Indigenous Knowledge Management: Software Tools, Rights Markup Extensions, and the Role of ICTs

This post is a Jane Hunter trifecta. Dr. Hunter is currently a Professorial Research Fellow & Leader of the eResearch Lab at The University of Queensland’s School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering.

Software Tools for Indigenous Knowledge Management (2002)

by Jane Hunter, Bevan Koopman, Jane Sledge

Indigenous communities are beginning to realize the potential benefits which digital technologies can offer with regard to the documentation and preservation of their histories and cultures. However they are also coming to understand the opportunities for misuse and misappropriation of their knowledge which may accompany digitization. In this paper we describe a set of open source software tools which have been designed to enable indigenous communities to protect unique cultural knowledge and materials which have been preserved through digitization. The software tools described here enable authorized members of communities to: define and control the rights, accessibility and reuse of their digital resources; uphold traditional laws pertaining to secret/sacred knowledge or objects; prevent the misuse of indigenous heritage in culturally inappropriate or insensitive ways; ensure proper attribution to the traditional owners; and enable indigenous communities to describe their resources in their own words. Hopefully the deployment of such tools will contribute to the self-determination and empowerment of indigenous communities through the revitalization of their cultures and knowledge which have been eroded by colonization, western laws, western cultures and globalization.

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Rights Markup Extensions for the Protection of Indigenous Knowledge (2002)

by Jane Hunter

Indigenous cultures have experienced a renaissance over the past 5-10 years as indigenous communities have recognized the importance of documenting and sharing their cultural heritage and history. This has coincided with the explosion of the internet and the widespread application of multimedia technologies to the construction of large online cultural collections. Together these developments have triggered a demand for copyright protection mechanisms. A number of XML-based markup languages (XrML, ODRL) have been developed to support the expression of rights asssociated with the intellectual property of resources. The MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework standard being developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) aims to standardize such a language to enable the management and protection of intellectual property associated with multimedia content.

However it has been widely recognized that modern intellectual property laws, which are rapidly assuming global uniformity, fail to protect indigenous knowledge adequately or to support traditional or customary laws governing rights over indigenous knowledge. This paper considers some of the requirements for the protection of indigenous knowledge and the enforcement of tribal customary laws associated with knowledge, which have been expressed by Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. It assesses the ability of the two major XML-based rights markup languages (XrML and ODRL) to satisfy these requirements and suggests extensions to these languages to improve their support for indigenous knowledge protection. The aim of this paper is to provide a starting point which will encourage input, feedback and suggestions from indigenous communities. This will enable a clearer understanding of their diverse requirements with respect to the protection of intellectual property and traditional knowledge and the development of a satisfactory solution through future collaboration and consultation.

Given a standardized machine-understandable representation of rights information, the utopian dream of trusted systems – automated rights enforcement and secure transactions involving both indigenous and non-indigenous resources – moves one step closer. But more importantly, the recognition of customary law and the rights of indigenous cultures within such systems, will lead to greater cross-cultural understanding, respect and tolerance and the promotion of indigenous social, cultural and economic development.

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The Role of Information Technologies in Indigenous Knowledge Management (2006)

by Jane Hunter

Increasingly, communities and organisations around the world are realising the value and significance of Indigenous Knowledge and the importance of preserving it for future generations. Indigenous Knowledge Centres (IKCs) are being established globally, but particularly in Australia, Africa, Latin America and Asia. The capture and preservation of Indigenous Knowledge is being used to revitalise endangered cultures, improve the economic independence and sustainability of Indigenous communities and to increase community-based involvement in planning and development. In parallel with the increasing recognition of the value and relevance of Indigenous Knowledge to today’s world and the need to preserve it, is recognition of the role that Information Technologies (IT) can play in its capture, management and dissemination. This chapter provides an overview of the current state of IT tools, services, and projects relevant to Indigenous Knowledge management. In particular it describes information technology tools being developed at DSTC (in consultation with numerous Indigenous and cultural organisations) that have been designed to enable Indigenous communities to capture, control and share their knowledge within local knowledge bases according to their unique, specific local needs. Finally this chapter identifies unresolved issues that will require further collaborative research and development and cooperation between Indigenous communities, researchers and software developers.

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The Author

Jane Hunter is Director of the eResearch Lab at the University of Queensland where she leads a team of Post-docs, PhD students and software engineers developing innovative software services for managing digital collections for the cultural, education and scientific domains. Her expertise is in semantic markup and interoperable annotations to facilitate the virtual integration of distributed online collections via the Semantic Web and Linked Open Data. She is currently a CI on: the Mellon-funded Open Annotations Collaboration project; the ARC-funded 20th century Painting Conservation Knowledgebase project; the Aus-e-Lit project; and the ‘Semantic Annotations for 3D Museum Artefacts’ project. She is also the manager of 6 ANDS (Australian National Data Services) based at the University of Qld. She has published over 90 peer-reviewed publications, many on the application of semantic web technologies to collections and datasets in libraries, archives and museums. She was the chair of JCDL/ICADL 2010 and is also deputy chair of the Australian Academy of Sciences Committee for Data in Science and represented Australia at the recent CODATA conference. [source]

For more information about Dr. Hunter, please visit her University of Queensland faculty page


Mark Oppenneer

Contributed by Mark Oppenneer

Mark is an independent researcher whose interests include culture and development, ICT4D, oral traditions, indigenous knowledge, technology, online communities, human computer interaction and interface design. He holds an MS in Communication & Rhetoric and an MALS in Mythology & Oral Traditions.  Read more...

Filed under the categories "Publication: Article / Paper" on January 22nd, 2012

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