Documents & Resources

Documents & Resources

Re-Positioning Indigenous Interests in Intellectual Property, Knowledge Governance and Access to the Benefits of Innovation

Indigenous Peoples around the world face growing risks of being sidelined in the governance of their own intellectual and cultural heritage as technology transforms how knowledge is produced, shared, and monetized.

In Canada and globally, over the past several decades, issues of equity and inclusion in intellectual property (IP) and knowledge governance are on the front burner. In this regard, there are two momentous transitions and large-scale changes in IP and knowledge governance with significant implications for Indigenous Peoples happening right now, namely:

The reduction of genetic materials in Indigenous ancestral territories into datasets or “Digital Sequence Information” (DSI) and widely shared datasets that bypass established guardrails of Indigenous laws and protocols, including free prior and informed consent, as part of a global regime known as “access and benefit sharing” (ABS);
The implementation in Canada of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (UNDA), 2021 Action Plan, which is urgently complicated by a new international treaty, the 2024 Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge.

The SSHRC Insight Grant: Re-Positioning Indigenous Interests in Intellectual Property, Knowledge Governance and Access to the Benefits of Innovation aims to facilitate the Indigenous co-development of a strategy in response to identified transitions and large-scale changes in IP and knowledge governance. It aspires to embolden informed and protagonist Indigenous participation in the anticipated revision of Canada’s legislative, policy, practice, and administration ecosystems of IP pursuant to the UNDA Act and overall implementation of Canada’s IP Strategy and Canada’s response to international trends toward taking Indigenous interests in intellectual property and knowledge governance seriously as a development justice matter.