Islands Business - Cover Story: PROTECT TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE TO FOSTER SMEs

They’re being used without owners’ approval

“They’re making plastic versions of our shell money in China,” said Leliana Firisua, technical director at the Small and Medium Enterprises Centre in Solomon Islands.

“There are a lot of traditional knowledge, music, art, stories and other areas that people can turn into commercial activities that need protection and without it, we are very much open to exploitation.” — Leliana Firisua

“Our traditional shell money has been copied. Someone took a photograph of it to China and they converted it there into plastic so these plastic beads are coming back and people buy them because they’re cheaper.

“But the traditional knowledge in keeping the shell money alive has become exploited and by undercutting the price, SME virtually disappears.”

Firisula was a participant at an Intellectual Property Rights workshop, organised by the Pacific Islands Private Sector Organisation (PIPSO), supported by the Pacific Regional Economic Integration Programme (PACREIP) and held in Suva in July.

The focus of the workshop was to create awareness on Intellectual Property (IP) and Traditional Knowledge (TK) issues, reflecting the establishment by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) that IP and TK are key factors in the success of many SMEs and private sector development.

“A lot of things are being converted into fake products and coming back using the same names and distorting business in the islands,” he added.

“There are other things too—even the use of local names to brand the products. For example the pidgin word Barava, to brand a toilet paper, which we have in Solomon Islands.

“Local names like that should be protected. The worse thing is when they start turning traditional artefacts into plastic, then we have a really big problem.

“Our traditional drums, our warrior items are all coming back as plastics.

“These things should be created by locals who are supposed to make a business out of it. In the use of traditional designs, some tattooing and body-marking designs which belong to specific tribes are now coming out on clothing materials printed overseas.

“They are being used without getting approval from the traditional owners and it’s basically daylight robbery,” said Firisua.

He is well aware of how Pacific islanders have been marginalised when it comes to the turning of their cultural properties into commercial ventures.

He comes from a country that has a history of being exploited in this area.

Sound tracks in the award-winning movie ‘The Thin Red Line’, for instance, featured songs from a Solomon Islands choir without permission; the award winning yet controversial music called “Sweet Lullaby” by the French duo Deep Forest used without permission a lullaby called Rorogwela. It sung by a woman named Afunakwa from the Fataleka region of Northern Malaita.

Like the case of the Hagahai tribe in Papua New Guinea, blood samples were taken from a woman in Marovo Lagoon in the Western Province and a man from Guadalcanal in 1990 for the purpose of developing vaccines to fight cancer.

The blood cells were patented by the US Government in 1990 without the permission of the tribes or the Solomon Islands government and caused an uproar.

In 2006, a story appeared in the Walrus Magazine (http://www.walrusmagazine.com) about how the Canadian award-winning anthropologist Pierre Maranda had gained a bad reputation among the Rere tribe of Lau Lagoon, where he had lived and learnt their ways of life.

Maranda was accused of stealing the clan’s octopus, which lived in the lagoon and revered by the people of Rere, who believed it to represent the spirit of their ancestors.

More recently, native palm trees were being uprooted and taken to Japan by Japanese scientists for research.

Firisula feels it is futile to talk about encouraging local people to set up small businesses selling handicraft or using their traditional knowledge to create products. First things first—there must be protection.

“I think the issue we have is the lack of protection of what we create,” he told ISLANDS BUSINESS.

“And there is a need for more awareness. The governments should be talking to their people about what Intellectual Property in Traditional Knowledge is and people need to be aware of it.

“I think Solomon Islands as a country that went through a crisis is in a vulnerable position because a crisis opens the door for outside individuals and entities to capitalise on things that would be in the best interest of the people to know.

“We already know that when there is a crisis, the government machineries are not very effective and the justice system is weak and exploitation usually happens. I think Solomon Islands is in that process.”

With appropriate legal protection and awareness among the grassroots on how they can protect what they create, Firisula agrees that Pacific islanders can create successful small businesses drawing from their cultures.

“There are a lot of traditional knowledge, music, art, stories and other areas that people can turn into commercial activities that need protection and without it, we are very much open to exploitation.”