Squeezing indigenous culture into the Western IPR system would do more harm than good

However, just because something can be done does not necessarily mean it should be done. There are dangers and unforeseen consequences that could come from putting sacred cultural elements into an ownership model. First, creating a property right to control cultural expression may trivialize and minimize both the importance of the cultural element being protecting and the harm of the appropriation. 124 While we enforce intellectual property laws, we may not see the infringement [*100] of a copyright or a trademark as a particularly serious transgression. There is also the issue of using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house, 125 meaning that if cultural appropriation is truly a weapon of colonialism and oppression, it is possible that the adoption of Western categories of property could actually empower the dominant culture. 126 Professor Farley posits, "Will translating indigenous art and authorship practices into western categories do more, in the end, to appropriate the local culture than straightforward pirating would?" 127 She further suggests that: Such an approach will force indigenous peoples to translate their story into the language of individualism, and therefore isolate and amplify one voice among many legitimate participants. It may, in the long run, be destructive to traditional indigenous culture to mandate that the world be thought of as the property of individuals. The cost of copyright protection may prove to be too high." 128 Others worry that attempts to protect indigenous culture might actually have the opposite effect, "freezing" a living culture and keeping it from growing and flourishing. 129 It has even been suggested that a certain level of cultural appropriation may actually preserve cultural elements and keep them from vanishing altogether. 130 These challenges and criticisms make it clear that if some kind of property rights scheme is employed to protect intangible indigenous cultural property rights, a great deal of care and attention to detail will be required to create legislation that will not only work, but will do more good than harm. These criticisms also highlight the problem with attempting to create a one size fits all statutory scheme to cover every situation and every group of people. The varying threats to cultural preservation faced by different tribes, created by different forms of appropriation, might very well require a number of diverse legal remedies at various levels of government. Others might be best addressed outside of the legal system altogether. In the drafting of any kind of law that would address these issues, the goal of such a legal remedy should always be kept in mind: to preserve culture, to protect sacred matter, and to strengthen sovereignty.