Indigenous research, publishing, and intellectual property

American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 89-105

  Madsen, Kenneth D ^a,b  

^a Tohono O'odham Community College

^b OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 57249111680     PISSN: 01616463     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.17953/aicr.32.3.n077h22508621k40     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed (Chicago-University of Chicago Press, 1996). Although my focus here is generally on academic (non-Native) and Native (nonacademic) paradigms, these are not mutually exclusive categories.
2. For a more specific analysis of contrasting epistemologies at Native and non-Native academic institutions see Kindi Harala, Chery Smith, Craig Hassel, and Patricia Gailfus, "New Moccasins: Articulating Research Approaches through Interviews with Faculty and Staff at Native and Non-Native Academic Institutions," Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 37 (2005): 67-76.
3. This terminology is frequendy used in reference to land and legal tenure as well as in reference to validating geographical continuity. Used less often in casual conversation, it was common in the campaign for US citizenship among Tohono O odham on both sides of the border at the turn of the millennium. See Guadalupe Castillo and Margo Cowan, It's Not OurFault - The Case for Amending Present Nationality Law to Make All Members of the Tohono O'odham Nation United States Citizens, Now and Forever (Sells, AZ: Tohono O'odham Nation, Executive Branch, 2001), 9
4. Heard among other Natives in such contexts as well, this phrase may have become widespread at the time of the Indian Claims Commission hearings, see Indian Claims Commission, The Papago Tribe of Arizona v. United States of America: Findings of Fact" (1968) reprinted in Papago Indians III, ed. D. A. Horr (New York: Garland Publishing 1974)' 261, 266.
5. Also refer to Robert A. Manners, "The Indian Claims Commission," in Papago Indians I, ed. D. A. Horr (New York: Garland Publishing, 1974), 19.
6. Like many academics who work with Native groups, my Indigenous research experience is based largely on my time among a single tribe rather than a broad spectrum of Native groups. It is, however, situated in an understanding of greater Native issues, and I have some limited experience with neighboring Arizona and Mexican groups. Several members of the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers also shared their experiences with me on the topic of publishing and intellectual property vis-à-vis other Native groups through an informal survey. Nonetheless, this article is primarily a case study and is based on personal experience illustrating alternative perspectives on intellectual property and publishing and promoting an overall philosophy of cooperation and sensitivity. Because I lack a close working relationship with other tribes, I do not take on the role of judging the appropriateness of the research of others. References made to what I view as positive aspects of the research of others should be interpreted narrowly radier than as an overall endorsement of a given work.
7. Kenneth D. Madsen, A Nation across Nations: The Tohono O'odham and the U.S.-Mexico Border (PhD diss., Arizona State University, 2005);
8. Kenneth D. Madsen, "Local Impacts of the Balloon Effect of Border Law Enforcement," Geopolitics 12 (2007): 280-98.
9. Some ideas developed in this essay for broader application in academia are also recommended in the more plentiful context of advising potential and current scholars of Native topics in terms of what to do or not to do. E.g., see National Museum of the American Indian, "Conducting Research in Indigenous Settings: Guidelines for Ethical, Appropriate and Successful Methodologies" (draft, Washington, DC) ; Devon A. Mihesuah, "Suggested Guidelines for Institutions with Scholars Who Conduct Research on American Indians," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 17, no. 3 (1993): 131-39;
10. Marianne O. Nielsen and Larry A Gould, "Non-Native Scholars Doing Research in Native American Communities: A Matter of Respect," The Social Science Journal 44 (2007): 420-33;
11. Suzanne Christopher, "Recommendations for Conducting Successful Research with Native Americans," Journal of Cancer Education 20 (2005): 47-51.
12. For a previous discussion on this see Michelle S. Rasmus, "Repatriating Words: Local Knowledge in a Global Context," American Indian Quarterly 26 (2002): 286-307.
13. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (New York: Zed Books, 1999), 1.
14. Luke E. Lassiter, The Power of Kiowa Song: A Collaborative Ethnography (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998).
15. Theodore Rios and Kathleen Mullen Sands, Telling a Good One: The Process of a Native American Collaborative Biography (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000).
16. Craig Storti, The Art of Crossing Cultures (Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 1990), 78.
17. In large part I owe inspiration to rephrase these words to interactions with my colleagues at Tohono O'odham Community College as we have engaged in selfreflection as to whether our mission should include fitting Himdag (culture) into the college (therefore prioritizing traditional academia), higher education into Himdag (therefore prioritizing Himdag), or an equal integration of the two. Our formal mission statement places emphasis on the second option, although there is room for interpretation and discussion of specific processes, see Tohono O'odham Community College, Tohono O'odham Kekel Ha-mascamakud (Tohono O'odham Community College): College Catalog 2006-2008 (Sells, AZ: Tohono O'odham Community College, 2006), 6-7.
18. For a work utilizing the term indigenizing with the scholarly goal of empowering Native people and making scholarship useful to tribal communities see Devon Abbott Mihesuah and Angela Cavender Wilson, eds., Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004).
19. More closely related to my goals here and in reference to increasing recognition of Native approaches to science, Gregory Cajete has stated that This kind of indigenous science education isn't just for indigenous people. It's for everyone, and it must become part of science education in the 21st century. Indigenous science education has the kind of meaning and context necessary to address the problems of the 21st century, including our relationships to the earth and to each other, the ability to understand and deal with "other." We are just at the very beginning of seeing how these two ways-indigenous and Western science-can come together to make a new world. These words were spoken at a 2003 meeting sponsored by the Directorate for Education and Human Services Programs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and cited in Lori Lambert, "From 'Savages' to Scientists: Mainstream Science Moves Toward Recognizing Traditional Knowledge," Tribal College Journal of Higher Education 15 (2003): 12.
20. For further discussion refer to Gregory Cajete, Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education (Skyland, NC: Kivaki Press, 1997);
21. Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 2000).
22. Lasdy, for a brief commentary on what Native ideas can offer to the rest of society, see Marjane Ambler, "Indigenizing Our Future: Listening to Indian Voices Will Help Us Face the Challenges Ahead" (Editor's Essay), Tribal College Journal of Higher Education 15 (2003) : 8-9.
23. The term research subject reflects a traditional and less-inclusive approach to academic research dian that to which I aspire, but I use the term here both as a generic term derived from IRB lingo such as human subjects and to confront academia's essential relationship with Native people as often seen from their perspective.
24. For an example of an attempt to build a more equitable power-sharing research arrangement, see Jennifer S. Arnold and Maria Fernandez-Gimenez, "Building Social Capital through Participatory Research: An Analysis of Collaboration on Tohono O'odham Tribal Rangelands in Arizona," Society and Natural Resources 20 (2007): 481-95.
25. Donald L. Fixico, "Ethics and Responsibilities in Writing American Indian History," in Natives and Academics: Researching and Writing about American Indians, ed. D. A. Mihesuah (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 91.
26. For my own experience in this regard see Madsen, A Nation across Nations, 29-36.
27. For a brief summary of other contexts see Mihesuah, introduction in Natives and Academics, 11.
28. Tohono O'odham Community College, College Catalog 2006-2008, 2.
29. For the perspective of one andiropologist see Rasmus, "Repatriating Words," 286-307. Her opening paragraph begins, "My name is Michelle, and I am an Andiropologist. It has taken a while for me to be able to say that without all the feelings of guilt and shame that often come with this particular academic orientation. Why the guilt and shame? It is because my involvement with Native peoples long preceded my involvement with anthropology, and I had seen and learned of the negative legacy that many andiropologists left in their wake."
30. For a cosmological view of this dichotomy's possible origins, see Thomas E. Sheridan, Landscapes of Fraud: Mission Tumacácori, the Baca Float, and the Betrayal of the O'odham (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006), 8, 79-80.
31. For a discussion of an integrated view of traditional service reformulated as a "scholarship of application" see Ernest L. Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990), 21-23.
32. In this sense the phrase "publish or perish" is used in the context of knowledge perishing if one does not publish it for posterity. From a Native perspective this can also be an unwelcome paternalistic assumption incongruous with their own take on their lives and culture.
33. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 3.
34. Paul Rubin, "Indian Givers: The Havasupai Trusted the White Man to Help with a Diabetes Epidemic. Instead, ASU Tricked Them into Bleeding for Academia," Phoenix New Times, 27 May 2004, 20.
35. For an elaboration on the ideas in this paragraph, see Michael F. Brown, Who Owns Native Culture? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
36. For an excellent discussion of the importance of such measures within American Indian studies see Cheryl Metoyer-Duran, "The American Indian Culture and Research Journal and the American Indian Quarterly: A Citation Analysis," American Indian Culture and Research Journal 17, no. 4 (1993): 25-54.
37. David Fazzino, Report to the Tohono O'odham Nation: Traditional Foods on the Tohono O 'odham Nation with Focus on San Lucy (unpublished manuscript, 2007) ;
38. David V. Fazzino II, Traditional Food Security: Tohono O'odham Traditional Foods in Transition (PhD diss., University of Florida, 2008).
39. Tohono O'odham Legislative Council, Resolution of the Tohono O'odham Legislative Council (acceptance and approval of Mr. David Fazzino's report entided Traditional Foods on the Tohono O'odham Nation with Focus on San Lucy) (Sells, AZ), Resolution No. 07-669, 10 October 2007.
40. I previously wrote about this topic in regard to books that had been recognized by the Association of American Geographers as having appeal to the educated lay public. See Kenneth D. Madsen, "Writing for Nongeographers: Lessons from the J. B. Jackson Prize," The Geographical Review 92 (2002): 63-72. To put this in another context, how many of us can say that we can get a passing grade on the mother-in-law test when describing our research? For that matter, how well can we provide not just a superficial description but also the essence and understanding of our work to a colleague in a different subspecialty?
41. Michael F. Brown and Margaret M. Bruchac, "NAGPRA from the Middle Distance," in Imperialism, Art and Restitution, ed. John Henry Merryman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 217.
42. Ibid., 216.
43. E.g., Donald M. Bahr, Juan Gregorio, David I. Lopez, and Albert Alvarez, Piman Shamanish and Staying Sickness (Kácim Múmkidag) (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1974);
44. David Kozak and Camillus Lopez, "The Tohono O'odham Shrine Complex: Memorializing the Locations of Violent Death," New York Folklife XVII (1991): 1-20;
45. David L. Kozak and David I. Lopez, Devil Sickness and Devil Songs: Tohono O'odham Poetics (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999);
46. Rios and Sands, Telling a Good One.
47. Although Lassiter does not list a coauthor on the cover, he provides an excellent example of collaboration among the Kiowa, see The Power of Kiowa Song.
48. For a discussion of concerns about biographies coaudiored with Natives, see Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, "American Indian Intellectualism and the New Indian Story," in Mihesuah, Natives and Academics, 119-24.
49. L. Lopez, C. Doherty, A. Spears, K. D. Madsen, and T.Joaquin, "Geographers, Andiropologists, and Tribes: Varying Perspectives on Tohono O'odham Border Research," Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Philadelphia, 18 March 2004.
50. For a bringing together of Hopis and academics widi emphasis on tribal policy implications see Armin W. Geertz, "Contemporary Problems in the Study of Native North American Religions with Special Reference to the Hopis," American Indian Quarterly 20 (1996): 393-414.
51. Madsen, A Nation among Nations, i;
52. see also Fazzino, Report to the Tohono O'odham Nation, 1.
53. In at least one article in the American Indian Quarterly, interview excerpts have been copyrighted to a tribal agency. See Rasmus, "Repatriating Words," 286-307. The copyright for the article as a whole, however, remained with the University of Nebraska Press.
54. ProQuest is the holder of the University Microfilms International collection.
55. Rios and Sands, Telling a Good One, 252-53, 264, 340n24. In this case, royalties were directed to a tribal scholarship in the Native coauthor's name.
56. Ibid., 340n23. The draft statement by the National Museum of the American Indian, "Conducting Research in Indigenous Settings," also recommends the sharing of royalties that result from commercial purposes.