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Gibson, Johanna --- "The Lay of the Land: The Geography of Traditional Cultural Expression" [2008] ELECD 329; in Graber, Beat Christoph; Burri-Nenova, Mira (eds), "Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions in a Digital Environment" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions in a Digital Environment

Editor(s): Graber, Beat Christoph; Burri-Nenova, Mira

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847209214

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: The Lay of the Land: The Geography of Traditional Cultural Expression

Author(s): Gibson, Johanna

Number of pages: 21

Extract:

8. The lay of the land: the geography of
traditional cultural expression
Johanna Gibson
Through the use of ancestrally inherited designs, artists assert their identity, and
their rights and responsibilities. They also define the relationships between individ-
uals and groups, and affirm their connections to the land and the Dreaming.1

You see, the land is not only to cultivate. The land is also for you to be cultivated
in as a person. This is why, when the land is in the hands of others, you are only a
tool.2



1. INTRODUCTION
The relationship between copyright and traditional cultural expressions (TCE)
is an uneasy and problematic schema, one which not only locates the interests
within the proprietary and objective character of copyright, but also one which
shares much with the imperial narration of knowledge that accompanies histo-
ries of colonisation and global cartography. Intellectual property laws chart the
modern trade routes built upon international knowledge economies.
Knowledge is thus inextricably geographically-bound not only for traditional
communities but also for the momentum of globalisation.

The main battle in imperialism is over land, of course; but when it came to who
owned the land, who had the right to settle and work on it, who kept it going, who
won it back, and who now plans its future ­ these issues were reflected, contested,
and even for a time decided in narrative.3




1 Wally Caruana, Aboriginal Art, London: Thames and Hudson, 1993, at p. 15,
as quoted in Terri Janke, ...