Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Sharon Parenteau. I am the General Manager of Louis Riel Institute, the culture and education arm of the Manitoba Metis Federation. We would like to thank you for providing us with an opportunity to present to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology as part of the five-year review of the Copyright Act.
We recommend that the committee consider an alternative approach to dealing with Métis cultural property and develop substantive changes to the Copyright Act to protect Métis cultural property.
The Métis nation has a proud heritage with a distinct culture. Property stemming from Métis culture can include traditional indigenous knowledge. Iconic images of the Métis, appropriating Métis artistic cultural expression, and representations of the Legislative Assembly of Assiniboia are three key examples of Métis cultural property.
The use of Métis cultural symbols without the consent of the Métis nation and the abuse of Métis history, and identity theft, are key concerns in the protection and continuance of Métis culture for generations to come. The protection of Métis cultural property is complex and disparate, and will require expenditure of Métis resources to address. The Manitoba Metis Federation has developed the Manitoba Métis community research ethics protocol to protect the citizens of the Métis nation by ensuring that research involving the Manitoba Métis community is culturally appropriate and considers the distinction of the Métis nation. The MMCREP is an act of self-government to protect and promote the culture, history, values, collective rights, and interests of Métis citizens.
The MMCREP generates a centralized research protocol where the MMF home office is the first point of contact for external and internal researchers. Researchers work closely with the MMF to direct them to departments, affiliates, regions, and locals in the context of their projects, thus ensuring that the Manitoba Métis community's cultural, historical, and intellectual property is appropriately reflected and preserved.
Current copyright laws do not fully protect Métis cultural property rights. For example, fixation does not protect oral knowledge handed down from generation to generation. Works that have not been fixated in a tangible form of expression are not protected under the Copyright Act. Since fixation is one of the prerequisites of copyright protection, this limitation allows expropriation of traditional knowledge.
Advocacy through appropriate political channels is required to align Canada's intellectual property regime with the cultural property rights of the Métis nation. There are two ways through which this could be achieved: a self-government agreement affording the Métis nation the authority to legislate to protect its cultural property, and legislation to directly address one or more of the intellectual property issues specifically from a Métis perspective and context.
There are existing Métis nation protocols that have been established by the MMF that are based on traditional knowledge handed down from generation to generation. The MMF has taken this traditional knowledge, such as the traditional harvesting methods described in the MMF's Métis laws of the hunt, traditional land use teachings, which the MMF collects in its traditional land use knowledge studies, and the original Métis names for landmarks and historical communities. These and other protocols are documented in Louis Riel Institute publications.
We define traditional knowledge as the body of knowledge shared by indigenous people and held by and transmitted between indigenous representatives that supports traditional land use for the benefit and well-being of indigenous peoples. Similarly, people come to understand the ecology of their surrounding environment through years of first-hand experience and inherent cultural understandings of relationships between humans, animals, lands, and water. People also come to understand the ecology of their environment through teachings that have been passed down through relations or within a community. This type of knowledge is often referred to as traditional ecological knowledge.
Existing traditional knowledge is carried by the knowledge keepers of the community, through oral transmission. There are fewer knowledge keepers and citizens who can speak the traditional language of Michif, making it difficult to preserve and revitalize.
An alternative way to preserve the oral history and knowledge is to recreate it in different forms. While the MMF has made considerable efforts collecting and using traditional knowledge for ecological purposes, the artistic community has only begun to explore this issue. In the age of digitization, artistic cultural expression is often appropriated by others with no safeguards.
Changes to the Copyright Act need to give the Métis nation the authority to legislate and protect its Métis cultural property. Our traditional knowledge is usually transmitted orally, through storytelling. Using the Manitoba Métis community research ethics protocol ensures researchers are working with the Manitoba Métis community to gather and protect Métis cultural property. Research gathered is subsequently housed in the Métis knowledge base, and is protected by the Manitoba Métis Federation, which is the governing body for the Manitoba Métis community.
Thank you.