BIO-CULTURAL COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS - Portal do Professor

PART I / CHAPTER 2
3.6 The Cultural Importance of TK
and Indigenous Breeds
All communities greatly emphasized the cultural importance
of their TK and where applicable, their indigenous breeds. The
Bushbuckridge traditional healers, for example, explained how
they perform a number of important roles as traditional healers
that underpin their Sepedi or Tsonga cultures:
As well as treating conventional illnesses, we perform a number
of other culturally significant roles in the community. We
connect community members to their ancestors in different
ways, including assisting families when their newborn babies
cry for their names, carrying out coming of age ceremonies,
providing counseling for a range of issues, chasing away evil
spirits through cleansing ceremonies, and determining when
the ancestors are calling someone to become a traditional healer.
We also induct new traditional healers, providing initiation
and training, thus passing on our knowledge and culture to
future generations. All of the above contributes to healthy
communities, builds leadership and morale, and promotes
our culture. 15
Likewise, the Samburu set out a number of areas of their
culture in which their breeds are important. They state:
In addition to the sustenance our livestock provides us, they
also play a significant role in our culture. A number of examples
illustrate this point:
• Each clan’s elders decide on the age set for initiating boys,
and a bull is slaughtered to validate that age set;
• During the coming of age ceremony, boys are circumcised
while wearing and sitting on Red Maasai sheep skins;
• As part of wedding ceremonies, the man must find a pure
Red Maasai sheep (signified by its red color, long ears and
clear eyes) and present it to his future Mother-in-Law who
is then referred to as “Paker”, literally meaning “the one who
has been given sheep.” Another sheep is slaughtered
for the wedding;
• The bride is given a calabash full of milk and a gourd
that is filled with the fat of from the tail of the Red Maasai
sheep, drinking the milk to assuage her fears about going
15. Supra note 8.
16. Supra note 2.
BIO-CULTURAL COMMUNITY PROTOCOLS AS A
COMMUNITY-BASED RESPONSE TO THE CBD
to the new home and moisturizing her skin with the fat
to relax her;
• When a child is born, a sheep is slaughtered, and when
someone dies, sheep fat is smeared on their mouths
as a sign of respect; and
• When we slaughter for warriors, we choose only one
color which they say is straight, also when someone is sick,
then they slaughter an animal that is healthy, with all the
teeth and eyes. There is a special steer (castrated bull) that
is slaughtered and a part of the skin is used as a ring.
The color has to be accepted by the community and it
must have all its teeth intact.
Notably, whilst mixed breeds can be used in lean times, the
pure indigenous breeds are more highly valued for use in
our ceremonies. 16
They concluded by saying: “Our culture and animal breeds
are integral to who we are as a People. Without our
indigenous breeds we will lose a critical part of our
collective bio-cultural heritage, and without our culture our
indigenous breeds are less likely to be conserved.”
3.7 Traditional Knowledge, Sharing and
Free, Prior and Informed Consent
In continuation of the last point, the idea of ABS and its
constituent parts such as FPIC is novel to many communities.
Communities need time to think through what prior
informed consent to use their natural resources or TK really
entails, especially when the idea of owning or selling
resources or knowledge can be alien.
Natural Justice’s approach has been to work with
communities to think through the customary laws that relate
to the sharing of TK and use of natural resources, helping
communities to extend the values that underpin their TK
or access to resources to other new stakeholders such
as (non-) commercial researchers.
All the groups mentioned above discussed how they
came to know their knowledge and how they share it
with each other. In fact, the sharing of knowledge was
presented by all groups as one of the most important
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