In 2007, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples became law, extending inherent human rights for the first time to the approximately half a billion Indigenous people around the planet. But nation-states have been slow to rethink their laws and policies.

Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage situates Canadian progress in undertaking these reforms within a global context and explains what Indigenous knowledge is, who may use it, and how to provide it with legal protection. By tracing decade-long negotiations with British Columbia and Canada, this book demonstrates the fundamental role of Indigenous advocacy in developing legislation and action plans to implement inherent rights.

This fully new edition tackles current issues in intellectual property rights and topics such as the revision of educational curricula to incorporate Indigenous content and methodologies. What emerges is a proposal for cooperative legal reform that will invigorate Indigenous knowledge systems and heritage.

Against the backdrop of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage examines past and emerging issues in the recognition of Indigenous inherent human rights and knowledge within a Canadian legal context.

Exordium

Part 1: The Lodge of Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge and Heritage in Modern Thought

1 Eurocentrism and the European Ethnographic Tradition

2 Indigenous Peoples’ Struggles for Respect, Dignity, and Self-Determination

3 What Is Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge?

Part 2: The Indigenous Peoples’ Movement to Reform Knowledge and Heritage Regimes

4 The Indigenous Domain and Eurocentric Intellectual and Cultural Property Rights

5 Rethinking Intellectual Property Rights

6 Indigenous Peoples’ International Reforms of Knowledge and Heritage

7 Protecting Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge and Heritage in Canadian Law

8 Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge and Heritage in Canada

Part 3: Canadian Law and Policy Reforms

9 Aligning Canadian Law with Indigenous Peoples’ Inherent Rights

10 Decolonizing the Education System

Reflections

Appendix A: United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007)

Appendix B: Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (British Columbia, 2019)

Appendix C: United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (Canada, 2021)

References; Index