(August 9, yearly, commemorates International Day of World’s Indigenous People celebrated worldwide, including the Philippines. The purpose is to engage attention to the difficulties indigenous people face, like discrimination, social injustice and their rights being violated, these often unaddressed or if done so, superficially.)
BAGUIO CITY – Unless bulked by profound understanding and meaningful commitment with indigenous communities in the Philippines, use of their indigenous knowledge – morphed through centuries – by non-indigenous people can be leveled as extractive, tokenistic and most of all, exploitative, a study encapsulates.
Indigenous knowledge runs the gamut of knowledge which include oral and written, observations and innovations, clothing, art, their intrinsic link to nature, their attachment to environment, their history, their dialects, their medicine, their world view, culture and tradition, In short, their very “way of life.”
It brings to the fore, the compelling need to ensure that indigenous people’s knowledge must be protected, preserved, encouraged, acknowledged and respected universally, the study stresses.
In a 47 pages’ dissertation titled “The Protection of the Indigenous Knowledge of the Indigenous People,” Atty. Brenner Bengwayan, Secretary of the Sangguniang Panlungsod of Baguio City, explores and traces how collection of indigenous knowledge has, of late, been stealthily of keen interest by the hands of commerce.
Or, to put it bluntly, cultural knowledge is under threat of being stolen from indigenous communities by acts of piracy.
Such action is the appropriation of indigenous knowledge by developing countries accused of trying to earn a fast buck from centuries old erudition.
In his study, Atty. Bengwayan states: “Central to the idea of cultural heritage is the understanding that the protection of the cultural and intellectual rights of the indigenous people is fundamentally connected with the realization and exercise of their territorial rights and right to self-determination.”
“Territorial, in the sense that indigenous people have the right to decide for themselves what they want to do with their ancestral domain and the resources that come with them, that has been handed to them from generations past, “Bengwayan further states.
However, done through deceit, cunning, greed and design by unscrupulous persons often connected with commerce industry, indigenous cultural communities continue to face what Bengwayan terms as “unfaltering theft of their indigenous/cultural knowledge.”
Corporate activity happens to be zeroed in by the study as the most destructive and prevalent abuses of indigenous rights and are the direct consequences of development strategies that fail to respect their fundamental right to self-determination.
“Most international corporations do not consider that the indigenous people are the main proponents or the original innovators of the indigenous knowledge that they profit from. They do not even take into consideration that the indigenous people have developed their indigenous knowledge from past generations and in turn have devised ways to manage and protect the knowledge that has been passed down to them from their elders,” Bengwayan explains.
One among the most glaring examples of offenses committed on tribal communities is their indigenous knowledge on crops and plants, otherwise known as “green gold,” being stolen, the act known as bio-piracy.
Bio-piracy is defined by Bengwayan as “the patenting of biological and genetic resources and traditional knowledge by multinational and transnational corporations without consulting, acknowledging and compensating the original source.”
For private entities covertly engaged in such an act, it is termed by Bengwayan as “Green Gold Rush.”
Insult is further added to injury when these private entities patent materials derived from indigenous knowledge, creating a situation whereby developing nations where the indigenous people come from, end up paying for their own genius or wisdom. In short, paying for what they developed in the first place.
Bio-piracy has become the scourge of indigenous people in ten countries worldwide, including the Philippines and the truth remains murky as to how deep is indigenous knowledge already patented and owned by transnational seed banks and pharmaceutical laboratories.
In contrast to Western legal systems, indigenous cultural heritage cannot be owned or monopolized by a single individual, group or corporation nor can it be alienated, surrendered or sold. In clearer terms, in the world of indigenous people, no person owns a traditional knowledge but rather a collective ownership.
It is the community being the owner of an indigenous knowledge, its responsibility to develop, enrich and protect in accordance with laws and traditions of respective tribal groups. Indigenous knowledge is communal property, “a baffling idea for westerners to grasp,” Bengwayan explains.
The Philippines has its own experience on bio-piracy and is well documented. To preserve the rights and resources of indigenous tribes, the Philippines enacted the Indigenous People’s Rights Act, (IPRA), made into law in 1997 or otherwise known as Republic Act 8371, the study emphasizes.
For the indigenous communities nationwide, it was a breakthrough. As last, they have been armed with a law crafted especially for their development and protection dealing with the right to self-governance, social justice and human rights, cultural integrity and ancestral domain.
Within the facets of the Cultural Integrity clause of IPRA lies the bulk of rights awarded to Philippine indigenous people, Bengwayan citing some of its provisions like Section 5 ensuring protection of indigenous culture, traditions and institutions.
Section 14 of IPRA lays the rights of indigenous people to indigenous knowledge systems and practices and to develop their own sciences and technologies.
Section 15 of IPRA details the protection of indigenous knowledge systems and practices. In other words, no outsider can dig into the confines of ethnic communities without consent first being given by indigenous members.
When the Convention of Biological Diversity was adopted in 1992, states have started formulating policy and legal institutional measures to regulate access to their own genetic resources and traditional knowledge. The Philippines pioneered on this.
Executive Order Number 247 titled, “Prescribing Guidelines and Establishing a Regulatory Framework for the Prospecting of Biological and Genetic Resources, their By-Products and Derivatives, for Scientific and Commercial Purposes and for Other Purposes,” was enacted.
While EO 247 affords private corporations the license to exploit natural and genetic resources in the Philippines in relation to commercialization of indigenous knowledge, it must be done on two parameters set in Section 2 of EO 247.
Bengwayan explains these conditions as number one: prospecting of biological and genetic resources shall be allowed within ancestral lands and domains of indigenous communities/indigenous people only with the prior, informed consent of such communities, obtained in accordance with customary laws of the concerned community.
Second, prospecting of biological and genetic resources shall be allowed only with the prior, informed consent of the concerned local communities.
Yet, bio-pirates continue to skirt loosely crafted anti bio-piracy laws in the country, shockingly, with the help of some Filipinos, Bengwayan reveals. These bi-pirates devise ways to supersede enacted laws of the land.
Some bio-pirates have used the guise as tourists to infiltrate and extract from the indigenous communities. Others have utilized the features of humanity like medical missions to collect tissue samples of indigenous people.
There remains an underlying reason for acquiring cultural knowledge and that is simply corporate greed. Presuming that these foreign entities are “dedicated to humanity, circling the globe to find cures for diseases,” they often do it in unethical ways, hiding behind the guise of helping without the true essence of aid in mind, Bengwayan argues.
“While it may be said that to develop modern miracles takes millions of dollars for research, analysis and battery of tests, including application of patent, these companies will have sole ownership of the indigenous knowledge protected over years, and these firms initial capital outlay increases fourfold or more after developing the product for market,” Bengwayan narrates.
In truth, indigenous medical knowledge is sought after by transnational pharmaceutical companies to drastically shave their expenses while increasing their profit.