Article
Sharing indigenous knowledge: To share or not to share? That is the question
Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS
(2003)
Abstract
The Internet and digital technology create new possibilities for the development of cultures,
communities and knowledge. Over the last twenty years there has been a great increase in interest in
indigenous knowledge from a variety of groups, including academia, development agencies and the
corporate world. Within this diverse range of interests, there have been initiatives to facilitate a global
network to exchange indigenous knowledge by development agencies such as the World Bank's
'Indigneous Knowledge for Development Program' and UNESCO's 'Best Practices of Indigenous
Knowledge' database. The development agencies appear to be mainly concerned with systematizing
indigenous knowledge and looking at the notion of indigenous knowledge as forming part of global
knowledge which can be preserved, transferred, or adopted and adapted elsewhere. Multilateral and
bilateral donors have also facilitated the establishment of national indigenous knowledge resource centers
which are organizational structures through which indigenous knowledge is recorded, stored, screened for
potential economic uses at the national level, and distributed to other centers in appropriate ways.
I argue that it is necessary to abandon the assumption that we can record and document indigenous
knowledge and pass it 'up' to interested parties as technological packages are passed 'down' to
beneficiaries. Indigenous knowledge systems are rarely if ever isolated from the rest of the world; people
will incorporate and reinterpret aspects of western knowledge and practice into their traditions as part of
the ongoing process of globalization. Meanwhile, in the commercial arena, national and multinational
corporations have taken indigenous knowledge as a valuable commodity and are 'sharing' the knowledge
in the commercial world for profit. Within the framework of social capital, I explore the sharing of
indigenous knowledge at the local level and at the global level. I argue that the embeddedness and
contextual nature of indigenous knowledge creates tensions for sharing it on a global scale. I also argue
that although there is a strong public purpose interest in greater community access and sharing of
indigenous knowledge, there should be mechanisms for the compensation of indigenous peoples for the
commercial use of their knowledge - indigenous knowledge should be treated as a form of intellectual
property in order to increase the economic return from resources maintained by indigenous peoples. Once
indigenous communities are connected to the Internet, their opportunities for benefiting economically are
being marginalized.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2003
Publisher Statement
Presented at the Canadian Association for Information Science Conference, May-June, 2003, Halifax, Nova Scotia. This article appears in Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS, 2003 and can be found at this link.
Citation Information
Christine Hagar. "Sharing indigenous knowledge: To share or not to share? That is the question" Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS (2003) p. 336 - 347 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/christine_hagar/20/