INDIGENOUS 'INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY': A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

This study investigates the reasons that prevent the application of Intellectual Property constructs to Indigenous normative regimes governing sacred knowledge. The research specifically concerns Yolngu people of North-East Arnhem Land (Northern Territory, Australia) norms managing the production and exhange of traditional artworks. What is argued is that Western Property law is unable to conceive the "interconnected" and "cosmological" dimension of Indigenous knowledge, since it cannot adequately conceptualize the relationship between Indigenous people and their land. The first part of the study shows how the notion of "land/real property" (as conceived and developed in Western law and legal philosophy) produces both a "dephisicalization" of land, and an ontological partition between humans and the place they inhabit. The second part of the study describes Yolngu way of conceiving land, particularly focusing on the way in which land is "connected" both to people and sacred artworks. Such connection, as it is shown, is mainly implied by the vision of land as a "physical-cosmological continuum". The last part of the thesis shows how Yolngu have tried to translate their vision of artworks into the Intellectual Property lexicon.