From Obstruction to Decolonization? 159
initiatives, indigenous and African Diaspora-led, have already been informing
and inspiring seed sovereignty and seedkeeping practices across the region. Even
more expansively, such a compilation could learn from Biocultural Community
Protocols across the Abya Yala continent (Las Américas) broadly.
The next research, advocacy, and policy need is an application of BC and TK
Labels and Notices, along with CARE Principles, on data related to plant genetic
resources for food and agriculture. This would expand knowledge and actualization of indigenous data sovereignty as it relates to digital and analog resources:
PGRFA and the knowledge therein.
Finally, agrobiodiversity governance needs a compilation of indigenous and
indigenous- and Black-led public declarations on the subject. Following the lead
of the Atateken Declaration, what Policy Briefs would emerge from these cosmologically grounded political articulations.
17 Concurrently, the U.S. involvement in the ITPGRFA needs investigations regarding political economy and the
role of big philanthropy and agribusiness and data industries in any U.S. national
plan of action.
What are the diverse epistemologies at work – and at odds – in plant
germplasm conservation governance in the U.S., and how do these dynamics
impact international governance paradigms and resources? Just as hallmarks of
biocultural jurisprudence and challenges to Western legal categories of privatized
property and individualized innovation (as laid out in this book’s introduction),
Biocultural Community Protocols fundamentally challenge the U.S. colonial
settler and imperial paradigms. Yet, they also speak to longstanding modes of
resistance. The U.S. government has long played an obstructionist role in international forum related to agrobiodiversity, as the flagrant non-ratifier of the
CBD. Even the U.S. government’s ratification of the ITPGRFA carries the tensions and risks of increased IPR, entrenched agro-industry lobbyists, and indigenous erasures. Yet, possibilities abound for the U.S. leadership to listen to and
learn from the Biocultural Community Protocols, indigenous-led biocultural
initiatives, and the movements for indigenous data sovereignty, all unfolding and
expanding across Turtle Island territories. Community-based action-research is
needed to explore how the multiple perspectives and stakeholders of U.S.-based
civil society, indigenous nations, farmer- and practitioner-of color organizations,
and community-partnered researchers could make their way into CBD ratification as well as into the national focal point office at the U.S. State Department at
the ITPGRFA meetings. This has the potential to inform, reform, and transform
agrobiodiversity governance at large – to move from obstruction to decolonization and even indigenization.
Notes
1 *All URLs retrieved on 1 September 2021.
2 WG8J, First North American Dialogue on Biocultural Diversity, CBD/WG8J/11/
INF/612 October 2019, Annex I.
initiatives, indigenous and African Diaspora-led, have already been informing
and inspiring seed sovereignty and seedkeeping practices across the region. Even
more expansively, such a compilation could learn from Biocultural Community
Protocols across the Abya Yala continent (Las Américas) broadly.
The next research, advocacy, and policy need is an application of BC and TK
Labels and Notices, along with CARE Principles, on data related to plant genetic
resources for food and agriculture. This would expand knowledge and actualization of indigenous data sovereignty as it relates to digital and analog resources:
PGRFA and the knowledge therein.
Finally, agrobiodiversity governance needs a compilation of indigenous and
indigenous- and Black-led public declarations on the subject. Following the lead
of the Atateken Declaration, what Policy Briefs would emerge from these cosmologically grounded political articulations.
17 Concurrently, the U.S. involvement in the ITPGRFA needs investigations regarding political economy and the
role of big philanthropy and agribusiness and data industries in any U.S. national
plan of action.
What are the diverse epistemologies at work – and at odds – in plant
germplasm conservation governance in the U.S., and how do these dynamics
impact international governance paradigms and resources? Just as hallmarks of
biocultural jurisprudence and challenges to Western legal categories of privatized
property and individualized innovation (as laid out in this book’s introduction),
Biocultural Community Protocols fundamentally challenge the U.S. colonial
settler and imperial paradigms. Yet, they also speak to longstanding modes of
resistance. The U.S. government has long played an obstructionist role in international forum related to agrobiodiversity, as the flagrant non-ratifier of the
CBD. Even the U.S. government’s ratification of the ITPGRFA carries the tensions and risks of increased IPR, entrenched agro-industry lobbyists, and indigenous erasures. Yet, possibilities abound for the U.S. leadership to listen to and
learn from the Biocultural Community Protocols, indigenous-led biocultural
initiatives, and the movements for indigenous data sovereignty, all unfolding and
expanding across Turtle Island territories. Community-based action-research is
needed to explore how the multiple perspectives and stakeholders of U.S.-based
civil society, indigenous nations, farmer- and practitioner-of color organizations,
and community-partnered researchers could make their way into CBD ratification as well as into the national focal point office at the U.S. State Department at
the ITPGRFA meetings. This has the potential to inform, reform, and transform
agrobiodiversity governance at large – to move from obstruction to decolonization and even indigenization.
Notes
1 *All URLs retrieved on 1 September 2021.
2 WG8J, First North American Dialogue on Biocultural Diversity, CBD/WG8J/11/
INF/612 October 2019, Annex I.