Debra Harry
Topic: Indigenous Peoples and Biocolonialism: Conflicting Sovereignties
and Worldviews
Biographical Information
Debra Harry is Northern Paiute from the Pyramid Lake Reservation
in western Nevada. She is a long time activist committed to protecting
the human and collective rights of Indigenous peoples from the ongoing
impacts of colonialism, a commitment that has steadily grown since her
early resistance against the expanding militarism in Nevada. In the mid-1990s,
Debra joined up with the late Dr. Frank Dukepoo, the respected Hopi and
Laguna geneticist who was one of the early Native American voices questioning
the potential dangers to indigenous peoples of genetics research, his
own chosen and beloved profession, and together they co-founded the organization,
the Indigenous People's Council on Biocolonialsm, of which Debra is now
the executive director. The Indigenous People's Council on Biocolonialism
was established to challenge the "new wave of colonialism", in other words,
the new interest in the appropriation, commodification, and patenting
of the genetic resources of indigenous peoples by international corporate,
scientific, and government entities. In 1994, Debra received a three-year
Kellogg Foundation Leadership Fellowship to research the effects of genetics
research and biotechnology on indigenous peoples and their environments.
Since then she has published numerous articles on topics such as the Human
Genome Diversity Project, indigenous knowledge, biodiversity, and intellectual
property rights, and the impacts of corporate globalization on indigenous
cultures, as well as several educational handbooks including Indigenous
Peoples, Genes, and Genetics and, Life, Lineage, and Sustenance: Indigenous
Peoples and Genetic Engineering. Currently, Debra is a doctoral candidate
at the University of Auckland.
Debra has represented the position and interests of Indigenous Peoples
on the issue of genetic resources, indigenous knowledge and intellectual
property rights at the United Nations, most recently at the United Nations
Convention on Biological Diversity held in Kuala Lumpur in February of
this year. At this meeting of UN member states who are parties to the
Convention on Biological Diversity, Debra Harry called upon indigenous
peoples to declare their territories "No Access Zones for genetic resources
and indigenous knowledge." This declaration was in response to the state's
intention to develop an international regime on access and benefit sharing
that will develop the global mechanisms that facilitate the exploitation
of genetic resources.
At this recent United Nations forum, as well as in many other national
and international conventions in which she participates, Debra Harry argues
that the right to self-determination of indigenous peoples must be recognized
and respected.
As part of her ongoing effort to amplify the voices and concerns of Indigenous
peoples regarding this new wave of colonialism, Debra has turned her interest
to visual media and has recently collaborated with the London-based independent
film company, Yeast Directions, to produce a film, funded by the Ford
Foundation and released last year, called "The Leech and the Earthworm".
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