Cultural Property and Censorship

How Do We Balance Cultural Property and Open Access?

The ideas behind cultural property ownership are being debated and defended between indigenous communities and the library and information world. Native communities maintain many reasons to keep their cultural, societal, and religious identities and artifacts secret. Information organizations, on the other hand, sometimes hold the opposite view and are concerned about censorship, access, and cultural preservation.

Indigenous Populations and Traditional Cultural Expressions
Many indigenous groups believe that their communities are the owners of the ideas, information, and knowledge, or traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) that are created within that community, that they have the right to control these ideas. Some sacred stories, songs and teachings lose their sacredness when they are shared outside the community, written down, or expressed to people that do not have a right to hear them, as defined by the culture. Some indigenous communities would prefer to use their religious instruments until they wear out or are destroyed, rather than share them outside their community.

Many indigenous communities depend on privacy for the successful completion of important cultural activities. Secrecy generates social hierarchy between those who know and those who don’t. A breakdown of secrecy threatens traditional patterns of political and religious life. Cultural artifacts also create a heritage and unify ethnically diverse populations. Without these symbols, it would be difficult to mobilize citizens for national defense and other collective tasks.

Open Access and Cultural Conservation
On the other hand, many groups object to the censorship or limitations that some Native communities want to impose on TCEs. Some librarians and archivists believe that limiting access to these items interferes with public rights to information. They believe that restriction is contrary to the preservation of cultural heritage, that it prevents them from completing their missions of preservation. It is a discouraging prospect for curators who dedicate their working lives to the conservation of such objects.

Recent proposals have recommended that TCEs should have perpetual copyright protection as long as they are being maintained by their indigenous communities. This proposal would extend to other traditional and cultural communities, thereby including a great body of work that has always been considered public domain, such as American folk tales, labor and civil rights songs, fairy tales, holiday customs, and religious texts such as the Old and New Testaments, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita.

How Do We Draw the Line?
The library community is concerned about other groups that might seek to claim protection under provisions for TCEs. Where would the laws stop? Would Catholics, Jews, or Christians be able to make claims about artifacts and property that would keep them from public access? Would political groups; non-religious, spiritual communities; and cult organizations be able to make the same claims?

Where do we draw the line. How can we make careful and thoughtful decisions while respecting both cultural heritage and open access? Can we go down the path of of mutual respect and openness? Asking questions and talking with leaders on both sides will at least keep a respectful line of communication open. But where do we go from there?