Protecting Indigenous Art

A personal account of how copyright protects Indigenous art

There is the country non-Indigenous people can see, and then there is the country Indigenous people see that the rest of us can barely comprehend, but glimpse through the vivid colours, shapes and imagery of their artworks, and their visual recounting of ancient stories and settings.

The unauthorised use of Indigenous artworks is a global industry that damages cultural integrity and harms the livelihoods of artists an…