Justice, Transaction, Translation: Blackfoot Tipi Transfers and WIPO s Search for the Facts of Traditional Knowledge Exchange

In this article, I examine the complexities and politics of enrolling one socially embedded form of transaction and knowledge into the terms or practices of another. I look at the correspondences and divergences in how the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) transposed the "facts" of Blackfoot tipi-transfer practices in efforts to harmonize global intellectual property (IP) regimes and to achieve "justice" and "empowerment." WIPO s translation work is set against a case where Piikani Blackfoot tipi holders used relational transfer practices to effect a use arrangement, bypassing the means and ends of IP I argue that looking at WIPO s practices helps us to see anthropology s own epistemological, instrumental, and political constraints, while looking at Piikani transfers helps us to conceive of alternatives. This has bearing across anthropology s disciplinary spectrum where problems of knowledge translation are commonplace.