Indigenous societies are increasing concerned about "cultural appropriation" - the taking of cultural information without the informed consent of the society. When that knowledge is published or placed in public data banks it is no longer under the control of the originating society.

One basis of concern, intelligible to those of us in a market economy where everything is commoditized, is that knowledge of the healing properties of botanical and other natural substances may be appropriated from published knowledge by commercial drug and cosmetic firms who then have no responsibility to the society whose ancestors discovered and preserved the knowledge. Others get rich; the originators get nothing. And the scientist who collected and published the information, regardless of who holds the copyright, has been the agent for converting cultural information into the public domain where it is forever "captured."

In my experience a more widespread basis for the concern is that much indigenous "knowledge" - in some societies, most of it - is embedded in a belief system that couches "facts" within spiritual contexts. Thus in a great many societies, large categories of information are devine gifts, and to use such knowledge for commercial purposes, for personal gain, commits a sort of insult or disrespect to that context. Preserving knowledge in a respectful context seems to me to be the main concern of indigenous societies, and only occasionally is it a quest for commercial co-participation. To many of us it seems appropriate that we honor a society's feelings by not putting sacred symbols on sweat shirts and coffee mugs, and to refrain from subjecting a sacred plant substance to a regimen of disintegrative laboratory analyses which treat it as simply another mix of organic compounds.

The physical scientists among us at this point start getting a panicked look. In my experience, however, indigenous societies are as interested in helping the human species as any society. But they do want the right to say no, to set conditions under which the knowledge may be used, and to maintain that control not just at first collection, but indefinitely into the future.

Not all indigenous cultural information is of this degree of concern. As Malinowski showed early in the century, all societies have non-sacred, trivial information that can be readily alienated. The key is that indigenous societies need to be able to decide which information needs to be given special protection and which does not. This raises the matter of informed consent.

In more than a metaphorical sense, our professions need to stop "capturing" indigenous knowledge.

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