59.03.010 Definitions

For purposes of this Act:

(a) "Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indian Community" includes Tribal members, their descendants and ancestors, and other individuals, families, clans, and people residing within the reservation and the exterior boundaries of the Reservation.

(b) "Academic Research" means research carried out to obtain educational qualifications, to further an academic career at an institution of higher learning, or for scientific advancement

(c) "Biodiversity" means the total variety of life in all its forms including levels that range from alleles to the biosphere and shall include alleles, genes, populations, species, ecosystems, landscapes, and the ecological processes of which they are a part.

(d) "Biogenetic Resources" means biological and genetic resources, including plant material, animals, microorganisms, cells, and genes.

(e) "Biological Samples" means, but is not limited to, bacteria and other microorganisms, plant, animal, or any human biological materials, genetic samples, any copies of the original genetic samples, any cell lines containing copies of the original genetic samples, and data derived from these samples.

(f) "Commercial Purposes" means to sell, purchase, barter, trade, delayed compensation for profit, exchange, transport, or offer to sell, purchase, barter, trade, delay compensation for profit, exchange, or transport.

(g) "Cultural Research" means any endeavor, by means of critical investigation and study of a subject, to discover new or collate old facts or hypotheses on a cultural subject, the latter being defined as any ethnographic or anthropological study, including basic data collection, studies of or incorporating traditional knowledge or classifications systems (e.g. studies of medicinal properties of plants), documentary films, archaeology, linguistics and ethno-historical accounts.

(h) "Indigenous" means native, originating or growing naturally in a specific landscape and also refers to people descending from the original inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere who have maintained distinct languages, culture, or religion from time immemorial.

(i) "Products of Research" means publications (including but not limited to reports, studies, articles, theses, books, manuscripts, sound recordings, film and video, media interviews, computer databases), field notes, illustrations, photographs, sound recordings, collected material artifacts, replicas, and specimens, including any derivative forms they may take such as translations, and communications through the electronic media, including the internet and world wide web.

(j) "Research" includes identification, description, classification, collection, database, recordation, analysis, and publication in fields including, but not limited to, the arts, the culture, the sciences, the social sciences, the environment, health, medicine, linguistics, history, and other investigative disciplines or approaches as identified by the Tribe.

(k) "Reservation" means all lands outside or inside the exterior boundaries of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indian Reservation which are under the jurisdiction of the Tribe, ancestral lands where the tribe holds interest, and such lands as may hereafter be obtained or added to the jurisdiction of the Tribe.

(l) "RRB" refers to a minimum five (5) Tribal members of the Research Review Board established under this Act.

(m) "Taboo/Sacred" means subjects to which access is restricted to any degree which may include such subjects as places, names, knowledge, oral traditions, objects, and practices.

(n) "Traditional Indigenous Intellectual Property" means the indigenous cultural information, knowledge, uses, and practices unique to the Tribe's ways of life maintained and established over tribal homelands and aboriginal areas. This knowledge is based upon millennia of observation, habitation, and experience, and is a communal right held by the Tribe, and in some instances by individuals. This property includes, but is not limited to, the following:

(1) knowledge of remembered histories and traditions;

(2) details of cultural landscapes and particularly sites of cultural significance;

(3) records of contemporary events of historical and cultural significance;

(4) sacred property (images, objects, sounds, knowledge, material, culture or anything that is deemed sacred by the community);

(5) knowledge of current use, previous use, and/or potential use of plant and animal species, soils, minerals, objects;

(6) knowledge of preparation, processing, or storage of useful species;

(7) knowledge of formulations involving more than one ingredient;

(8) knowledge of individual species (planting methods, care for, selection criteria);

(9) knowledge of ecosystem conservation (methods of protecting or preserving a resource);

(10) biogenetic resources that originate (or originated) on indigenous lands and territories;

(11) tissues, cells, biogenetic molecules including DNA, RNA, and proteins, and all other substances originating in the bodies of Tribal members, in addition to genetic and other information derived therefrom;

(12) cultural property (images, sounds, crafts, art, symbols, motifs, names, performances); and;

(13) Knowledge of systems of taxonomy of plants, animals, and insects.

(o) "Traditional Knowledge Right" means the traditional right of individuals to control the ways the information they provide is used and accessed. The issue of Traditional Knowledge Rights arises when individuals either own or are the custodians of specialized (or usually taboo/sacred) knowledge and its communication. This knowledge can include but is not limited to names, ceremonies, designs or forms, oral traditions, practices and skills.

(p) "Tribal Member" means an individual Indian who is enrolled in the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indian Tribe.

(q) "Tribe" means the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indian Tribe.