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Monday, September 15, 2003

The New York Times reviews Who Owns Native Culture?, a book by Michael F. Brown, a professor at Williams College who questions ownership of cultural property and traditions.

According to The Times, the book is a "brave, logical and even witty book about some of the hazards and challenges of cultural heritage protection." But rather than say everything should be for sale or everything should be closed off, Brown seeks "the middle road," the reviewer says, where people "can develop informal social norms of decency and respect that are responsive to the concerns of indigenous peoples without turning our society into a patchwork of legally empowered illiberal cultural enclaves."

Brown has a passage about the campaign to eliminate the use of the Washington Redskins team name. "'Native American cultures have survived five centuries of pestilence, military conflict and dispossession. Compared to these catastrophes, in what meaningful sense does the name of a professional football team put their survival at risk? One could argue just as convincingly that petty insults actually promote cultural survival by bringing Indians together in solidarity against the dominant culture," Brown writes.

The first chapter of Brown's book is reprinted in The Times. "Who Owns Native Culture?" is published by Harvard Press.

Get the Story:
Review: 'Who Owns Native Culture?': The Gatekeepers (The New York Times 9/14)
First Chapter: 'Who Owns Native Culture?' (The New York Times 9/14)
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