Media production is a dynamic and evolving means of maintaining and preserving Indigenous knowledge, recording a living history of aural and visual culture and language in modern formats.

This submission responds to Intellectual Property (IP) Australia’s Protection of Indigenous Knowledge in the Intellectual Property System consultation paper. It does not address all questioned posed in the consultation process, instead focusing only on areas of IP that should extend to the production of media content and the protection of archive materials. It reminds IP Australia of the contribution First Nations media makes to the protection of language and the potential role our sector could undertake in education and awareness processes to support the proposal’s outlined in the consultation paper.

Key points

• First Nations media organisations have collected a significant catalogue of recorded media over the past 40+ years. However producers, media organisations and custodians can be hesitant about the digitisation of culturally sensitive materials due to concerns about the protection of Indigenous knowledge in digital formats. In response to these concerns, First Nations Media Australia established a Reference Group which developed the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Audiovisual Collections Plan for preserving and managing community collections.
• A number of protocols have been developed to provide guidance to media around the representation of matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the research, collection, production and publishing of media stories. 
• The inclusion of archived audiovisual recordings in a national database of Traditional Knowledge and genetic resources could reinforce adherence to copyright law. This would encourage repatriation for the use of those materials, resulting in greater economic opportunities, for First Nations produced content.
• First Nations media organisations currently broadcast in over 20 Indigenous languages nationally, including the first language of many people in remote communities. In this way, our sector contributes to the ongoing maintenance of Indigenous languages every day. 
• First Nations Media Australia encourages IP Australia to draw on the resources, reach and expertise of the First Nations media sector in education and awareness activities.