Samoan lawyer and Human Rights advocate, Sa’eumalo Hai-Yuean Tualima, has achieved a first for the Pacific.
She has become the first Pacific Islander to be chosen as the World Intellectual Property Organization (W.I.P.O) Indigenous Fellow.
Every year, the World Intellectual Property Organization chooses one person from around the globe to become their W.I.P.O Indigenous fellow. This year, Sa’eumalo has been given the honour. Speaking to the Sunday Samoan, Sa’eumalo said the one-year fellowship will potentially change her career path.
“This is a dream come true for me because only one person gets it per year,” she said.
Sa’eumalo holds a Bachelor of Arts in Criminology and Sociology, a Law degree as well as Masters of Law. She was admitted to the Samoan Bar last month She also worked in the Samoa Law Reform Commission on National Heritage Board Project and the National Human Rights Institution.
Among the key focus of the fellowship programme is the safeguarding of traditional knowledge.
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“Traditional Knowledge is basically cultural expressions which includes things like dance and song related to culture, also includes cultural practices.”
However she said preserving traditional knowledge faces a lot of challenges.
“In Samoa, there are two things mainly: because the traditional Intellectual system requires one owner and one of the main issues that this is a broad issue around the world is that there’s no true owner because stuff comes out of tribes or villages, groups of people that has ownership over something”
“And also, the traditional intellectual property system requires it hasn’t been exposed to the public in order to attract protection and the other issue is how do you manage stuff that has been exposed, the commercialization of it, how do you manage that?
How does it benefit like the traditional owner because it’s been exposed to the public and it has been commercialized so it’s quite a complicated issue to try and look at that.”
She recommends the government to start to work together with those who draft policy and law and with the villages, those who have the traditional knowledge and other holders of it to draft policy that is reflective of its cultural context not necessarily something that fits the intellectual property system but something that protects knowledge here and also will benefit the village people and benefits the people who owns that traditional knowledge.
Traditional knowledge “is very important because it’s the connection between the past, the present and the future, if it’s lost, we don’t know where we're from as well it’s really important for our culture to survive,” however she admits it’s hard because culture evolves.
Sa’eumalo heads to Geneva in February next year where she will be involved in assisting in undertaking activities with indigenous peoples and local communities related to intellectual property and genetic resources, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions.
The Fellowship Program was approved by WIPO Member States in December 2008 and started in August 2009.
The previous W.I.P.O Indigenous fellows were: Eliamani Laltaika (2009, United Republic of Tanzania), Patricia Adjei (2010, Australia), Gulnara Abbasova (2011, Ukraine), Jennifer Tauli Corpuz (2012, Philippines), Q’apaj Conde Choque (2013, Plurinational State of Bolivia).
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