Upcoming Open Culture Live Webinar: “Whose Open Culture? Decolonization, Indigenization, and Restitution”

“Andean Textile Fragment” by Peruvian. 1500. Walters Art Museum., here slightly cropped, is licensed via CC0.

On Wednesday, 17 January, 2024, at 3:00 pm UTC, CC’s Open Culture Program will be hosting a new webinar in our Open Culture Live series titled “Whose Open Culture? Decolonization, Indigenization, and Restitution.”

As we observed a few years ago, there is growing awareness in the open culture movement about issues related to the acquisition, preservation, access, sharing, and reuse of cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples and local communities (including traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions), heritage in the context of colonization, and culturally-sensitive heritage. Many questions arise in the context of open access, for example:

Who decides what can be digitized and/or made openly available online, and under which conditions?
Who has control and who can make governance decisions over their contents?
How are the consultation and decision-making processes designed and implemented and by whom?
How can institutions communicate permitted uses to users (including but mostly going beyond CC licenses or tools)?
When is restitution the answer?
How do we share ethically, responsibility, and with respect and sensitivity?
Who should be entitled to answer those questions and take action?

In this webinar, we will discuss the many complex considerations around such heritage and explore some of the different approaches to respectful, sensitive, responsible, and ethical — in sum, better sharing. We will be joined by experts including:

Jane Anderson, Vice Chair & Founding Member, Strategic Advisor, Co-Founder, Local Contexts
Maui Solomon, Council Founding Member, Strategic Advisor, Local Contexts
Camille Callison, Indigenous Librarian and Activist, University of the Fraser Valley
Erna Lilje, Curator, Indigenous knowledge & material culture, Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen

Register here.

CC is a non-profit that relies on contributions to sustain our work. Support CC in our efforts to promote better sharing at creativecommons.org/donate

Background reading

Beyond Copyright: the Ethics of Open Sharing by Josie Fraser, 2021. Creative Commons – We Like to Share Medium Blog.
Traditional Knowledge and Copyright Intersections by Connor Benedict, 2023. Creative Commons – We Like to Share Medium Blog.
Collaborate, Communicate, and Navigate Ethical Considerations with the Ethical Sharing Card Game by Isaac Oloruntimilehin, 2023. Creative Commons – We Like to Share Medium Blog.
An Africa centered approach to restitution data  by African Digital Heritage, 2021.
Response to the 2018 Sarr-Savoy Report: Statement on Intellectual Property Rights and Open Access relevant to the digitization and restitution of African Cultural Heritage and associated materials by Mathilde Pavis & Dr. Andrea Wallace, 2019.
Restitution with a Catch? The Copyright Perspective on the Sarr-Savoy Report by Camille Francoise, 2020. IFLA Blog.
Open and Equitable – Questions on how to handle digital copies in collections from colonial contexts (Part III) by Andrea Wallace, 2022. Wikimedia Deutschland Blog.
Decolonization and Indigenization by Andrea Wallance, 2021. OpenGLAM.
Preservation or plunder? The battle over the British Museum’s Indigenous Australian show by Paul Daley, 2015. The Guardian.
Traditional Knowledge and Creative Commons White Paper by Mehtab Khan, 2018
Sharing Indigenous Cultural Heritage Online an Overview of GLAM Policies by Brigitte Vézina and Alexis Muscat, 2020
Taking Care Conference 2022 Keynote, Brigitte Vézina

What is Open Culture Live?

In this series, we tackle some of the more complex challenges that face the open culture movement, bringing in speakers with personal and professional expertise on the topic.

Respectful Terminologies & Changing the Subject 
Back to Basics: Open Culture for Beginners 

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