Justice, Transaction, Translation: Blackfoot Tipi Transfers and WIPO's Search for the Facts of Traditional Knowledge Exchange

Abstract

In this article, I examine the complexities and politics of enrolling one socially embedded form of transaction and knowledge into the terms or practices of another. I look at the correspondences and divergences in how the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) transposed the “facts” of Blackfoot tipi-transfer practices in efforts to harmonize global intellectual property (IP) regimes and to achieve “justice” and “empowerment.” WIPO's translation work is set against a case where Piikani Blackfoot tipi holders used relational transfer practices to effect a use arrangement, bypassing the means and ends of IP. I argue that looking at WIPO's practices helps us to see anthropology's own epistemological, instrumental, and political constraints, while looking at Piikani transfers helps us to conceive of alternatives. This has bearing across anthropology's disciplinary spectrum where problems of knowledge translation are commonplace.