Protecting aboriginal cultural heritage in Australia: looking for solutions in the Canadian experience
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In recent decades Australian aboriginal paintings have become increasingly sought after as "high art" and as part of the nationalist iconography. The paintings often incorporate the communal designs of the artists' communities or clan groups, which are subject to aboriginal laws administered by traditional custodians. The popularity of the paintings has fostered increased respect for aboriginal cultures and has provided a source of income for many aboriginal communities. However, a corollary of their popularity is their unauthorised reproduction by tourist industry operators onto t-shirts and other mass produced objects, causing serious violations of aboriginal laws. Aboriginal sanctions are not enforceable in Australian settler courts. Aboriginal artists and their communities have therefore turned to copyright law for relief in what are now know as the "aboriginal copyright cases". However, it has become increasingly apparent that copyright law neither recognises the communal, ancient and spiritual aspects of the paintings, nor adequately compensates the serious spiritual or religious damage caused by the unauthorised reproductions. Australian government bodies and commentators have therefore turned to exploration of reform proposals. Reform proposals to date range from amendments to copyright law to the recognition of aboriginal rights in communal designs as an extension of the Mabo doctrine of native title. However, some commentators have argued that the issues raised by the aboriginal copyright cases are intricately linked with other debates concerning appropriation of aboriginal cultures and, more widely, issues of decolonisation. Taking this wider approach, the thesis turns to the Canadian experience of decolonisation, and in particular developments in the areas of aboriginal rights and self-government. The thesis examines the potential advantages and disadvantages of using aboriginal rights litigation and self-government agreements to address the issues raised by the aboriginal copyright cases. It concludes that the Canadian experience in these two areas is instructive and worthy of further consideration as reform proposals are considered. Drawing on this experience, the thesis argues for reforms which acknowledge aboriginal peoples' right to cultural self-determination within a state constitutional framework.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.060 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.011 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.011 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".