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Sorry but this seems like a curated list. Where are Kurds, Berbers, Yazidi, Basques, land given away by the Yalta conference. This makes only certain forms of l

Sorry but this seems like a curated list. Where are Kurds, Berbers, Yazidi, Basques, land given away by the Yalta conference. This makes only certain forms of land appropriation illegitimate.

elnatro 5y ago
Basques are as native as people from Burgos or other Spanish regions.
- mc32 5y ago
  I think the implication is their territory was shrunken from a larger area and now occupy a small corner. And the map of the middle east avoids Ottoman/Turk and British doings.
throwaway894345 5y ago
This is a general confusion (problem, trouble, discomfort) I have with dividing the world up into "indigenous" and "other"--it feels very arbitrary and ahistorical (and I'm happy to be corrected!). Surely all of human history and pre-history, people were moving around and conquering each other's territory and so on? What criteria do we use to determine which territory rightfully belongs to a given "people" (and "what constitutes a people?" seems like another particularly difficult question).
- nautilius 5y ago
  So you wouldn't object to a burglar coming into your house to steal all of 'your' stuff, because, clearly, that's how it has been done "all of human history and pre-history", and really, "What criteria do we use to determine which [stuff] rightfully belongs to [you]" anyway?
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Of course, but the idea here is that in all likelihood, the indigenous people themselves took the land from another group in prehistory, so I don’t understand why we talk about various places which were long since colonized “really belonging” to the indigenous group. What’s the point? They were likely neither the first to the land, nor were they in control of the land when the music stopped (i.e., when we developed international norms for not colonizing other peoples). It doesn’t seem like a particularly convincing claim.
    - nautilius 5y ago
      You'll have to admit that your argument only holds if you pick your time frame of reference precisely, and conveniently, to just after land grab was no longer "acceptable". I don't think an arbitrarily and conveniently defined cut-off date makes it a morally defensible argument, if it even ever was acceptable (the morality of this was even discussed at the time of the landgrab). It's like the burglars saying, "well of course if you had bought your stuff a week later, you'd be safe. But, tough luck!" It's not like that was 1000 years ago; There are people today that were alive when that happened, or knew people who lived through it.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        To be clear, I don’t think there’s a good ethical framework for determining who has rightful claim to a given plot of land. I agree that it’s convenient for me that the least arbitrary “cutoff” is the relatively stabilization of borders (which itself is pretty nebulous). I’m not wed to it, but it certainly seems more defensible than “whoever was there when history arrived”. The whole enterprise seems intractable. Or as another commenter put it: > the whole thing is a big fucking mess.
        nautilius 5y ago
        Oh yeah, it's a mess, we surely agree on that ;-)

Sorry but this seems like a curated list. Where are Kurds, Berbers, Yazidi, Basques, land given away by the Yalta conference. This makes only certain forms of land appropriation illegitimate.

elnatro 5y ago

Basques are as native as people from Burgos or other Spanish regions.

mc32 5y ago
I think the implication is their territory was shrunken from a larger area and now occupy a small corner. And the map of the middle east avoids Ottoman/Turk and British doings.

throwaway894345 5y ago

This is a general confusion (problem, trouble, discomfort) I have with dividing the world up into "indigenous" and "other"--it feels very arbitrary and ahistorical (and I'm happy to be corrected!). Surely all of human history and pre-history, people were moving around and conquering each other's territory and so on? What criteria do we use to determine which territory rightfully belongs to a given "people" (and "what constitutes a people?" seems like another particularly difficult question).

nautilius 5y ago
So you wouldn't object to a burglar coming into your house to steal all of 'your' stuff, because, clearly, that's how it has been done "all of human history and pre-history", and really, "What criteria do we use to determine which [stuff] rightfully belongs to [you]" anyway?
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Of course, but the idea here is that in all likelihood, the indigenous people themselves took the land from another group in prehistory, so I don’t understand why we talk about various places which were long since colonized “really belonging” to the indigenous group. What’s the point? They were likely neither the first to the land, nor were they in control of the land when the music stopped (i.e., when we developed international norms for not colonizing other peoples). It doesn’t seem like a particularly convincing claim.
  - nautilius 5y ago
    You'll have to admit that your argument only holds if you pick your time frame of reference precisely, and conveniently, to just after land grab was no longer "acceptable". I don't think an arbitrarily and conveniently defined cut-off date makes it a morally defensible argument, if it even ever was acceptable (the morality of this was even discussed at the time of the landgrab). It's like the burglars saying, "well of course if you had bought your stuff a week later, you'd be safe. But, tough luck!" It's not like that was 1000 years ago; There are people today that were alive when that happened, or knew people who lived through it.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      To be clear, I don’t think there’s a good ethical framework for determining who has rightful claim to a given plot of land. I agree that it’s convenient for me that the least arbitrary “cutoff” is the relatively stabilization of borders (which itself is pretty nebulous). I’m not wed to it, but it certainly seems more defensible than “whoever was there when history arrived”. The whole enterprise seems intractable. Or as another commenter put it: > the whole thing is a big fucking mess.
      - nautilius 5y ago
        Oh yeah, it's a mess, we surely agree on that ;-)