What about protecting intellectual property? Can’t databases easily lead to indigenous peoples losing control over the natural and cultural resources their groups own?
Protecting collective intellectual property is important in all ‘closed’ knowledge economies. Aboriginal societies are no different than American corporations in this. The issue is one of controlling who knows and how much they know. Strategic revealing and hiding is involved. Modern companies protect their intellectual property with patent laws, by various technical means, and by selectively authorising and commissioning various knowers. Aboriginal clans have equally effective means of managing the strategic revealing and hiding of intellectual resources. There are two rather separate elements that need to be considered in thinking about intellectual property and indigenous knowledge with respect to collections of digitised items that point to natural and cultural resources. The first relates to forms of management for these collections that express indigenous ways of doing intellectual property. Workable ways of respecting different clan ownership of various elements, and recognising
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