"[T]he fundamental underpinnings of intellectual property often do not match the particular characteristics of indigenous traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, which are generally intangible and collectively owned" (0910).
"The whole issue of traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expression is one of particular interest and challenge . . . because some of the fundamental characteristics associated with . . . traditional knowledge, and [traditional cultural expressions] do not match with the way intellectual property laws function. For something to be copyrightable, it needs to be fixed and it needs to relate to one author that you can theoretically identify. In the case of the traditional knowledge or traditional cultural expressions of indigenous people or other types of communities, most often you're dealing with things that are not fixed, such as a song, a story, a know-how. That's the first hurdle. The second hurdle is that it's usually collectively owned: a song belongs to the Abenaki people, assuming you can identify some sort of property around this song, but it doesn't relate to one individual in the Abenaki community. From the get-go then you have a major challenge when you're trying to use copyright for that purpose. That being said, there are other tools in the intellectual property tool kit that are still at the disposal of indigenous people, such as patents and trademarks. Often the example that is put forward is the misappropriation of the inukshuk or of the dream catcher" (0955).
Evidence Tuesday, May 22, 2018. House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage
"[T]he marginalization of Indigenous ideas and cultural expression from the protective mantle of intellectual property rights parallels the historic marginalization of Indigenous peoples' rights to their traditional lands and resources. In both contexts, the privileging of non-Indigenous interests arose from the Euro-Canadian legal system's preference for individuals over collectives as rights holders and its tendency to allocate property rights protection in accordance with uses that promote economic efficiency" (4).
"The challenge for those who are sympathetic to the creation of more equitable mechanisms for the protection of Indigenous expertise and creative expression is to explicitly identify the values currently privileged by intellectual property law. . . . [I]t is critically important that Indigenous values not simply be marked off as 'special' concerns that must be discussed, while the norms underlying current intellectual property regimes remain unquestioned and invisible to serious reflection. The risk that mainstream values will be unconsciously privileged in such a debate is well documented in studies of cross-cultural negotiation, which show that there is a tendency in cross-cultural dialogues for the norms that underlie the perceptions and evaluations of the negotiators from a dominant culture to be precisely those norms that the dialogue leaves undiscussed and uncontested" (4–5).
Coyle, M. (2010). The idols of the cave: Reimagining the protection of Indigenous knowledge and expression. Canadian Intellectual Property Review, 26(1), 3–18