Transcript of Patricia Adjei, Indigenous cultural and intellectual property
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Trevor Pisciott...: Good morning, everyone. Apologies for the delay while we sorted out the technology. Fantastic to be here with you this morning, and as I begin, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which I'm joining you from today, the lands of the Wurundjeri People, and I pay my respects to their Elders past and present and extend those respects to the Traditional Owners of whichever lands you are joining us from today, as well as to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who might be with us this morning. For those of you who I haven't had the pleasure of meeting before, good morning. My name's Trevor Pisciotta. I'm the executive director of Regulatory Policy and Programmes and Animal Welfare Victoria in Agriculture Victoria, and it's my absolute pleasure to be with you this morning.
I'm thrilled to be here to introduce today's session on what's going on with Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property, also known as ICIP. This session is part of Agriculture Victoria's barpangu yurpangu Speaker Series, which is a calendar of curated events designed to build greater awareness of First Nations culture and community, as well as of First Nations experiences and thoughts on agriculture and self-determination. This speaker series is part of the way in which Agriculture Victoria is delivering our commitments under DEECA's Pupangarli Marnmarnepu Self-Determination Strategy, which guides DEECA and including Agriculture Victoria activities to support self-determination. The series provides an opportunity for staff, industry, and community to engage in First Nations thought leadership and build awareness of First Nations narratives and perspectives. If you'd like to extend your awareness further, you can view past recordings of previous sessions, which are available on our Agriculture Victoria website, so you can have a look whenever suits you.
As I said, today's event focuses on the status of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property. What is it, why protections are needed, and what is happening in terms of protection of intellectual and cultural property in Australia and internationally? Before I introduce our speaker, I'd like to let you know there'll be time for some questions towards the end of the session. Please feel free to add questions in the Q and A section at any time during this session, and we'll try to get through as many as possible before we wrap up. I'd now like to introduce our esteemed speaker who brings a wealth of experience from ICIP. So Patricia Adjei is a Wuthathi, Mabuiag Islander and Ghanaian woman and is currently the director of standalone legislation at the Office of the Arts in the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communication, and the Arts. And as someone from a department with a really long acronym, that's a pretty impressive departmental name, Patricia.
Patricia holds a Bachelor of Arts and Law from the University of New South Wales and was a Churchill Fellowship recipient, which enabled her to investigate the practical application of laws in the USA and Panama that are intended to protect Indigenous cultural rights. She previously worked as a lawyer at the Copyright Agency at the Arts Law Centre of Australia at National Indigenous TV and was the 2010 World Intellectual Property Organisation Indigenous Intellectual Property Law Fellow. She's a published author having published several articles as well as a chapter on Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property rights, and I'm incredibly excited to hear what Patricia's got to share with us about ICIP. Thanks so much, Patricia. Over to you.
Patricia Adjei: Great, thanks so much, Trevor, for that lovely introduction. Hi, everyone. I'd like to also acknowledge the Traditional Owners of whose land we're gathered on virtually today. I'm Zooming in from Gadigal Country here in Sydney, and I pay my respects to Elders past and present and also acknowledge any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on the Zoom call today.So I have a presentation, so I'm going to try and share that. That will sort of go through lots of different issues around what actually is Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property and what's happening at the federal level in terms of the work that we're doing at Office for the Arts in developing the legislation and then also talk a bit about some work that's happening internationally as well through the UN system at the World Intellectual Property Organisation, and also a project that's happening in the bush food space as well with the Department of Foreign Affairs and WIPO as well. So hopefully, everyone can see the slides. Okay. Let's go.
So in terms of Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property, this is a right that has been discussed in Australia for a number of decades across all different industries in Australia, and Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property is really the foundation of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in the country. And at the moment, we don't have any sort of full legal protection for Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property, so we talk about these rights as the right for Indigenous peoples in Australia to be able to practise and maintain and control and own their cultural heritage, their knowledge as well. But as you can imagine, all different aspects of cultural knowledge and heritage can manifest in different artistic and cultural forms like songs and music, stories, dance, but also artworks, symbols. But then, it can also manifest in ecological knowledge, bush foods, medicines, plants, land management practises, sacred sites as well, cultural heritage, and knowledge about the land, sea, and sky as well, so it's all encompassing for most Indigenous peoples across the country.
When people are using Indigenous Cultural IP, the people ask permission and consult with the relevant Elders or Traditional Owners for the use of that knowledge. They also attribute to where that knowledge is coming from as well because Indigenous Cultural IP is not normally an individually owned knowledge or artistic sort of product. It's normally communally owned, so you normally would have to talk to a number of different Elders if you want to use a particular bush food, for example, or use a language word for example. And this knowledge, this Indigenous Cultural IP has been passed down from generation to generation as well, so it's tens of thousands of years old. And at the moment, you may have heard of Dr. Terri Janke, who's a leading Indigenous lawyer in this space and has developed a number of best practise ethical guidelines called protocols that guide users and companies and organisations into how they should go about getting free, prior, informed consent from Indigenous communities, how do they go about consultation, and how are they respectfully engaging with communities when people are wanting to use Indigenous Cultural IP.
And then, again, that international level, there's hundreds of thousands of Indigenous peoples around the world who have very similar issues to Australian Indigenous peoples. And so, back in 2007 at the United Nations level, there was a declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples created and endorsed by many countries. Australia did endorse it in 2009, and our declaration gives rights to Indigenous peoples across the world on a range of different-
Trevor Pisciott...: Sorry, Patricia. Could I just jump in just for one moment?
Patricia Adjei: Oh, yeah.
Trevor Pisciott...: We just had a couple of people asking if you could make the slides full screen and also just noting that for them, it's still on the first slide.
Patricia Adjei: Okay.
Trevor Pisciott...: So sorry.
Patricia Adjei: Oh, that's okay because I've got four. Oh, maybe that's how I do it. Is that better?
Trevor Pisciott...: That hasn't changed for me. I'm sorry.
Patricia Adjei: Oh. Is that better?
Trevor Pisciott...: No.
Patricia Adjei: Still on the-
Trevor Pisciott...: I wonder if-
Patricia Adjei: ... titles?
Trevor Pisciott...: Yeah, I can still see the titles on the side and just the first slide.
Patricia Adjei: Oh, no.
Trevor Pisciott...: Sorry, everyone. We'll try and work this out.
Patricia Adjei: [inaudible 00:10:13] I've got it on presenter view.
Trevor Pisciott...: That's very strange. So that's now swapped slides.
Patricia Adjei: This one? So let's see. Does that work?
Trevor Pisciott...: I'm really sorry. That's okay. We might just have to proceed at least if we can click through the slides. That way, we can keep up.
Patricia Adjei: Okay. Yes.
Trevor Pisciott...: Thanks everyone for bearing with us. Thanks, Patricia.
Patricia Adjei: Sorry about that because I can't see the Zoom.
Trevor Pisciott...: Yeah, I know it's really challenging, but that's pretty clear to me. So I think we're good to go. Thank you.
Patricia Adjei: Okay, sorry. And I'll share the slides afterwards as well.
Trevor Pisciott...: Thank you very much.
Patricia Adjei: So people can go through them. Yeah, so I was just saying, in terms of, again, that international level, the declaration was created back in 2007, and it has particular rights for Indigenous peoples across different types of subject matter. Article 31 is the relevant article that talks to protection of Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property rights. I should also say in Australia, we use the term Indigenous Cultural Intellectual Property rights. This is a term that was actually coined by Dr. Terri Janke four decades ago, or sorry, three decades ago. But at the international level, there's sort of different terminology that is used to talk about what's traditional knowledge, which can be sort of more of that know-how, cultural knowledge, ecological, medicinal type of knowledge. And then, you also have traditional cultural expressions which talks to the artistic and creative heritage and knowledge of Indigenous peoples as well.
But zooming back to Australia, you may have heard, particularly in the visual arts space, there's been a number of government inquiries, a number of reports that have recommended new laws to protect Indigenous Cultural IP, but also to deal with an issue around what's called the fake or inauthentic Aboriginal-style art products, souvenirs that may not necessarily be made by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander artist and then misrepresent artists and culture. And so, a couple of years ago, well, back in actually 2016, there was a Fake Art Harms Culture campaign run by a number of industry bodies, the Indigenous Art Code and the legal service, the Arts Law Centre, and also Copyright Agency, the Copyright Management Organisation that really sort of highlighted that there are thousands of dollars being wasted and money's not going back to communities and artists because there are all these inauthentic boomerangs and didgeridoos and different sort of tea towels, all that stuff that you see in different markets across the country.
Actually, in Melbourne, the Queen Victoria Markets have a policy where they've actually stated sellers can't sell fake Aboriginal art, which is really good to see. So hopefully, there aren't any of those fake products being sold at the Queen Vic Markets. Why do we need to protect Indigenous Cultural IP? Because at the moment, there are existing gaps in existing intellectual property laws. So we see intellectual property law as a sort of umbrella term for all the different streams of intellectual property laws that we have in this country. So copyright is one sort of economic right for creators to be able to exploit their work and make money off it. You also have patents, more in the kind of invention, scientific space, scientific research where companies will register patents for particular innovations and make money off the use of those patents as well. You've also got designs law and plant breeders' rights, geographic indicators as well.
And so, these intellectual property laws were coined hundreds of years ago, but they didn't really take into account how Indigenous peoples want to be able to use and protect and maintain their Indigenous Cultural IP. So if you look at copyright law, for example, it's a law that, again, gives those economic rights to creators and artists or normally for individual artists, if they express their work, say on a canvas or they record something, so record a song, they get automatic protection under Australian copyright law, and they're able to exploit their works and make money off it through licencing deals for the lifetime of the artist plus 70 years. But we see that there's a gap between copyright law and in Indigenous Cultural IP. And so, there's no existing copyright law. There's no recognition of that communally owned knowledge that community have and that you have to ask permission to be able to use Indigenous Cultural IP.
And that also goes for Indigenous people in their own language groups, so if I wanted to use a particular Mabuiag Islander story from the Torres Strait, I would actually have to also talk to Mabuiag Elders to be able to use that story and publish it in a book, for example. We also see there's no recognition of the tangible, intangible aspects of culture, so oral stories, knowledge, cultural knowledge that's passed down, it's not protected. So you might see examples. You may have heard of examples in the past of when researchers have gone out to communities and recorded a sacred ceremony or sacred men's business, for example, and then gone and published that knowledge outside of that community without telling the community, without asking them first. And so, there's no sort of repercussions or anything that community can really do because there's no law to stop that. And then, there's also that sort of lack of recognition of transmission of culture from generation to generation, and that Indigenous culture is also enduring and evolving as well because we live in a contemporary world.
So again, back in the visual arts space, after that Fake Art Harms Culture campaign, there was a federal parliamentary inquiry into the inauthentic style art products. The committee heard from a number of different Indigenous artists and communities, art centres, galleries. The recommendations that came out of that report was that there should be a new law in Australia to protect Indigenous Cultural IP as well. And so, these are just some examples of statements from different bits of the different inquiries that have come out back in 2018, the parliamentary inquiry. One of the recommendations out of that parliamentary inquiry was to have the Productivity Commission do an investigation into the inauthentic art products. There was a report from there, the Productivity Commission, and they also recommended that new laws be introduced.
And way back in 2007, when I was a baby lawyer at the Art Law Centre, there was a Senate inquiry into the unethical dealings of Indigenous art, and you see examples in the past of dealers or galleries taking advantage of artists and not paying them properly as well, so that was that Senate inquiry. But even back then, in 2007, there were calls for this new Indigenous Cultural IP law in Australia as well. So fast-forward to January 2023, the National Cultural Policy through the department that I'm working with, Office for the Arts, Minister Burke is the minister they work to. He published the Revive, the National Cultural Policy, and there are five pillars in the National Cultural Policy. The first pillar is First Nations first, and so under that pillar, there was the Australian government commitment to create the new laws in Australia to protect traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions and also look at the harm caused by fake art merchandise and souvenirs. So that was a really amazing step for government.
I've been in this department for two years. I've come in and set up a new team. My team is kind of all over the country, which is really great. I'm based in Sydney, not Canberra, but we have that commitment from government. We also have the funding until July 2027 to work on this legislation and look at the two types of laws, potentially a specific law to deal with the fake art issues, the imports that are coming in from overseas, as well as a broader Indigenous cultural law in Australia. So I have a team of about six of us across the country, and the work that we do sort of divided up into legislative measures and non-legislative measures because community have said that they want to have the legislation there as well. But people also want to learn more about Indigenous Cultural IP and have better understanding about what their rights are as community members.
So as part of the budget, there's also funding for educational and marketing materials around encouraging buyers to buy authentic Indigenous art. And then, we also have a very small grants funding programme that looks at providing training and mentoring opportunities for First Nations artists and also arts workers. Funding has gone to the Arts Law Centre of Australia, which is that community legal centre that provides free legal advice to artists and organisations, and they're looking at mechanisms to deter, respond to fraudulent, unethical dealings around ICIP and the fake art issues as well. But last year, as part of our work as well around the educational engagement work, we started off with a national consultation programme, and we went to 38 locations across the country. So we did come to a number of different cities and towns in Victoria, and it was a real mix of that sort of regional remote and urban locations.
We had about 240 participants to the sessions, which was really great to see, and a real mix of Elders and artists and cultural practitioners, but also other academics and lawyers and interested parties in this area. On our website, we have a copy of the consultation report, but there was a lot of support for banning fake Indigenous art, also looking at enforcement measures, what might that look like. People also talked about AI issues and how that relates and intersects with Indigenous Cultural IP as well with a lot of the fake images being created through AI as well, for example. People talked about better educational or more educational resources to better understand Indigenous Cultural IP, but also to understand other intellectual property laws like your copyright and patents and trademarks, for example.
They wanted to see with the Indigenous Cultural IP legislation a broad scope of subject matter covered in the legislation, so all the different elements that I talked about in the beginning around Indigenous Cultural IP and also including language, so how do you actually go about protecting people using language words, for example. So it was really positive to be part of that process as well. But also, a big part of our work under Closing the Gap is to collaborate and partner with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experts as well. So we have a eight-person working group that we actually meet with online once a month, and we meet with them once a year in person as well.
As you can imagine, Dr. Terri Janke is the chair of this expert working group, but we have a number of different experts from across the country who provide expertise in the different areas they work in like Dr. Alana Gall, for example, is a Palawa woman based now in South Coast, New South Wales, but works in the traditional medicines space and bush foods space, which is really great. Aurora Milroy is from the Pilbara in Western Australia and works in the cultural heritage native title space as well, so a really good mix of different experiences on the panel as well. So they work with us and they provide us advice on the development of the legislation as well.
We also, I should mention, work across government, across federal government as well to make sure that we have input from other government departments that are also working in the ICIP space as well. There's quite a few committees that we sit on and co-chair and chair. So we have one interagency meeting once a month with IP Australia that regulate all the intellectual property laws in Australia, the National Indigenous Australian Agency, as you can imagine, and also the Attorney-General Department that manages and looks after copyright and AI. And then, we have a interdepartmental committee meeting sort of quarterly, and that has a number about 11 government departments across the federal level, including the Federal Department of Agriculture. We sort of meet and give them an update on where we're at with the legislation, and they also give input into different ICIP issues they're working on and experiences as well. IP Australia had set up a couple of years ago sort of pre-COVID a Indigenous Knowledge-
Speaker 3: Excuse me, Trish. Sorry.
Patricia Adjei: Yes.
Speaker 3: Do you want to just move the title?
Patricia Adjei: Oh, yeah, sure.
Speaker 3: Again, thank you.
Patricia Adjei: Yep. Yeah, so IP Australia also have the Indigenous Knowledge Working Group that we sit on and co-chair. That's actually quite a good working group that Agriculture Victoria could be part of because there are state and territory bodies agencies that sit on that working group as well. And again, that's normally twice a year. That group meets online and talks through issues as well. But I thought I'd also flag... While we're doing this work around legislative development in Australia, there's also a number of different laws that we look to overseas and regionally and at home that deal with protecting and providing particular rights around Indigenous Cultural IP. You may have heard of the Victorian Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act that actually Dr. Terri Janke works with the Victorian government on developing, and that looks to protect intangible, tangible, Victorian Indigenous cultural heritage.
We also see in South Africa. Back in 2019, they actually implemented their Protection, Promotion, Development and Management of Indigenous Knowledge Act as well that looks to protect the more traditional knowledge aspects of Indigenous South African culture and knowledge. We see also in Panama. Back in 2000, they introduced very early on actually the special collective rights of Indigenous peoples law that looks to protect the Indigenous Cultural IP of the different Indigenous communities in Panama as well. The US has a particular act called the Indian Arts and Craft Act, which sort of goes more to the consumer side protection type law, which means that if sellers are selling Native American art products, the artist has to be a Native American person from a recognised Native American tribe, and the seller is able to label the products made by a Native American person. Otherwise, if it's made by non-Indigenous person, they can be fined as well under that act.
And then, way back in 2002, the World Intellectual Property Organisation worked with the Pacific Body SPC, Secretariat of Pacific Communities, to develop a regional framework for Pacific Islander countries that have traditional knowledge and what used to be called expressions of culture, which is now traditional cultural expression to develop their own laws in their own countries. And so, the Cook Islands back in 2013 introduced the Traditional Knowledge Act as well, so we look at some of these frameworks and acts to better learn how we can deal with the scope of the legislation and what the rights could be, for example, and how you go about consent and so on. But I'll just flag some of the Indigenous protocols that have been drafted mainly by Dr. Terri Janke in the art space. You've got Creative Australia's protocols, the film funding body. There's the pathways protocols. Terri worked also with the Victorian Traditional Owners Corporation to develop the Native Food and Botanicals Protocol.
And of course, in many of her protocols, she uses her True Tracks framework, which is 10 principles, which sort of guide users on how to ethically and respectfully engage with communities, get consent from communities for the use of their Indigenous Cultural IP, but also to share any benefits like royalties or fees for consultation fees or for the use of that knowledge through maybe a licencing agreement as well. And then, just before I get to the WIPO slides, I just thought I'd mention some work that's happening in the AI space, which seems to be quite a hot topic at the moment. So at the federal level, there's two government departments that are looking at these issues. The Department of Industry and Science is looking at the ethical sourcing of AI. And so, there's a committee looking at issues in that space, and there's that kind of intersection with Indigenous Cultural IP content being used to develop AI as well.
And then, Attorney-General's Department have their copyright and AI team as well, and there's a reference group with different industry bodies that sit on that that, again, look at the issues around ICIP being copied in the sort of AI data as well. So there's been sort of discussions last year and this year around what could be done. Could there be statutory licencing, for example, introduced where developers have to pay a licencing fee for the use of content being scraped, or would there be guardrails? So this is a new sort of space that the law is always... I mean, the law's always trying to keep up with digital technological changes, but we see also overseas. Again, there are other examples that we can look to. So the European Union has an AI act. Brazil is also developing an AI act, and there were draught Kenyan AI guidelines as well. But you can have a look at DISR and AGD's websites for more information about AI.
And then, just lastly, there's been a lot of work happening in this space in the World Intellectual Property Organisation, which is a United Nations specialised agency that manages and regulates international IP laws. It's one of the biggest agencies after the United Nations because they have a really big patent department that collects all the international patent fees. So actually, it has the biggest budget after the United Nations because of all those patent fees and trademark fees as well. So there's a particular division, the Traditional Knowledge Division, that was set up back in 2000, I think it was, that has a number of different capacity building programmes for countries where they might be wanting to introduce new legislation to protect Indigenous knowledge, or they might be wanting to work with Indigenous communities in their own countries.
Another big part of their work is the international treaty development work, so they act as secretariat for the Intergovernmental Committee, which was set up again in 2001, that is looking at introducing three new treaties in this space. This committee meets three to four times a year to discuss the new potential international laws on protection of traditional cultural expressions and traditional knowledge. And last year, we had a really, really big win. There was a diplomatic conference, which is when they finalise a treaty. So back in May last year, a treaty was finalised to disclose full disclosure of traditional knowledge and genetic resources, which is really exciting because it's the first time any intellectual property treaty has included the rights of Indigenous peoples as well. And so, in this committee, it's made up of WIPO member states. So the Australian government attends, normally represented by IP Australia and Department of Foreign Affairs. I normally go once a year from the Office for the Arts, but there's also Indigenous representatives that are there, and they're very vocal about how their rights should be protected under these new treaties as well.
And then, there are other non-government organisations that participate as well. So this treaty was adopted last year. It was a massive effort by the committee. It was a two-week diplomatic conference. As you can imagine, we were there all day, all night discussing the issues, the objectives, the rights' holders, what would be in this treaty, and it was finally adopted on the second last day of the two-week programme. So it was very emotional, it was very exciting, and it was really great to be there. Our First Nations ambassador, Justin Mohamed, was also there with the Australian ambassador to Geneva, James Baxter, as well. So there were lots of ambassadors from around the world who normally attend these diplomatic conferences because you don't normally... It takes decades to finalise a treaty, so it's very exciting, but you have the last couple of days a lot of diplomatic behind-the-scenes meetings going on so that you could get the treaty finalised, so we finally got there in the end.
But yeah, the objectives of the treaty are to look at really providing transparency to the patent system in relation to genetic resources and traditional knowledge. So that kind of pharmaceutical side of intellectual property law where in the past, a lot of patents have actually been based off Indigenous people's knowledge in traditional medicines or traditional plants and foods have been used to create new types of drugs or medicines, and none of those benefits have gone back to communities, and there hasn't been any consent or attribution with those communities as well. So that's really the premise of this new treaty, to prevent also patents being sort of granted or registered for inventions that aren't actually novel because they're based off Indigenous knowledge or Indigenous type of plant material as well. So this is just the kind of technical, an example of Article 3 in the treaty that talks about... Well, if applicants are going to register for a patent in a country, they will have to disclose where that actual genetic resource, so that plants or that medicine or bush food has come from and if it has any Indigenous knowledge associated with it as well.
And so, just lastly, I'll mention something that's again happening here in Australia through our Department of Foreign Affairs in partnership cooperation with the World Industrial Property Organisation. This started the end of last year, the Bushfoods Pilot, and will end in a couple of months actually this year. The project was really set up to identify and address practical intellectual property challenges faced by Indigenous businesses or First Nations businesses in Australia when considering exporting bush foods. And so, as part of this pilot three Indigenous businesses, I think they're mostly from Western Australia actually, were selected, and they are looking at exporting bush foods. They're all at different levels of their business.
WIPO also engaged Indigenous academic Dr. Miri Raven, who's a scientist, and also Professor Daniel Robinson from UNSW, I think they're both at UNSW, as experts to lead this programme and work with the businesses to develop some resources in this space, so educational resources around how you protect Indigenous bush foods, so looking at potential, what's called, geographic indicators. So champagne, for example, is a geographic indicator from the Champagne region in France. So there's a particular way that your wine makers are able to use that geographic indicator when they're developing their wine. The grapes has to be grown in that region. And so, looking at a similar type of approach here in Australia, we do have geographic indicators that IP Australia manage and regulate, but we normally have what's called a certification mark. So whether Kakadu plum, for example, could have a regional certification mark for particular Indigenous businesses and communities that are growing Kakadu plum a certain way in a certain region and protect that product and that bush food as well.
This project is, again, to bring together those businesses and training workshops and also to work with other agencies, to talk through these issues so that they're more informed about their rights and how they might export their bush food products as well. They also have mentoring opportunities through this work, but there will be new educational, intellectual property law resources that will come out of this project as well, and they'll be public for everybody to see.
So that's a really quick overview of Indigenous Cultural IP, the work that we're doing Office for the Arts. I've got our website up here if you want to have a look at what we're doing. We also have a icip@arts.gov.au email, so if anyone's interested or if there are people who want to know more about it, they can email us and just a copy of the National Cultural Policy-Revive, which is on our website, Office for the Arts, as well. But thank you for inviting me to present today. Thanks, Trevor.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Patricia, and thanks everyone for bearing with us as we dealt with the technology challenges, and well done, Patricia, with persevering. We've all been when the tech doesn't cooperate. As Patricia said, she'll provide the slides through, and we'll circulate them after the session. So if there's anything people couldn't quite see, you can kind of peruse as you wish. The Q&A is open, so I encourage everyone to pop some questions in. We do have a couple of questions in the chat, and I'll just note I certainly learn a lot there, Patricia. Thanks so much. It's obviously a really emerging area of attention internationally, so thanks so much for sharing your perspectives and some great people involved. I know Dr. Terri Janke has done some work for Agriculture Victoria-
Patricia Adjei: Oh, great.
Speaker 3: ... a couple of years ago, looking at overlap between Indigenous knowledge and biosecurity, which was fantastic work. So great to see some other aspects of the work she's involved in. So one of the questions we've got here comes from one of AgVic staff member Nick, who's asked, "What can the agriculture sector and [inaudible 00:43:46] Victoria do to ensure that traditional knowledge about things like plants, land management, seed systems, and breeding is acknowledged and not exploited by researchers and businesses without fair benefit sharing? This is especially an issue in agricultural research, biodiversity use, and seed plant commercialisation."
Patricia Adjei: Yeah, great question. I guess I'll just talk about there is also some work while this legislation is being developed. We are leading the work in the kind of art space, I guess, but you know how I mentioned the experts that we're working with? They have differing areas of expertise, and they have said that while we're focusing first on the visual arts space, they want to continue the discussions around developing law that will address issues in the more ecological medicinal knowledge area. So I guess watch this space around how the legislation develops to give those rights to communities. But while we're waiting for the legislation to develop, CSIRO also have Indigenous cultural protocols that they, again, worked with Dr. Terri Janke on developing that could also be a good resource for providing that educational piece to researchers and companies who are using traditional knowledge and plants and seeds to encourage better consultation and consent and encourage benefit sharing as well.
I think with the CSIRO ICIP policy, there might be some examples of templates as well that researchers and companies can use on how they actually go about doing that. I'm not sure if any kind of benefit sharing-type agreements have been established just yet in that space, but I can definitely find out. I can have a talk to IP Australia. IP Australia is a really good agency also to talk to about this space because they have an Indigenous knowledge team as well that have their own Indigenous knowledge panel, so I can talk to them and see what sort of resources are out there that you could give to researchers and companies as well. There's also, AIATSIS have their Indigenous research guidelines that are a good resource to give to people as well, but I think while the legislation is being developed, it's really that sort of educational work and encouraging users to engage with those resources to have a better understanding of how to protect ICIP in this country.
Trevor Pisciott...: Great. Thank you. We've got another one. It's just a request if we could share the, I think, the website you had on that last slide, if we could share the link in the chat, so we'll try to do that.
Patricia Adjei: Oh, yeah. Sure.
Trevor Pisciott...: Thanks. Thanks, Patricia. Another one, I've got a question about whether, and it's again kind of on the pharmaceuticals and supplements sector, and whether you think that the people who are involved in that sector have done sufficient cultural safety training and really engaged with these issues in a meaningful way, or there's a bit more work to be done.
Patricia Adjei: I think in the pharmaceutical industry... I mean, I don't work that closely with that industry, so I would be sort of guessing mostly. But again, I guess talking with IP Australia, with the patent office, and with CSIRO, again, CSIRO has an Indigenous unit as well, and they would be interesting to talk to about this issue, but I think what we see in the past, before the WIPO Treaty was developed, that pharmaceutical companies, they're just there really to make money off their patents and don't really understand how to engage with communities or maybe don't want to engage with communities. They really just want to get their patent registered and make money off their new medicine or drug or whatever it is. So I think there's still a lot of work that needs to be done in this space.
At, again, the UN level, there's also the World Health Organisation has their traditional knowledge and traditional medicines unit as well that is looking at... They're actually working with an NGO and looking to set up an Indigenous advisory committee to support work in this space as well. So there's a lot of, I guess, educational work that has to be done, but there are a lot of agencies here in Australia that are sort of developing ICIP protocols while we wait for the laws to be developed. And then, at that UN level, particularly because we have already the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, so a lot of the UN agencies actually are supposed to follow the principles from that declaration because it's rights that Indigenous peoples have been asking for, and it's an instrument that all UN agencies should be adhering to. So yeah, there's lots of different levels, I guess, of work that's happening. But yeah, there's always more education that is needed in this area.
Trevor Pisciott...: Thank you. Thanks so much. I think we've actually gotten through all of the questions, which is fantastic. So thank you.
Patricia Adjei: Great.
Trevor Pisciott...: Thanks everyone for your questions. Thank you so much to Patricia for sharing her expertise and her insights into the world of Indigenous intellectual and cultural property. I think in particular, it's been really useful both to understand the broad suite of work that's underway right across Australia and internationally in relation to this issue, but also for us here in AgVic and some of our stakeholders to hone in on the particular relevance. And thanks for the pointers, Patricia, of where we can go to find out more, and we'll certainly dig into that. To our online audience today, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed the session, and I'm sure you've learned a lot, and we've got some positive comments in the Q&A, which are always really, really lovely to see.
We hope you take away this information to help you in your work and support the collective enabling of First Nations self-determination now and into the future. Lastly, to find out more information about future barpangu yurpangu Speaker sessions, please have a look on the AgVic website. We've got future sessions coming up, which we would love for you to join us at. So thanks so much everyone for your attendance today. Thanks so much, Patricia, for your time and sharing your insights and knowledge. We appreciate it greatly. So thanks everyone. Have a great rest of your day. Enjoy your weekend when you get to it. Take care.
Patricia Adjei: Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Trevor. Bye.
Trevor Pisciott...: Bye.