Bootlegacy: Liz Nevis on intellectual and cultural property

A Clash of Symbols: Commodification of Cultural and Religious Images

Elizabeth Nevis — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 22:46:21 +0000

Appropriation of minority religious or other cultural images by outsiders - often, though not always, as a status symbol or fashion statement - is a sharpening point of controversy in some parts of the world. People from the originating cultures are upset for any or all of a number of reasons:

Some images are traditionally classified “eyes only” for certain individuals or subgroups under certain circumstances.
The right to display some images traditionally had to be earned rather than bought.
Outsiders displaying the images often do not know or care about their meanings or the traditional rules for how they are to be displayed.
Some images are traditionally not intended for fixation in some types of media, or for any type of permanent fixation at all.
Even if none of the above objections apply and the image may be embodied in a commodity and sold, people who believe they should be entitled to a share of the proceeds aren’t getting any.

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For April Fools’ Day: Whither the Wanabi?*

Elizabeth Nevis — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 16:01:51 +0000

Everywhere they go in Indian country, the Wanabi are despised and ridiculed. They seem to get everything wrong. They never take advantage of a good opportunity to shut up. They ask stupid questions and then hear what they want to hear, no matter what the answer is. They have no dress sense. They call the regalia “costumes.” Many of them can’t dance, and the ones who can insist on doing the wrong steps, which might really screw up the weather one of these days.

On what is plausibly “their” day, let me play the white/black/yellow/brown devil’s advocate for a moment.

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Bio - (prospectors or pirates? Neither metaphor is known for generosity, or good grooming)

Elizabeth Nevis — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 19:23:35 +0000

No matter what you call these globe-trotting researchers (often pharmaceutical companies or entities hoping to attract the favorable attention of pharmaceutical companies), this is what their detractors say they do:

Go someplace that has flora or fauna with unusual or unknown characteristics. In a lot of these places, the people who live there are poor. Possibly, given more money, the locals would have already paved over the flora, killed off the fauna, and built modern roads, houses, and stores. At least, when I visited the Peruvian Amazon a few years ago, that’s what a couple of the local folks I met said they’d prefer to do.
Ask local healers which plants or animal parts are medicinal, and for what, and exactly how to prepare them and how they work.
Go home with the collected knowledge and materials and lab-tweak them into a mass-producible, marketable, globally shippable product.
Patent it and make a lot of money.
Never pay the so-helpful locals one thin dime.

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