Book Summaries

Harry Donkor
CCS F612
Book Summaries

Tom Greaves: Intellectual Property Rights For Indigenous Peoples, A Sourcebook

This book explains the importance of Intellectual property rights for indigenous people around the world. It also explains the importance of determining who owns cultural knowledge and how to protect that knowledge from getting into the wrong hands. Tom Greaves also talks about the recent interest in indigenous people around the world and the impact that is having on indigenous communities. He believes that there should be the need to assert control and access over cultural knowledge and the things produced or owned by indigenous peoples. There is the urgent need to establish controls for indigenous people in terms of cultural knowledge and intellectual property rights to preserve meaning and honor for cultural knowledge and to ensure that traditional values are preserved.

Marie Battiste and James Youngblood Henderson: Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage

This book talks about the rush on indigenous knowledge systems, teachings, and heritage by outsiders in an effort to access, know and assert control over these resources. This writer also believes that indigenous people have been robbed of their humanity and this is creating a problem for indigenous scholars who are struggling to define indigenous humanity for the indigenous people. She believes that colonization brought disorder to indigenous people’s lives, to their languages, to their social relations and their ways of thinking about feeling and interacting with the world. She talks about how indigenous ways have been devalued in the Western standards of the world and the effect of this on indigenous people. He expresses that for indigenous people it is time for restoring their spirit and bringing back into existence health and dignity for their people. Indigenous elders and scholars are creating a renaissance that is based on the culture and heritage from pre-colonial times. This involves stabilizing and restoring indigenous languages and honoring indigenous worldviews. Indigenous people are developing methodologies for understanding their ways of life and for understanding other peoples’ ways of life as well.

Darrell A. Posey and Graham Dutfield: Beyond Intellectual Property

This books talks about protections for indigenous people’s intellectual and cultural property rights. These writers believe that some indigenous people are using intellectual property right laws for their benefit today. This book explains and goes into details about how indigenous people perceive, manage and use their natural resources and the development of programs to guarantee the preservation and strengthening of indigenous communities and their traditional knowledge. This book also talks about scientists, researchers and individuals and their roles in going into indigenous communities to do research and to benefit from indigenous knowledge and the fair ways for compensating these indigenous people and their communities.