Indigenous intellectual property
Kaia MacLeod and Rachel Chong
Western copyright does not adequately protect Indigenous intellectual property. Intellectual property is defined as “property (such as a concept, idea, invention, or work) that derives from the effort of the mind or intellect. […] also : a right or registration (such as a patent, trademark, trade secret, or copyright) relating to or protecting this property ” (Merriam Webster, 2026).
When considering the principles of Ownership Control Access Possession (OCAP) and United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), additional considerations should be taken. OCAP and UNDRIP ask us to consider collective ownership and Indigenous sovereignty to Indigenous intellectual property.
OCAP
“Ownership: An Indigenous community or group owns information collectively in the same way that an individual owns his or her personal information.
Control: First Nations, their communities and representative bodies are within their rights in seeking to control over all aspects of research and information management processes that impact them.
Access: First Nations must have access to information and data about themselves and their communities, regardless of where it is currently held.
Possession: While ownership identifies the relationship between a people and their information in principle, possession or stewardship is more concrete. It refers to the physical control of data.”
(First Nations Information Governance Centre, 2026, para. 5 – 7)
UNDRIP
“Article 13 – Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.”
(United Nations, 2008, p. 25)
“Article 31- Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures and… They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.”
(United Nations, 2008, p. 43)
There are many ways to honour Indigenous intellectual property. We have included a variety of examples below to help inspire the process. There are not prescriptive in nature but may be utilized as appropriate.
Examples: Local Contexts
Local Contexts is an Indigenous-focused, international non-profit organization that collaborates to develop labels which help guide the responsible and respectful use of Indigenous information, including conditions and protocols for sharing that information. These Labels may be used in various contexts, such as websites, books, and library catalogs.
“This Label should be used when you would like external users to know that this material is subject to certain conditions for circulation. This material is usually only shared between family members. Because these conditions have not historically been recognized, this Label helps make these conditions clearer for future users. Specifically, it asks them to respect culturally specific rules of use and to make different and fair decisions about using this type of material.” (Local Contexts, n.d.a)
Their website also has a page dedicated to the “Labels and Notices in Publication” where you can see various papers and articles talking about projects related to the Labels and Notices (Local Contexts, n.d.b). For example, Monica Galassi’s dissertation “Archivi Aborigeni in Italia/Aboriginal Archives in Italy: The Translation of Knowledge as Cultural Interface” links to this Local Contexts Project (Local Contexts Hub, n.d).
Examples: Audio/Visual Material
Many recordings of Indigenous Peoples have and continue to be made. By Western copyright default, the recordings are seen as the property of the researcher or the institution, instead of the property of Indigenous Peoples. To ensure ownership remains with Indigenous Peoples and uplifts OCAP and UNDRIP principles, alternative forms have been developed.
The University of Alberta has developed a form which includes seven generation stewardship of information, as an alternative to Western copyright defaults (Ostrowski, 2026).
