This article aims to give both an overview as well as to develop certain critical thinking tools that can help a reader engage with the complexity and diversity of Indigenous knowledge and intellectual property rights. It considers the cultural specificity of intellectual property law as well as looking at sites of contemporary struggle. Embedded in the article are questions of knowledge and power as well as how historical legacies of colonialism continue to affect the way we interpret the world and its cultures. The article also raises questions about legal authority and the way frameworks for participation and interpretation in legal contexts are produced and made available to parties that have been marginalized from such spaces.