For years, anthropologists studied indigenous tribes and then took their research home, published it and reaped the financial and academic rewards.

But a new international project will look at how researchers can balance their own desires with those of the community being studied.

Joe Watkins, director of the Native American Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma, will be on the steering committee for the project on Intellectual Property in Cultural Heritage.

Never before has such a massive project been undertaken to tackle the issues of cultural heritage rights, Watkins said.

The seven-year project is funded through a $2.5 million grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s Major Collaborative Research Initiatives program, which is similar to the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The committee has met only once before, and planned its second video conference call Wednesday to iron out some of the details.

“Right now we’re kind of feeling our way because it is such a new project and in some ways a new thought process,” Watkins said.

The committee will distribute the grant money to dozens of primary researchers throughout the world. Then the committee will oversee the projects, coordinate efforts and make recommendations from its wider vantage point.

“My role is to provide guidance to a worldwide network of anthropologists and archaeologists,” Watkins said.

The committee will look at how to integrate diverse findings and develop overarching themes from the case studies.

Research will address intellectual property rights for heritage and cultural resources and material, Watkins said. That could include archaeology, oral history or language.

Westerners often think of intellectual property as anything that’s published. So if an anthropologist goes to an indigenous community and studies its oral history and then publishes a book about it, the Westerner will think that content is his property.

But indigenous people have a different view of intellectual property.

“It’s more of an idea of control and sharing,” Watkins said.

The steering committee will take on projects that grapple with these conflicting views, hopefully giving indigenous people more of a voice, Watkins said.