.

Ownership is often understood merely as a function of social relations, that is, it emerges merely because of the relations between people with respect to the things that they own. Concomitantly ownership is also seen as being dependent upon creativity to bring its force into motion. Far from dismissing such a view of ownership, it is acknowledged that such a view possibly comes from a world that is preoccupied with creativity. This discussion aims to show a particular kind of dialectic between creativity and ownership that underlies discourses about intellectual property especially in countries like Papua New Guinea. Through an ethnographic concern with personal names and their attendant claims to ownership and creativity, this paper aims to show how two trajectories of ownership co-exist in a Papua New Guinea society.

The International Conference on Human Rights and the Environment took place in Tehran in May 2009 and was attended by around 150 participants, including 10 international and five Iranian speakers. It was conceived as an opportunity to bring together leading international experts in this field to seek greater clarity on the important but, as yet, under-conceptualised question of the nexus between human rights and the environment. Both in the papers presented and in the resulting Declaration text, cultural heritage was seen as a key element in both aspects of this nexus and as fundamental to achieving a suitable accommodation between the two.

Michael Brown famously asked ‘Who owns native culture?’ This paper revisits that question by analyzing what happens to culture when the culturally defined boundary between it and nature becomes salient in the context of disputes between indigenous and settler populations. My case study is the dispute between the New Zealand government and Maori tribal groupings concerning ownership of the foreshore and seabed. Having been granted the right to test their claims in court in 2003, Maori groups were enraged when the government legislated the right out of existence in 2004. Though the reasons for doing so were clearly political, contrasting cultural assumptions appeared to set Maori and Pakeha (New Zealanders of European origin) at odds. While couching ownership of part of nature as an IPR issue may seem counter-intuitive, I argue that as soon as a property claim destabilizes the nature/culture boundary, IPR discourse becomes pertinent.

Many molecular anthropologists no longer incorporate a field component into their research; rather, they rely on analyzing existing data sets and/or on collaborating with field researchers to obtain samples for analysis. This trend in molecular anthropology, combined with the aggressive agenda of the Genographic Project, has an important implication for the future of the discipline. If Native American communities are exposed to genetic ancestry research largely through the Genographic Project, they are less likely to see that there are multiple ways for Native American communities to interact with genetic researchers. Molecular anthropologists are in a position to offer an alternative approach to research by pursuing enduring and mutually beneficial collaborative projects with Native American communities.

The Genographic Project is a fantasy of an idea. It represents the instinct of humankind to seek to understand ourselves, right down to the smallest pieces of our essential being. To follow this longing for knowledge is to be in the company of every great explorer that has ever been, from the first hominid moving beyond the boundaries of African Eden to the intrepid women, men, and children who sailed the seas beyond the mainland of Southeast Asia to become the first occupants of the continent of Australia, to the men and women perhaps not yet born who will seek to land on and inhabit planets other than this one. Such journeys reveal ways of relating to new worlds and, in that process, instruct us in new ways of being human. As another great journey of exploration, this search within ourselves may teach us equally as much. To be certain, none of our journeys thus far have been without hardship, and it is naive to think that this or any exploration is free from challenges.

This article questions and contextualizes the emergence of a discourse of intellectual property rights in Māori society. It is argued that Māori claims regarding intellectual property function primarily to demarcate ethnic boundaries between Māori and non-Māori. Māori consider the reinforcement of ethnic boundaries necessary since they experience their society and distinctive way of life as endangered both by the foreign consumption or misappropriation of aspects of their authentic cultural forms and by the intrusion of foreign cultural elements. Following Simon Harrison (1999) it is argued that the first threat is often represented as an undesired form of cultural appropriation, piracy or theft, while the second threat is viewed as a form of cultural pollution. This argument is elaborated with a case-study of each so-called danger, namely a claim regarding native flora and fauna submitted to the Waitangi Tribunal, which is considered as an example of resistance against cultural appropriation, and the increasing hostility of Māori to foreign interest and research in Māori culture and society, which is analysed as an example of opposition to putative pollution.

From May 9–14, 2008, the Salzburg Global Seminar convened its 453rd session—and its annual arts and culture session—on “Achieving the Freer Circulation of Cultural Artifacts” at Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg. Sixty two participants from twenty-nine countries gathered for the five-day session, aimed at building consensus among cultural authorities and museum representatives from around the world on ways to overcome legal, political, and practical obstacles to the circulation of cultural objects. Participants worked together to identify and assess new and better ways to promote the sharing of art and artifacts—from virtual access to practical strategies for significantly expanding loan programs worldwide. Whereas there are many museum conferences worldwide, few strive to bring together a multi-disciplinary and truly global group of participants for an open, informal exchange of thoughts and ideas in a neutral setting. The gathering in Salzburg, generously supported by The Edward T. Cone Foundation, succeeded in providing an evaluative international forum of this type, which brought diverse experts from a range of national and professional contexts into dialogue and gave them the opportunity to reflect deeply and openly on ways to increase the international exchange of cultural artifacts.

In August 2008 the Seventy-third Conference of the International Law Association (ILA) in Rio de Janeiro adopted the Cultural Heritage Law Committee's “Guidelines for the Establishment and Conduct of Safe Havens for Cultural Material,” the text of which appears in this issue. The Committee, after discussing its on-going project concerning the relationship between international trade law and the protection of cultural heritage, decided to focus on national export controls.

The articles in this special issue on intellectual property in the Pacific document anxieties about culture and tradition, and about the intrusion of ideas of property into previously uncommodified areas of peoples' lives. These include fears that traditional knowledge and skills are not being passed on to young people (Nason and Peter; Pigliasco); that migrants in a globalized world will take aspects of culture with them when they leave (Nason and Peter); that anthropologists and other scholars will wrongfully appropriate and use aspects of the cultures they study for their own benefit (Van Meijl); and that profits from the commercialization of traditional knowledge, practices, and products will not go to the people who consider themselves their owners and caretakers (Lindstrom). In addition, Jo Recht's contribution provides a discussion of attempts to protect culture and tradition through international conventions and national laws. Finally, Andrew Moutu and Michael Goldsmith describe claims of ownership over aspects of nature to reflect on fundamental aspects of intellectual property and ownership more generally.

Anthropological genetics is an oddly liminal field—not quite anthropology, yet not quite genetics either. Anthropologists are trained to be attuned to the people they work with; without the goodwill of its objects, the profession cannot exist—but one does not have to secure the goodwill of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, to study its DNA haplotypes in depth. Geneticists, however, are more prestigious and better funded—and what scientist doesn't aspire to that?

As an UNESCO initiative, Mexico was chosen as the country to host a seminar about the illicit trafficking of religious cultural objects. This problem is severe in the region and the idea was received with great enthusiasm by all.

I want to commend the organizers of the Chacmool Conference panel. All too often attempts to discuss the broader social and cultural dimensions of genetic studies of ancient human migrations devolve into simplistic celebrations or condemnations. It is heartening to find here an example of a conference session that managed to avoid these dangerous poles, and to grapple instead with the hard task of discerning the issues raised and not raised by genomic studies of human migrations and history. I would like to devote my commentary to exploring what might be learned from the discussions at Chacmool.