A/HRC/45/35 people of origin. This should be undertaken in an impartial manner, based on scientific, professional and humanitarian principles as well as applicable local, national and international legislation, in preference to action at a governmental or political level” (para. 6.2). 36. In 2018, the European Parliament adopted a wide-ranging resolution calling on the European Union and its member States to address indigenous peoples’ rights. It specifically expressed support for indigenous peoples’ requests for international repatriation and the establishment of an international mechanism to fight the sale of indigenous artefacts taken from them illegally, including through financial assistance under the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights.18 IV. Repatriation and intangible cultural heritage 37. An emerging issue in repatriation concerns the intangible cultural heritage of indigenous peoples, such as their languages, ceremonies, songs, scientific information, and other expressions of knowledge, identity and culture. As with ceremonial objects and human remains, indigenous peoples have their own laws on and customs and traditions for the treatment of those resources. While many property law systems classify aspects of cultural heritage as “intellectual” or “intangible” properties, those distinctions are not necessarily meaningful for indigenous peoples, to whom these are all interconnected aspects of the living world.19 In the case of genetic resources, human blood and tissue are often used to extract valuable information leading to patents, illustrating the linkages between the tangible and intangible realms. 38. Indigenous peoples have suffered myriad human rights violations in the realm of intangible cultural heritage, including corporate exploitation of indigenous peoples’ traditional ecological knowledge for patents on pharmaceuticals; fashion designers’ appropriation of textile designs; and musical entertainers’ sampling of indigenous spiritual songs. The appropriation of indigenous peoples’ cultural heritage causes a range of spiritual, cultural, religious and economic harm caused by others’ appropriation. The same is true of unauthorized use of blood samples and DNA for scientific research.20 39. Most national legal systems fail to recognize indigenous peoples’ laws and treat such resources either as part of the public domain or – perhaps even worse – subject to the intellectual property ownership of non-indigenous parties who file claims for them. Indigenous peoples are concerned about loss of knowledge, privacy, sustainability and biodiversity, as well as the injustice of others profiting from their inventions and knowledge. It is also difficult for indigenous peoples to trace the taking of their intangible cultural heritage. 40. Claims for repatriation in this context are complicated by the ways that the law of property disaggregates interests among tangible and intangible aspects. When it comes to DNA or traditional ecological knowledge, researchers who acquired various raw materials or know-how from indigenous peoples may have subsequently obtained patents, research grants and product lines. Claims to return the blood or seeds originally taken are legally distinguishable from claims for participation in patent benefits. By the same token, even if a museum possesses and considers repatriating a ceremonial object such as a drum, recordings of the drum music may be owned and have been copyrighted by another party. 21 This is true even if the relevant indigenous people consider the drum and its sound, along with the traditional knowledge used to make the drum from the wood and sinew of the local landscape, and the voices of those who carried and sang with it, all to embody and express the eternal heartbeat of the people. 18 19 20 21 8 See www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-8-2018-0279_EN.html. Angela A. Riley and Kristen A. Carpenter, “Owning red: a theory of Indian (cultural) appropriation”, Texas Law Review, vol. 94, No. 5 (2016); and Kristen A. Carpenter, Sonia Katyal and Angela Riley, “In defense of property”, Yale Law Journal, vol. 118, No. 6 (April 2009). Kim Tallbear, Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Presentation by Harriet Deacon at the expert seminar.