Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T08:29:11.360Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Māori Intellectual Property Rights and the Formation of Ethnic Boundaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2009

Toon van Meijl
Toon van Meijl
Affiliation:
University of Nijmegen. Email: t.vanmeijl@ru.nl
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 16 , Special Issue 3: Pacific Discourses About Cultural Heritage and Its Protection , August 2009 , pp. 341 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ballara, Angela. “‘I riro I te hoko’: Problems in Cross-cultural Historical Scholarship.” New Zealand Journal of History 34, no. 1 (2000): 20–33.Google Scholar
Barclay, Barry. Mana Tuturu: Māori Treasures and Intellectual Property Rights. Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Bishop, Russell. “Freeing Ourselves from Neocolonial Domination in Research: A Kaupapa Māori Approach to Creating Knowledge.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Denzin, Norman K. and Lincoln, Yvonna S., 3rd ed., 109–39. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005. First published in 1994.Google Scholar
Brown, Michael F. “Can Culture Be Copyrighted?” Current Anthropology 39, no. 2 (1998): 193–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Michael F.Who Owns Native Culture? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Coombe, Rosemary, and Herman, Andrew. “Rhetorical Virtues: Property, Speech, and the Commons on the World Wide Web.” Anthropological Quarterly 77, no. 3 (2004): 559–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dengate Thrush, Peter. Indigenous Flora and Fauna of New Zealand. Waitangi Tribunal Research Series no. 1995/1. Wellington: Brooker's, 1995.Google Scholar
Greaves, Thomas C. “Cultural Rights and Ethnography.” General Anthropology 1, no. 2 (1995): 1–6.Google Scholar
Guha, Ranajit, and Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, eds. Selected Subaltern Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Harrison, Simon. “Cultural Boundaries.” Anthropology Today 15, no. 5 (1999): 10–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, Simon. Fracturing Resemblances: Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and the West. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006.Google Scholar
Harrison, Simon. “Identity as a Scarce Resource.” Social Anthropology 7, no. 3 (1999): 239–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keesing, Roger. “Class, Culture, Custom.” In Melanesian Modernities, edited by Friedman, Jonathan and Carrier, James G., 162–82. Lund, Sweden, and Bromley, England: Lund University Press and Chartwell-Bratt, 1996.Google Scholar
Mead, Aroha Te Pareake. “Understanding Māori Intellectual Property Rights.” Paper presented to the Inaugural Māori Legal Forum, October 10, 2002. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington.Google Scholar
Meijl, Toon van. “Modern Morals in Postmodernity: A Critical Reflection on Professional Codes of Ethics.” Cultural Dynamics 12, no. 1 (2000): 65–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munz, Peter. “Open and Closed Research: Review of ‘Decolonizing Methodologies’ by Linda Tuhiwai Smith.” New Zealand Books 9, no. 5 (1999): 6.Google Scholar
Pels, Peter, and Salemink, Oskar. “Introduction: Five Theses on Ethnography as Colonial Practice.” History and Anthropology 8, no. 1 (1994): 1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pere, Joseph. “Hitori Māori.” In The Future of the Past: Themes in New Zealand History, edited by Davis, Colin and Lineham, Peter, 29–48. Palmerston North: Department of History, Massey University, 1991.Google Scholar
Rata, Elizabeth. “Late Capitalism and Ethnic Revivalism, ‘A New Middle Age?’” Anthropological Theory 3, no. 1 (2003): 46–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rata, Elizabeth, and Openshaw, Roger, eds. Public Policy and Ethnicity: The Politics of Ethnic Boundary Making. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.Google Scholar
Reilly, Michael. “An Ambiguous Past: Representing Māori History.” New Zealand Journal of History 19, no. 1 (1995): 19–39.Google Scholar
Roberts, Roma Mere, and Wills, Peter R.. “Understanding Māori Epistemology: A Scientific Perspective” In Tribal Epistemologies: Essays in the Philosophy of Anthropology, edited by Wautischer, Helmut, 43–71. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing, 1998.Google Scholar
Roberts, Mere, Haami, Brad, Benton, Richard, Satterfield, Terre, Finucane, Melissa L., Henare, Mark, and Henare, Manuka. “Whakapapa as a Māori Mental Construct: Some Implications for the Debate over Genetic Modification of Organisms.” The Contemporary Pacific 16, no. 1 (2004): 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London, and Dunedin, New Zealand: Zed Books and University of Otago Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. “Getting the Story Right—Telling the Story Well: Indigenous Activism—Indigenous Research.” In Pacific Genes and Life Patents: Pacific Indigenous Experiences and Analysis of the Commodification and Ownership of Life, edited by Mead, Aroha T.R. and Ratuva, Steven, 74–81. Wellington: Call of the Earth/Llamado de la Tierra and Institute of Advanced Studies, United Nations University, 2007. Available at http://www.ias.unu.edu/sub_page.aspx?catID=97&dd1ID=229 (accessed 25 October, 2009).Google Scholar
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. “On Tricky Ground: Researching the Native in the Age of Uncertainty.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Denzin, Norman K. and Lincoln, Yvonna S., 3rd ed., 85–107. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2005. First published in 1994.Google Scholar
Solomon, Maui. “Intellectual Property Rights and Indigenous Peoples Rights and Obligations.” Motion Magazine, April 22, 2001, 1–16.Google Scholar
Solomon, Maui. “The Wai 262 Claim: A Claim by Māori to Indigenous Flora and Fauna: Me o Ratou Taonga Katoa.” In Waitangi Revisited: Perspectives on the Treaty of Waitangi, edited by Belgrave, Michael, Kawharu, Merata, and Williams, David, 213–32. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Solomon, Maui, and Watson, Leo. “The Waitangi Tribunal and the Māori Claim on their Cultural and Intellectual Heritage Rights Property.” Cultural Survival Quarterly 24, no. 2 (2001): 46–50.Google Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn. “Potential Property: Intellectual Rights and Property in Persons.” Social Anthropology 4, no. 1 (1996): 17–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn. Property, Substance and Effect: Anthropological Essays on Persons and Things. London: Athlone Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Tau, Te Maire. “Matauranga Māori as Epistemology.” In Histories, Power and Loss: Uses of the Past—A New Zealand Commentary, edited by Sharp, Andrew and McHugh, Paul, 61–73. Wellington: Bridget Williams, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Nicholas. Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Webster, Steven. Patrons of Māori Culture: Power, Theory and Ideology in the Māori Renaissance. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Williams, David. Matauranga Māori and Taonga: The Nature and Extent of Treaty Rights Held by Iwi and Hapu in Indigenous Flora and Fauna, Cultural Heritage Objects, Valued Traditional Knowledge. Wellington, New Zealand: Waitangi Tribunal, 2001.Google Scholar