Posted on April 12, 2010
Kylie Thomas explores the 'difficult conversations' that Jane Andersen engages in around the issues of about indigenous knowledge, archives and the legacy of colonial power.

Dr Jane Anderson, one of the most interesting critical thinkers in the field of intellectual property law and its relation to cultural heritage, just paid a visit to South Africa. Hosted at the University of Cape Town by the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative and the Sawyer Seminar Series in the Department of Anthropology, Anderson presented two fascinating research papers last month.

The first of these, '(Colonial) Archives and (Copyright) Law' highlights the relationship between archives and legal authority. The paper shows how contests over ownership of indigenous knowledge are reshaping how we understand archives and intellectual property. Anderson's work draws attention to how the archive is by no means inert, but is increasingly a site through which contemporary struggles about the past and over rights in the present emerge.

Anderson also presented 'Discursive Disorder: Power, Authority and Politics in Indigenous Intellectual Property', which examines the effects of the ways in which we approach the question of indigenous knowledge through an intellectual property paradigm. As a legal scholar and activist working with indigenous peoples in Australia and Indonesia and through her position as Expert Consultant for the World Intellectual Property Organisation at the United Nations, Anderson brings a deep understanding of how the law shapes and is shaped by conflicts over meaning and ownership in the public sphere.

Anderson is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Law and Society at the School of Law at New York University. She is also project ethnographer at Simon Fraser University's Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage project (see www.sfu.ca/ipinch/front). Her book, Law, Knowledge, Culture: The Production of Indigenous Knowledge in Intellectual Property Law was published by Edward Elgar Press, UK in 2009. The book will be of interest to many working in the heritage sector in South Africa as well as to researchers in the fields of intellectual property law, anthropology and philosophy.

Her work helps us to engage in what she terms 'a difficult conversation' about indigenous knowledge, archives and the legacy of colonial power - 'a difficult conversation because it involves intersections of remnant colonial power, rationalities of copyright, and interpretations of knowledge circulation, access and control'. (Anderson, 'Access and Control of Indigenous Knowledge in Libraries and Archives: Ownership and Future Use', American Library Association and The MacArthur Foundation, 2005, p4. See http://www.columbia.edu/ccnmtl/projects/alaconf2005/paper_anderson.pdf)

Kylie Thomas is a Post-doctoral Fellow in the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative at the University of Cape Town. Email starfish@iafrica.com