[P2P-F] the post you request on indigenous knowledge

[Michel Bauwens]

Thank you so much Caro, I have planned this for March 15!!

Michel

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 3:40 AM, carolina botero <carobotero at gmail.com>wrote:

> Sorry for the delay, I hope english is good enough
>
> carolina
>
>
>
> *Steps towards a new legal framework for indigenous communities*
>
> Carolina Botero
>
> Karisma Foundation
>
> @carobotero
>
> * *
>
> * *
>
> In 2010 UNESCO recognized Colombia’s Amazon traditional indigenousknowledge as "intangible cultural heritage” (
> http://www.gaiafoundation.org/content/highlights-2010-and-path-ahead). Without
> a doubt the latter represents an invaluable move towards the community’s
> establishment of their own legal framework; empowering them with new tools
> to fight pounding threats (such as mining projects, a fashionable trend in
> Colombia). Most importantly it contributes to the building of the
> traditional indigenous community’s history that we will read about in a few
> years time. However, one must acknowledge that indigenous community’s legal
> framework is a historical process  that needs time and space to fully
> develop.
>
>
>
> *"History belongs to those who write it"* a true statement which
> exemplifies society’s where the written form prevails over oral traditions and
> that is suffered by indigenous peoples inhabiting countries like Colombia regarding
> their own history. However, when listening to indigenous people, it can be
> seen that these communities have built and "write" their own history through
> their oral tradition, one to which the new context (legal, social,
> technological, etc.) allows us to glimpse today.
>
>
>
> The change towards indigenos is also evident in Colombia’s constitutional
> reforms. In the new 1991 Constitutional Chart the nation is defined as
> multiethnic and multicultural, in contrast to the policy contained in the
> 1886 Charter that embodied the idea of a Colombian nation under a
> Unitarian Hispanic rule: predominantly white, Spanish speaking and
>  Catholic.
>
>
>
> Indigenous communities cultural production has been ignored and devaluated.
> This community production has been considered as public domain, in fact,
> Colombia's Lew 23/1982 states that indigenous art is in the public domain. Labeling
> indigenous communities production as “public” carries with it the social
> negative connotation of “public" as worthless, as well as, not deserving
> protection. Parallel to this situation and with the complicity of a legal
> framework that has until recently ignored them, over the past century the
> community’s exploitation extends beyond their lands to their biological and
> genetic resources, art, culture, etc.
>
>
>
> However, developments in the twentieth century have shed a light on the
> injustices that these communities have had to endure. Thus constitutional
> reforms are beginning to recognize and accommodate other views;
> international emerging concepts like "cultural heritage" seek to give
> substance and value to these items beyond the idea of public domain with
> the intention to develop them on a local level; and, of course local
> characters have emerged from these communities and began to place their own
> history over the carpet.
>
>
>
> I personally believe that concepts such as "cultural heritage" are falling
> short: they are built on individual logics; they are usually associated with
> the State (not the community) and in general they conflict with local legal
> structures that may not allow them to develop beyond a well-deserved
> recognition. The historical process is a slow but sure process that will
> change the legal framework for good.
>
>
>
> --
> http://www.karisma.org.co/carobotero
> http://twitter.com/carobotero
> http://identi.ca/carobotero/
> http://www.equinoxio.org
>



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