Intellectual Property Laws and Heritage Protection

I disagree as much with the author on certain points which are made in this article as a I agree with other viewpoints that were illustrated. What I really disagree with in this article is the paragraph on page 54 where the author states that he feels Johnny Bulun Bulun leaves important questions unanswered in his statement in the that the author places in the above paragraph. The author states that he does not see how a reproduction in a book or in this article has less negative impact than the art reproduced on a T-shirt or blanket to be sold by someone other than the community and person who has made the art. I disagree totally. I think that if the artist was given a chance to explain this, he would. I believe, having read this article and it's issues very carefully, that the artist and his community might not have as big of a problem with the reproduction in a book because the art is reproduced to be a teaching tool about the culture and it's aesthetics, whereas reproducting this on another type of product implies that the person wearing this art reproduction might in fact be trying to embody the art. This cannot be done by anyone outside the community.I guess this would be considered part of the fair use doctrine? I am not going to say what this is an what this isn't because I just don't know enough about it. I think the author should have done the same in regards to the spiritual issues of this case. I feel that the author could have tried to take a more neutral stance here but instead he interjects his own opinions which lead the reader to believe that he finds Bulun Bulun's claim to be fraudulent. Otherwise, I actually found this article and it's discussions to be very interesting and important. I don't really know anything about Aboriginal cultures in Australia but I know that in some ways, these issues mirror issues closer to home for all of us. Unfortunately in this country, we do not hear very much about the constant battles which still go on in American courtrooms since our ancestors colonized the U.S. and took land away from our own native peoples.
I think that the author makes some really solid points later in the article and provides good examples to give his readers a sense of how complicated all of this is and how different our cultures are from one another. We cannot infringe our own rules onto others because, as Michael Brown states late in the article, "the theft of musical and artistic genres becomes the final assault after colonialism has taken away everything else.
Michael Brown also starts a conversation about the expiration of intellectual property and what this might mean for cultures like the aboriginal community that Bulun, Bulun belongs. I feel like these rights should extend to the communities from which the artist comes. They are from a different culture than we are and we should not try to impose our laws or ways of being upon them.