language as property

[Rankin, Robert L]

> My current dissertation research has raised an interesting issue about
> native language as property, intellectual property rights, and the like.
> Whereas: The [_] tribe claims full and complete ownership of  [the __
> language] and its compliments of words, phrases, language system and
> future words of the [_] people,...

Our colleagues on the list have already expressed views that pretty much
coincide with my own about this issue. However, there are one or two other
matters related to it that usually only get hinted at and gossiped about in
public discussions. They deserve an airing.

Views expressed in the proclamation are being promulgated primarily by a
small group of White linguists and anthropologists. They are the same ones
who tried to get Native scholars *not* to join or participate in SSILA at
its inception 20 years ago. From the low level of scholarship evinced by
some of this bunch, I am forced to conclude that they hope to gain exclusive
access to various languages while shutting out more qualified people. They
also apparently seek to cover their own analytical errors and render their
work free from meaningful peer review. I'm sorry to have to say this sort of
thing, but I can cite specific examples.

There are additional ethical questions that I have about this small clique.
Several years ago they were running an instructional center with the
Kickapoo tribe at Harrah, Oklahoma. It is reliably reported to me (and
others including John Koontz and David Rood) by a respected scholar from the
U. of Colorado that the group at Harrah suffered the theft of $80,000.00
worth of computers and other office equipment but for some reason known only
to them covered up the disappearance and declined to report it to the FBI as
required by law. I don't know if it was ever reported, but the event caused
me to have serious doubts about the honesty of the participants in the
cover-up (and I'm talking about non-Indians here). It was this incident that
caused me to have Victor Golla incorporate SSILA when I was president of
that organization in 1997 (individual members or officers of
non-incorporated organizations can sometimes be held liable for actions of
dishonest members).

Personally, I don't believe that this movement to try to copyright entire
languages originates with Indian people; it is a product of the same group
of non-Indian apparachiks. In the past 3 or 4 years they have been working
through an Indian lawyer from near Tulsa whom they've coopted, but the idea
that verb conjugations or noun declensions are "intellectual property"
originates with the non-Indians, not with the lawyer. He's just the
mouthpiece.

Like the rest of you, I don't see the courts granting copyright to pronouns
and conjunctions. This doesn't mean the movement won't have plenty of
nuisance value for the radicals though. Nor, unfortunately, does it mean
that endangered Indian languages won't simply perish even sooner from
"benign neglect." Qualified linguists, after all, won't go where they are
not wanted and cannot function normally, and there are plenty of languages
in the Pacific, Africa, Asia and South America that cry out for attention.

So the danger is not that whole languages will become copyrighted. The
danger is that the movement to do so will place the future of endangered
languages in the hands of inferior scholars and will cause their earlier
demise.

Bob

>"Whereas: the [_] tribe incorporates under tribal law the following
>decree: the [_] language is alive and dynamic,...

This is the chief problem. The languages are, for the most part, *not* alive
and dynamic.

>Whereas: The [_] tribe shall require under this tribal law any non-Indian
>or non-enrolled indian member to submit in an approved application form
>permission to use the [_] language in part or any part thereof, before
>they use any portion or part of the [_] language for any purpose"

I've always respected the rights of the tribe to negotiate this sort of
agreement when I was actually working for the tribe itself for pay. That
mostly applies to the Osages, for whom I did some work back about 1980. But
if I am working with an individual who has agreed to teach me, then no such
agreement is in place. That individual is simply practicing his/her freedom
of expression.