Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property

The term Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) refers to Indigenous peoples’ rights over their traditional culture, knowledge and heritage in all forms that may take. ICIP may include:

• writing (books, articles, poems)
• music (recorded or performed)
• performances (e.g. dance, ceremonies)
• artistic work (e.g. painting, carving)
• languages (documented/recorded or orally transmitted)
• tangible cultural property (e.g. sacred sites, burial grounds)
• intangible cultural property (e.g. oral tradition, traditional knowledge)
• ancestral remains and genetic material
• documentation of Indigenous peoples’ heritage in all forms (e.g. reports, films, sound recordings)

(Arts Law, 2011; Terri Janke and Company, 2018)

This factsheet on Respecting and Protecting ICIP provides a great overview of ICIP rights.

Australian copyright law does not have specific provisions for ICIP, and there are gaps in the law that can leave ICIP vulnerable to exploitation. Here are the main issues:

• Copyright only protects intellectual property that exists in a material form. This describes material that is documented, recorded or captured in some way. This means that material that is orally transmitted (or performed without being recorded in some way) is not protected by copyright.
• Copyright ownership tends to be centred on individual ownership and demonstration of “intellectual effort”. ICIP may be community or collectively owned, developed, and passed down through many generations.
• Copyright protection has a limited timeframe. The typical duration of copyright protection is 70 years after the creator’s death. As Indigenous peoples have cultural traditions and creations that span thousands of years, this timeframe is very limited in comparison.

(Kearney et al, 2018)

• Curtin’s Intellectual Property Policy provides guidance on ownership of ICIP by Curtin employees.

• In her book True tracks: Respecting Indigenous knowledge and culture (2021), Dr Terri Janke provides guidelines on ways to engage with ICIP that respect the needs of Indigenous people.

• Dr Janke also co-authored the Protocols for using First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts, which provides guidance for creative practitioners, particularly those who have received grants from Australia Council for the Arts.

• The AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research also contain guidance on how to use ICIP appropriately for research purposes.

Copyright holders are usually the creator(s) of the work, but copyright can be assigned to others and owned by multiple people. Copyright ownership among multiple people should be agreed upon in advance and documented to avoid disputes.

Copyright owners have exclusive rights under Australian law to copy, download, distribute, adapt, perform and translate the work. This means that non-copyright holders who wish to do any of these actions require permission from the copyright holder(s), unless an exception applies. A user of a work is allowed to read or link to a work online without permission of the copyright holder. To learn more about copyright see Copyright Basics.

All work is copyrighted upon creation and belongs to the owner(s) regardless of whether or not they apply a copyright statement. However, copyright statements can be useful in naming the owner(s) of the work and defining their terms of use. Cultural protocols, names of Knowledge Holders, Nations, Countries and or Language Groups can also be included as part of the copyright statement. It can also be useful to include contact information so that users can seek permission. There is lots of flexibility in how you can display a copyright statement, and how much information you’d like to include.

Example 1. Simple copyright statement:
©Cameron Jones, 2026. All rights reserved. For permissions, please contact: cameronjones@email.com

Example 2. Detailed ICIP statement for documents and/or artwork (see Notes section at bottom of page): Kaarl–ka–Nyininge, A Place to be.

Example 3. Detailed ICIP statement for website: Centre for Reworlding.

If you are displaying art online, there are different approaches you can take to protect your work from copyright infringement.
Watermarks. If you have art or photographs for sale, you can apply a watermark across the sample or display image.

Low resolution image. Display a low resolution image while making it clear that the high resolution version is available for sale.

For more tips, see Arts Law’s guide to protecting your work online.

Telling people how you would like your work attributed makes it easier for users to cite the work accurately. In addition to title, author, date and URL, attribution components might include the relevant Nation/Country/Language Group(s) of the ICIP Knowledge Holders, where appropriate.

For example:
Yandarra with Gumbaynggirr Country, Aunty Shaa Smith, Uncle Bud Marshall, Smith, N., Wright, S., Daley, L., & Hodge, P. (2022). Ethics and consent in more-than-human research: Some considerations from/with/as Gumbaynggirr Country, Australia. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 47 (3), 709–724. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12520

For more attribution examples, see the Indigenous Knowledges Attribution Toolkit.

Contracts ensure that the terms of use of the ICIP are clear, fair and agreed upon by all parties.
Here is Arts Law’s guide to contract basics.
Artists in the Black, a service of Arts Law for Indigenous artists, provides free legal advice and help with contracts.
See also Creative Workplaces’ guide to Respectful Use and Sharing of ICIP for examples of benefit sharing that might be included in contracts.

If you find your work has been used in a way that breaches your intellectual property rights (e.g. used unlawfully), you can send a takedown notice to whomever is responsible for the breach.
Arts Law’s guide to takedown notices provides instructions and a template for this process.

Artificial intelligence “crawlers” or “bots” are automated computer programs which explore the internet, copying material for use in training artificial intelligence models. This continues to be a controversial issue internationally. While such copying is generally not permitted within Australia without permission, the law cannot prevent AI crawlers from overseas copying content from Australian websites. There are several approaches copyright holders have taken to block AI crawlers.

Website settings. Adding protocols in a website’s internal structure (such as a robot.txt file or Really Simple Licensing) can provide instructions to bots on which portions of a website they can visit and how the content can or can’t be used. However, not all bots comply with these protocols.

Image Filters. These tools have emerged as a response to AI bot crawling and learning from art styles. Applying an image filter such as Glaze to an image can mask how the art appears to an AI bot, while remaining unchanged to human eyes.

Hide your work from bots. Work cannot be crawled by AI bots if it cannot be found or accessed. You might choose to make work only available to those with a link (or a login), or only provide your work behind a paywall or upon request. For example, the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories website has a Members Only section for certain songs and stories, secured behind a login.