By Brian Egan
From July 24th to 26th IPinCH Steering Committee members and staff gathered in southwestern British Columbia for an intensive work retreat. Hosted at the Sasquatch Crossing Eco Lodge, a facility owned and run by the Sts’ailes First Nation, the retreat provided a rare opportunity for us to engage in detailed discussions about project objectives and outcomes and to make progress on planning major activities over the next two years.
Our first task was to identify areas where we believe IPinCH is well positioned to make a significant contribution. We felt that the project can make a difference by:
- nurturing a new generation of scholars working on intellectual property (IP) and cultural heritage (CH) issues;
- helping communities address their concerns and interests regarding IP and CH issues;
- educating legal scholars and the legal community on these issues;
- assisting with policy development and reform within post-secondary institutions, especially within Simon Fraser University (IPinCH’s home institution), with respect to community-based research and research ethics;
- advancing understanding among scholarly, policy, and public audiences on IP and CH issues, and especially through sharing of lessons from IPinCH-funded case studies and community-based initiatives;
- facilitating networking between people working on IP and CH issues; and
- developing and sharing practical and scholarly resources on IP and CH issues, including information on recommended practices for community-based cultural heritage research and resources useful to a wide range of organizations concerned with these issues.
For each of these areas, we then identified specific activities that we could undertake or specific products that we could create in order to make the kind of difference we seek.
Much of our time at the retreat was spent on planning for the IPinCH Fall Gathering, to be held November 7-8, 2014, in the Musqueam First Nation community near Vancouver. Drawing on the excellent feedback we’ve received from team members, we came up with four broad questions that will shape our discussions and deliberations at the gathering: What have we learned? How can we make a difference? What are we missing? and What’s next?
With these questions in mind, we sketched out a draft program that we will be sharing with team members over the next few weeks. In addition to the formal two-day gathering, we anticipate a number of pre- and post-gathering events, including a workshop for students and emerging scholars to be held on November 6th.
A big “thank you” to all of the Steering Committee members, who have given so generously of their time not only at the retreat but also throughout the life of the project. A special thanks to Robin Gray, student representative on the Steering Committee, who has made invaluable contributions to IPinCH.
Finally, this was the second time we retreated at Sasquatch Crossing and once again we were met with amazing kindness, grace, and generosity, for which we are grateful to Denny and Al, our lovely hosts.
Photos: The whole gang on the porch at the Sasquatch Crossing (photo courtesy K. Bannister); a planning session (photo: K. Bannister); Robin Gray and Julie Hollowell, John Welch, George Nicholas do some exploring (photos: B. Egan).
