The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation

318 Pages·2009·3.12 MB·English

by  James O. Young

The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation
The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation Edited by Edited by James O. Young and Conrad G. Brunk
© 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-16159-6
The Ethics of
Cultural Appropriation
Edited by James O. Young and Conrad G. Brunk
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
This edition fi rst published 2009
© 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s
publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientifi c, Technical, and Medical
business to form Wiley-Blackwell.
Registered Offi ce
John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ,
United Kingdom
Editorial Offi ces
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK
The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
For details of our global editorial offi ces, for customer services, and for information about how
to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at
www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.
The right of James O. Young and Conrad G. Brunk to be identifi ed as the authors of the
editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without
the prior permission of the publisher.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in
print may not be available in electronic books.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks,
trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated
with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide
accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the
understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If
professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent
professional should be sought.
A catalog record for this book is available.
ISBN 978-1-4051-6159-6
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 10.5/13pt Minion by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong
Printed in Malaysia by Vivar Printing Sdn Bhd
01 2009
To Leslie Kenny
With the editors’ gratitude for all of
her assistance in producing this volume
Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors ix
Preface xii
Artist Statement xvii
lessLIE
1. Introduction 1
2. Archaeological Finds: Legacies of Appropriation, Modes of
Response 11
George P. Nicholas and Alison Wylie
3. The Appropriation of Human Remains: A First Nations
Legal and Ethical Perspective 55
James [Sa¢ke¢j] Youngblood Henderson
4. The Repatriation of Human Remains 72
Geoffrey Scarre
5. ‘The Skin Off Our Backs’: Appropriation of Religion 93
Conrad G. Brunk and James O. Young
6. Genetic Research and Culture: Where Does the Offense Lie? 115
Daryl Pullman and Laura Arbour
7. Appropriation of Traditional Knowledge: Ethics in
the Context of Ethnobiology 140
Kelly Bannister and Maui Solomon (Part I)
Conrad G. Brunk (Part II)
8. A Broken Record: Subjecting ‘Music’ to Cultural Rights 173
Elizabeth Burns Coleman and Rosemary J. Coombe with
Fiona MacArailt
viii Contents
9. Objects of Appropriation 211
Andrea N. Walsh and Dominic McIver Lopes
10. Do Subaltern Artifacts Belong in Art Museums? 235
A.W. Eaton and Ivan Gaskell
11. ‘Nothing Comes from Nowhere’: Refl ections on Cultural
Appropriation as the Representation of Other Cultures 268
James O. Young and Susan Haley
Index 290
Ethics of Cultural Appropriation
Research Group Members
Laura Arbour is a clinical geneticist and associate professor in the Depart-
ment of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia, based in
Victoria, BC. Her research is focused on addressing genetic conditions that
disproportionately affect Canadian Aboriginal people and understanding
culturally acceptable ways to carry out the research.
Kelly Bannister holds a doctorate in botany from the University of British
Columbia. She is an adjunct professor in the Studies in Policy and Practice
Program and director of the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance at
the University of Victoria. She has published in journals such as Current
Anthropology and Cultural Survival Quarterly on ethnobotany and the
appropriation of Indigenous cultural knowledge.
Conrad Brunk is Professor of Philosophy and past director of the Centre
for Religion and Society at the University of Victoria. He specializes in
applied ethics, particularly issues involving the interplay of science and
human values in public policy. He has authored and edited many books
and articles on environmental and health risk management, professional
ethics and new technologies. He serves on numerous expert panels for
government and industry in these areas.
Elizabeth Burns Coleman holds a doctorate in philosophy from Australian
National University and is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Communications
and Philosophy sections of Monash University. She is the author of Aborig-
inal Art, Identity and Appropriation (2005) and other works on cultural
appropriation.
Rosemary J. Coombe holds a PhD in law with a minor in anthropology
from Stanford University. She has taught law, anthropology and commu-
nication and cultural studies at the University of Toronto, York University,
Harvard University, De Paul University, the University of Connecticut and
American University, as well as holding distinguished research chairs in
x Ethics of Cultural Appropriation Research Group Members
the Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand. She is the author of The
Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties: Authorship, Appropriation and the
Law (1998) as well as articles in cultural anthropology, legal theory and the
globalization of intellectual property. She currently holds a Canada Research
Chair in Law, Communication and Culture at York University.
A.W. Eaton is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois
at Chicago. She works on topics in aesthetics, feminism, and value theory.
Ivan Gaskell is at Harvard University where he holds the Margaret S.
Winthrop chair in the Fogg Art Museum, and teaches in the history depart-
ment. He has written, edited or co-edited a dozen books on art and
aesthetics.
Susan Haley holds a doctorate in philosophy but has been a full time writer
for 20 years. She is the author of seven novels, including The Complaints
Department (2000) and The Murder of Medicine Bear (2003), which draw
on her experience of life in mainly Aboriginal communities. She is pres-
ently at work on an eighth novel.
James (Sa’ke’j) Youngblood Henderson holds a J.D. from the Harvard
Law School. He is the author or co-author of eleven books and is currently
the Research Director of the Native Law Centre of Canada at the University
of Saskatchewan. He is a tribal citizen of the Chickasaw Nation.
Travis Kroeker holds a doctorate from the University of Chicago. He is
the author of two books and many articles on religion and ethics. He is
Professor of Religious Studies at McMaster University.
Dominic McIver Lopes is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and an
associate dean of arts at the University of British Columbia. His main
research interest is the philosophy of art. He is the author of Understanding
Pictures (1996) and its sequel, Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures
(2006). He is also co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Aesthetics and
several specialized collections in aesthetics. His most recent work focuses
on new art media, especially interactive media, and theories of art, taking
into account cross-cultural perspectives.
George P. Nicholas is a professor of archaeology at Simon Fraser Univer-
sity, Burnaby, British Columbia, and director of the international research
initiative ‘Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage: Theory,
Practice, Policy’. He was founding director of Simon Fraser University’s
Indigenous Archaeology Program in Kamloops, BC (1991–2005).
Ethics of Cultural Appropriation Research Group Members xi
Nicholas’ research focuses on Indigenous peoples and archaeology, intel-
lectual property issues relating to archaeology, the archaeology and human
ecology of wetlands, and archaeological theory, all of which he has pub-
lished widely on. He is series co-editor of the World Archaeological Con-
gress’ Research Handbooks in Archaeology.
Daryl Pullman is Associate Professor of Medical Ethics at Memorial Uni-
versity in St. John’s, Newfoundland. He has published widely in legal,
medical and philosophical journals.
Geoffrey Scarre is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Durham,
UK. In recent years he has taught and published mainly in the areas of
moral theory and applied ethics. His latest books are Death (Acumen/
McGill-Queens, 2007), Mill’s On Liberty: A Reader’s Guide (Continuum,
2007) and the edited collection (with Chris Scarre) The Ethics of Archaeol-
ogy (C.U.P., 2006). His current projects include a book, On Courage, to be
published by Routledge in 2009.
Maui Solomon is an Aboriginal lawyer in Kawatea Chambers, Wellington,
New Zealand. He has worked extensively on bio-piracy and the appropria-
tion of traditional knowledge.
Andrea N. Walsh is a visual anthropologist at the University of Victoria
and is of Irish, Scottish, Canadian and Nl’akapamux ancestry. Her main
area of interest is twentieth-century and contemporary First Nations visual
and material culture. The focus of her research has been on ideas of space
and place represented through urban First Nations and Metis artists who
are working in the areas of conceptual art, installation, photography, paint-
ing and video/fi lm. She also maintains a collaborative community-based
research program with the Osoyoos Museum Society (OMS) and the
Osoyoos Indian Band (OIB) to research and document a rare collection of
Aboriginal children’s art from the Inkameep Day School created between
1931 and 1942.
Alison Wylie is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington.
She is probably the leading authority on the philosophy of archaeology and
has written, edited or co-edited fi ve books, including Thinking from Things
(2002), Ethics in American Archaeology (2000) and Value-Free Science?
(2007).
James O. Young is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Victoria.
His publications include three books, among them Cultural Appropriation
and the Arts (2008), and more than forty articles in refereed journals.