When it becomes part of the tourism product, who really owns a community's intangible heritage?

1. Intangible Heritage and Tourism,
Ownership and Copyrights:
Does a Community own its
Intangible Cultural Heritage?
© Dr. E. Wanda George
Mount Saint Vincent University
Halifax, NS Canada
January 2010

2. The Fundamental Questions?
• Does a community really own its
distinctive intangible cultural heritage?
• Can a local community „copyright‟ its
own cultural expressions - its particular
cultural icons, traditional folk art and
music, local folklore, myths and stories,
language, meaningful landscapes and
landmarks, unique architecture…?

3. Local Cultural Assets Exploited?
• Entrepreneurs, governments, marketers, film-
makers, photographers, tour operators, artists
and others are increasingly appropriating and
exploiting local intangible culture and heritage for
their own commercial purposes and profit gain.
• What about the small rural community which has
developed longstanding cultural traditions and
assets that now attract a wide range of
consuming tourists?

4. What is Intellectual Property?
• “… may be thought of as the use or value of
an idea such as inventions, designs, literary
and artistic works, and symbols, names,
images and performances”
Source: Hoffman, 2006:10
• “… creations of the mind - inventions, literary
and artistic works, and symbols, names,
images, and designs used in commerce”
Source: World Intellectual Property Organization, 2009

5. Copyrights & Moral
©®℗ Rights
℠™
• Copyrights ©
• Copyrights, trademarks, and patent laws – forms of
protection.
• ‘Right to copy.’ The owner of copyright, often the
creator, is allowed to produce or reproduce the work or
to permit anyone else to do. In Canada, a copyright is
restricted to the expression in a fixed manner (e.g. text,
recording, or drawing) of an idea; it does not extend to
the idea itself.
• Moral Rights
• No one, including the person who owns the copyright,
is allowed to distort, mutilate or otherwise modify your
work in a way that is prejudicial to your honour or
reputation

6. Traditional Knowledge
“Traditional knowledge and cultural expressions are
often the product of intergenerational and fluid
social and communal creative processes that
reflect and identify a community’s history, cultural
and social identity and social values” (Source: Wendland, in
Hoffman, 2009:328)
Traditional knowledge is:
 handed down from one generation to another, either orally or by
imitation.
 reflects a community’s cultural and social identity.
 consists of characteristic elements of a community’ heritage.
 made by ‘authors [creators] unknown’ and/or by communities and/or
by individuals communally recognized as having the right,
responsibility, or permissions to do so.
 not made for commercial purposes but as vehicles for religious and
cultural expression [social construct].
 constantly evolving, developing, and being recreated with the

7. Indigenous Cultural
Heritage Issues
• Secret and sacred traditions
have been appropriated and
exploited by outsiders over
centuries
• Biopiracy – appropriation of
native medicinal plants and
remedies
• Appropriation of lands and
violations of sacred landscapes
and cultural spaces,
appropriated by tourists
• Appropriation by outsiders of
the unwanted use of native
cultural resources – music,
Photos with permission by David Hughes
design styles, folktales and

8. Critical Questions
• Should heritage be treated as an inalienable resource?
• To what extent can law control the movement of
ideas?
• Does it make sense for ethnic groups to define their
cultural practices as property that cannot be studied,
imitated or modified by other without permission?
• How far can democratic states go to provide
indigenous peoples with cultural protections without
violating the rights of the general public?”
Source: Brown (2003:6)
Source of Slide background: © Reuters Pictures. Participants at the 2009 World Social Forum
in the city of Belem, Brazil February 1, 2009

9. The Das Report
• ... society owns its heritage, defined as ‘everything
that belongs to the distinct identity of a people and
which is theirs to share, if they wish, with other
peoples…each indigenous community must retain
permanent control over all elements of its heritage,
under its owns laws and procedures, but always
reserves a perpetual right to determine how shared
knowledge is used. Members of such communities
own their heritage, including its ‘works, arts and
ideas’ (in Brown, 2003, pp. 211)
• While indigenous cultures are part of ‘common
heritage of all humankind,’ nothing said about the
world’s cultural and intellectual commons or
whether one should even exist - it takes for granted
that indigenous peoples are not part of any public
other than their own enclosed conceptual universe

10. Intangible Heritage
• From the Das Report, one can reasonably infer that
any social group that qualifies as ‘a people’,
indigenous or not, enjoys equality
• Intangible cultural heritage – practices,
representations, expressions, knowledge, skills –
as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and
cultural spaces…traditional and living at the same
time…constantly being recreated and mainly
transmitted orally. The depository of this heritage
is the human mind, the human body being the main
instrument for its enactment, or – literally –
embodiment. The knowledge and skills are often
shared within a community, and manifestations of
intangible cultural heritage often are performed

11. Cultural Appropriation
• Ziff and Rao (1997:1) define ‘cultural
appropriation’ as ‘the taking – from a culture
that is not one’s own – of intellectual property,
cultural expressions or artifacts, history and
ways of knowledge.” Cultural appropriation:
– can harm the appropriated community; it can negatively
impact the integrity and identities of cultural groups.
– can impact the cultural object itself; it can either damage or
transform a given cultural good or practice.
– wrongly allows some to benefit to the material detriment of
others (deprivation of material advantage).
• Current law fails to reflect alternative
conceptions of what should be treated as
property or ownership in cultural goods.

12. • Do non-indigenous communities not have
the same or similar concerns and issue?
Do not the same rights of intangible
cultural heritage apply also to non-
indigenous communities?

13. LUNENBURG, NOVA SCOTIA
P R IN C E E D WA R D IS L A N D
S yd n e y
NEW 1 05
B R U N S W IC K A m he r st
1 04 N e w G la sg o w A n tig o n is h
P o rt H a w ke s b u ry
Tr u ro
K e n tv ille 1 02
1 01
D ig by N O VA S C O T IA
H a lifa x /D a rtm o u th
K e jim ku jik B ridg e w a te r
N a tio n a l P a r k Lun enbu rg
1 01
To b e a tic
Gam e
S a n ctu a ry L iv e rp o o l
Ya rm o u th S h e lb u rn e 1 03
0 1 00 km
L o ck e p o rt
B a rrin g to n

14. LUNENBURG,
Rural intangible culture
NS
appropriated and
transformed into
commodities for
tourism

15. ST. JACOBS,
ONTARIO
Rural intangible
cultural heritage
appropriated and
transformed into
commodities for
tourism

16. Conclusions
Rural communities create and own their cultural assets.
Ownership & copyright issues are complex. However,
are communities not entitled to their rightful share of
the economic benefits that are being reaped by the
tourism industry?
Is there a solution – one that is more equitable and
sustainable that will benefit all stakeholders TODAY
and protect intangible cultural heritage for FUTURE
GENERATIONS?

17. A Community Cultural Heritage
Preservation Fund
All the stakeholders – community, tourism industry and
visitor – would be benefactors of a community cultural
heritage preservation fund
For the Community
• some badly needed resources and a means for a community
to enable management and preservation of its cultural
heritage assets
• monies to subsidize employment of a full-time cultural
heritage manager who would be responsible for all functions
relating to use of a community‟s cultural heritage resources
• give control to the community who could protect the integrity
of its own cultural assets and how its cultural heritage gets
interpreted to visitors through marketing materials and
activities
• a resource person to educate the publics about the
importance of protecting local cultural heritage assets and
ensuring authentic local experiences for visitors

18. A Community Cultural Heritage
Preservation Fund
For the Tourism Industry
• ensure authentic heritage products and cultural
experiences for its customers
• provide cultural products that are carefully maintained,
protected and reproduced under the jurisdiction of the
community (genuinely local) and give a value-added
element to existing cultural tourism products
• ensure a long term and sustainable „supply‟ of authentic
cultural components for industry suppliers and their
future customers
For the Visitor
• ensure that she/he would receive an authentic and truly
local heritage product and cultural experience, a
cultural product that has been „certified‟ by the
producing community (the actual creators)

19. A Community Cultural Heritage
Preservation Fund Strategy
A fund strategy for small rural communities might entail
such tactics as:
• a visitation fee per head applied to commercial tour operations and
their customers who visit/utilize a culture-based tourism
community as part of a tour product.
• a fee for the opportunity to capture on-site photos of local cultural
heritage assets, for example, from inside local museums,
churches, schools and any heritage buildings (no photos, no
charge).
• an entrance fee to local cemeteries, heritage buildings and
museums.
• licensing fees for outsiders to take and make use local cultural
images for their own commercial and marketing purposes.
• a fee for commercial film-making in the community.
• heritage preservation donation boxes strategically placed around
the host community (most tourists are well-educated and
understand/respect the importance of preservation).

20. For full article: George, E. W. (2010). In Press. Intangible cultural heritage,
ownership, copyrights, and tourism. International Journal of Culture,
Tourism and Hospitality Research, 4 (4).