Aboriginal Art and Identity: Crossing the Border of Law's Imagination

Journal of Political Philosophy

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 20-40

  Coleman, Elizabeth Burns ^a  

^a AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 1342287061     PISSN: 09638016     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2004.00189.x     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. Where I use the term 'indigenous' I mean indigenous peoples in general. By the term 'Aboriginal' I am referring to Australian Aboriginal peoples.
2. Cited in Richard Handler, 'Who owns the past? History, cultural property, and the logic of possessive individualism', The Politics of Culture, ed. Bret Williams (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1991), p. 67.
3. Ibid., p. 68.
4. Producers C. Eatock and K. Mordaunt (Australian Film Finance Corporation Ltd, 1997).
5. I b i d.
6. John Bulan Bulan & Anor v. R & T Textiles Pty Ltd [1998] 1082 FCA (3 September 1998).
7. I b i d.
8. T. Janke, Our Culture, Our Future: Proposals for the Recognition and Protection of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 1997), pp. 41-2.
9. Rosemary J. Coombe, 'The properties of culture and the politics of possessing identity: native claims in the cultural appropriation controversy', Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, 6 (1993) 249-85 at p. 253. See also Michael E Brown, 'Can culture be copyrighted?' Current Anthropology, 39 (1998), 193-206 at p. 195.
10. Rosemary J. Coombe, 'The properties of culture and the politics of possessing identity: native claims in the cultural appropriation controversy', Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, 6 (1993) 249-85 at p. 253. See also Michael E Brown, 'Can culture be copyrighted?' Current Anthropology, 39 (1998), 193-206 at p. 195.
11. C. Kukathas, 'Are there any cultural rights?', Political Theory, 20 (1992) pp. 105-39.
12. J. Waldron, 'Minority cultures and the cosmopolitan, alternative', University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 25 (1992), 751-93.
13. M. Martin, 'What's in a painting? The cultural harm of unauthorised reproduction: Milpurrurru & Ors v. Indofurn Pty Ltd & Ors', Sydney Law Review, 17 (1995) 591-8 at p. 591.
14. For example, Amanda Pask, 'Cultural appropriation and the law: an analysis of the legal regimes concerning culture', Intellectual Property Journal, 8 (1993) pp. 57-86, see p. 64.
15. Coombe, op. cit., p. 270.
16. Dean A. Ellinson, 'Unauthorised reproduction of traditional Aboriginal art', University of New South Wales Law Journal, 17, #2 (1994) pp. 327-44.
17. Durkheim believed that the totems of Australian Aboriginal peoples and North American Indians were insignia. E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. J. W. Swain (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1965, originally published 1912), bk. 2, ch. 1, sec. 2, p. 134.
18. B. Sherman, 'From the non-original to the Ab-original: a history', Of Authors and Origins: Essays on Copyright Law, ed. B. Sherman and A. Strowel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 113.
19. Kamal Puri, 'Copyright protection of folklore: a New Zealand perspective', Copyright, 22 (1988), cited in Sherman, ibid., p. 121.
20. Kamal Puri, 'Copyright protection of folklore: a New Zealand perspective', Copyright, 22 (1988), cited in Sherman, ibid., p. 121.
21. V. Johnson, Copyrites: Aboriginal Art in the Age of Reproductive Technologies, Exhibition catalogue (Sydney: National Indigenous Arts Advocacy Association and Macquarie University, 1996), p. 13.
22. Sherman, 'From the non-original to the Ab-original: a history', p. 126 in Sherman and Strowel (eds), Of Authors and Origins.
23. This case is not reported and may have been settled out of court. See Nina Stevenson, 'Infringement of copyright in Aboriginal artworks', Aboriginal Law Bulletin, 17 (1985), 3; Johnson, Copyrites, pp. 15-16.
24. This case is not reported and may have been settled out of court. See Nina Stevenson, 'Infringement of copyright in Aboriginal artworks', Aboriginal Law Bulletin, 17 (1985), 3; Johnson, Copyrites, pp. 15-16.
25. Johnson, Copyrites, p. 15.
26. The same argument can be found in the case against Indofurn Pty Ltd, George Milpurrurua, Bunduk Marika, Tim Payunka and the Public Trustee for the Northern Territory v. Indofurn Pty Ltd, Brian Alexander Bethune, George Raymond King and Robert James Rylands (1994) 54 FRC 240 (1994) 130 ALR 659. Michael McMahon, the lawyer acting for the artists, stated in a forum on copyright and Aboriginal art that the adaptation of Lilipiyana's painting Wititj (olive python) included Lilipiyana's signature element of a split tail and that this element had been copied. Copyrites forum, The Art Gallery of New South Wales, 20 August 1996.
27. Howard Morphy, Aboriginal Art (London: Phaidon Press, 1998), pp. 145-80.
28. Johnson, Copyrites.
29. The author of an artistic work is the owner of the copyright by virtue of section 35(2), and according to von Doussa J, 'that provision precludes any notion of group ownership in an artistic work, unless the artistic work is a 'work of joint ownership' within the meaning of s. 10(1) of the Act. A 'work of joint authorship' means a work that has been produced by the collaboration of two or more authors and in which the contribution of each author is not separate from the contribution of the author or the contributions of the other authors.' John Bulan Bulan & Anor v. R & T Textiles Pty Ltd [1998] 1082 FCA (3 September 1998).
30. Janke, Our Culture, Our Future, p. 38.
31. Copyright Act 1968, sec. 33 (2). (Commonwealth of Australia).
32. Janke, Our Culture, Our Future, p. 42.
33. Copyright Act 1968, sec. 22 (1).
34. Although Walter v. Lane [1900] AC 539 showed that a person who transcribed an unfixed work could own copyright, it is questionable whether this remains the case. The Australian Copyright Council suggests that, 'A painting which portrays inherited ideas, such as traditional motifs from mythology and folklore, will be protected as long as the artist has presented or depicted the ideas in his or her own way'. Australian Copyright Council, Artists and Copyright, Bulletin, 68 (1989), p. 6.
35. Janke, Our Culture, Our Future, pp. 34, 41.
36. Ibid., p. 38.
37. Ibid., p. 34.
38. Zeccola v. United Studios Inc. (1982) 46 ALR 189 at 192.
39. P. Edwards, ed., Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 3; K. Grose, ed., Hamlet: Prince of Denmark (London: Blackie, 1969), p. ix.
40. P. Edwards, ed., Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 3; K. Grose, ed., Hamlet: Prince of Denmark (London: Blackie, 1969), p. ix.
41. R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945, originally published 1939), ch. 14, sec. 7, p. 320.
42. Sherman, B. 1994. 'From the non-original to the Ab-original: a history', p. 113 in Sherman and Strowel (eds), Of Authors and Origins.
43. S. Breyer, 'The uneasy case for copyright: a study of copyright in books, photocopies and computer programs', Harvard Law Review, 84 (1980), 281, cited in S. Ricketson, Intellectual Property: Cases, Materials and Commentary (Sydney: Butterworths, 1994), p. 78.
44. S. Breyer, 'The uneasy case for copyright: a study of copyright in books, photocopies and computer programs', Harvard Law Review, 84 (1980), 281, cited in S. Ricketson, Intellectual Property: Cases, Materials and Commentary (Sydney: Butterworths, 1994), p. 78.
45. M. Nelson, Sydney Biennale 1986, cited in F. R. Myers, 'Representing culture: the production of discourse(s) for Aboriginal acrylic paintings', The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, ed. G. E. Marcus and F. R. Myers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 89, n. 32.
46. M. Nelson, Sydney Biennale 1986, cited in F. R. Myers, 'Representing culture: the production of discourse(s) for Aboriginal acrylic paintings', The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, ed. G. E. Marcus and F. R. Myers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 89, n. 32.
47. This section of the paper draws upon observations I made in an earlier article, 'Aboriginal painting, identity and authenticity' in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59 (2001), 385-402.
48. Howard Morphy, Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 171.
49. Ibid., p. 153. Heraldic devices have rules called a blazon.
50. Courier Mail (8 February 1999), p. 3.
51. Margaret Clunies Ross and L. R. Hiatt, 'Sand sculptures at a Gidgingali burial rite', Form in Indigenous Art: Schematisation in the Art of Aboriginal and Prehistoric Europe, ed. Peter J. Uko (London: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1977), pp. 131-46 at p. 133.
52. Morphy, Ancestral Connections, p. 108.
53. Ibid., p. 80.
54. Ibid., see ch. 8.
55. Ibid., pp. 136-7.
56. Morphy, Aboriginal Art, pp. 255-8, see figures 171-3.
57. John G. Flemming, An Introduction to the Law of Torts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), pp. 69-72.
58. John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (London: Penguin, 1995), p. 41.
59. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for The Journal of Political Philosophy for raising this objection.
60. I would like to thank Peta Spender for raising this objection.
61. The fiction of corporate personality contains two (hotly contested) ideas: (i) that a corporation is an artificial entity, and (ii) that a corporation exists only through a grant of incorporation from a sovereign. See Gregory A. Mark, 'The personification of the business corporation in American law', University of Chicago Law Review, 54 (1987) pp. 1441-83, in particular p. 1447.
62. S. J. Stoljar, Groups and Entities (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1973), p. 33.
63. I b i d.
64. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for The Journal of Political Philosophy for raising this objection.
65. For instance, see the Business Names Act 1962, s. 20(a) (New South Wales).
66. House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, The Use of the Coat of Arms: Armed with National Pride (Australian Government Printing Service, 1994), pp. 25-34.
67. Ibid., p. 42.
68. Rodney Dennys, The Heraldic Imagination, (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1975), p. 63.
69. Cited in Dennys, ibid., p. 65.
70. House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, op. cit., p. 28.
71. Trade Marks Act 1995 (Commonwealth of Australia), sec. 6.
72. Application to USA Patents and Trade Marks Office dated 17 January 1994.
73. William Edge & Sons Ltd v. William Niccolls & Sons Ltd (1911) AC 693 (House of Lords) at 701-5.
74. Hogan v. Koala Dundee Pty Ltd (1988) 12 IPR 508 (Federal Court) at 510.
75. Andrew Hornery, 'Corporate Dreamtime collides with reality', Sydney Morning Herald, (20 March 2000), p. 1.
76. Trade Marks Act 1995 (Commonwealth of Australia), sec. 6(1).
77. Ellinson, op. cit., p. 338.
78. This paper has been several years in gestation. Versions of this paper have been presented to the Sydney Society for Literature and Aesthetics, and the School of Humanities, Australian National University. I would like to thank the participants at those seminars for their comments, many of which have been worked into the paper. I would also like to thank Robert E. Goodin, Brian Garrett, Larissa Behrendt, Peta Spender, Kevin White, Nicolas Peterson and two anonymous referees for The Journal of Political Philosophy for their suggestions, advice and encouragement at different stages of the drafting process.