indigenous

Mud and stone dwellings of the Kogi Indians, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. The Kogi are one of the indigenous cultures of the Sierra Nevada and still maintain their own traditions as a result of their isolation after the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. For the Kogi, the Sierra Nevada is ‘the heart of the world’, and their laws are based on the harmonious relationship between humans and nature.

The people, animals, or plants that are native to a country, but especially a people whose territory has been colonized by others (particularly Europeans). In 1995 it was estimated that there were approximately 220 million indigenous people in the world. Examples of indigenous peoples include Australian Aborigines and American Indians. A World Council of Indigenous Peoples is based in Canada. The United Nations declared 1993 the International Year of Indigenous Peoples.

Commercialization of indigenous peoples' knowledge, and the appropriation of their land and resources increased dramatically with European colonization and the emergence of nation states threatening the integrity of their cultures and their means of livelihood. In the 1980s and 1990s various indigenous organizations emerged. Seeking self-determination, such groups demanded the rights to the natural resources on their land, and financial remuneration for the commercialization of their traditions. Several conferences in the early 1990s, the most influential being Mataatua, have resulted in a unified declaration of aims and demands. Signed at Aotearoa (New Zealand) in 1993 by indigenous people from over 60 countries, the Mataatua declaration proclaims the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination, demands indigenous people be recognized as the exclusive owners of their cultural and intellectual property, and insists that their descendants are the beneficiaries of their knowledge.

A major obstacle to indigenous peoples achieving their aims is that their concepts of ownership differ profoundly from Western legal concepts of intellectual property rights, emphasizing communal rather than individual ownership.