Melaina Dyck (Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation), “The Living Pharmacy: Innovation and Intellectual Property of Indigenous Knowledge in Pucallpa, Peru” (Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies)

F&ES alum Melaina Dyck currently works in the Peruvian Amazon as a Global Justice Fellow with the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation. The Gruber Fellowship, which is administered by Yale Law School, provides financial support for Yale graduates to implement one-year projects concerning global justice and women’s rights. Dyck’s fellowship focuses on bridging government and local efforts to secure intellectual property rights for traditional ecological knowledge. Dyck strives to prioritize community needs by using participatory research and engagement approaches.  Dyck’s primary focus is supporting Farmacia Viva Indigena (“Indigenous Living Pharmacy”)—a committee of residents in one indigenous community that maintains a forest garden of medicinal plants, through which native plant species and traditional medicinal knowledge are preserved and developed. Dyck has collaborated with Farmacia Viva to realize long-term goals for the garden project, worked with women in the community to organize a workshop in which women taught each other about plant remedies, and facilitated a visit by government representatives from Lima who led workshops on indigenous intellectual property rights.  Dyck’s Gruber presentation will examine the benefits and challenges of working at the community level in order to engage the global indigenous rights concerns, and provide insight into the Gruber Fellowship for prospective applicants.

 

 

 

Interested in attending this event but not a F&ES student? Just e-mail fes.cdo@yale.edu to RSVP.