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> ... who owned the land ... they didn't use the word "owned", only "occupied". The indigenous groups probably didn't even have anything like our modern concep

by jlhawn 2y ago

> ... who owned the land ... they didn't use the word "owned", only "occupied". The indigenous groups probably didn't even have anything like our modern concept of land "ownership" and would think of it more like land alienation. As a Georgist, I'm personally very annoyed by these sort of empty indigenous land acknowledgements. I'm more excited about stuff like this Squamish Nation housing development in Vancouver, BC [1] where they actually get rights to use the land how they want even if it doesn't fit local expectations of "indigenous ways of knowing and being". [1] https://senakw.com/ https://senakw.com/

WalterBright 2y ago
> The indigenous groups probably didn't even have anything like our modern concept of land "ownership" I doubt they had deeds to land. But they did fight inter-tribal wars over which territory belonged to which tribe. Humans have a very well developed notion of "mine" and "not mine". Saying indigenous peoples did not have this is an extraordinary claim, and would need strong evidence.
- santoshalper 2y ago
  Also, OUR idea of ownership, at least legally, is based on the idea of usage and access. You may own a piece of land, but not the mineral rights. You can't prevent an aircraft from flying over your property etc. Ownership is a bundle of rights and exclusions. The idea of ownership meaning "who is allowed to hunt on this land" would fit right into our legal framework of ownership.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    I'm also pretty sure that any tribe that built a village and farmed had a very strong notion of my house and my garden. Even animals mark their territory and aggressively defend it.
    - AlotOfReading 2y ago
      You'd be surprised then. Indigenous property rights aren't homogenous. Many lacked the kind of exclusive ownership that we have in Western systems. (Some) Inuit recognized communal band lands for example, where a particular individual within that band might have rights to a particular resource location while they used it, but their usage was governed by complex systems of traditions and they couldn't necessarily exclude others from separate resources in the same physical location. Pueblo groups had extremely strong ideas about property lines, but those properties were often analogous to modern corporations where individual families could own "shares" in the property, and exchange those for other shares in other properties to reallocate ownership. Areas within a property could also be "rented" to others, or the entire property reclaimed by the government. The best way I can summarize it is that native Americans tended to have much more fine-grained ideas about what property rights entail than our Western systems. Capabilities based security vs role based security, to really force the analogy into computing.
      - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
        Is that really different than traditional Western societies? Medieval European societies had complex systems governing shared rights and ownership of common grazing lands and forests, for example. Those rights changed over time (such as through the Inclosure Acts) but it's not a concept alien to western societies.
        AlotOfReading 2y ago
        There's probably an interesting comparative discussion that I'm not remotely qualified to have on medieval European property rights, but there's enough history of colonial settlers wildly misunderstanding indigenous property systems that I don't know a better word than "alien".
        ethbr1 2y ago
        "Misunderstanding" seems perhaps overly charitable to the colonial settlers. Possessing of enough military force to ignore others rights would be more historically descriptive. Even if they had fully understood all the nuances of indigenous property rights, they still would have stolen the land. Confusion was just a fig leaf.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  Thanks for this bit of sanity. Arguing that Native Americans didn't have a concept of land ownership, while still having the concept "I'm going to murder you and your compatriots so that I can occupy the land where you live.", seems a bit like splitting hairs.
  - dcrazy 2y ago
    It’s not splitting hairs. There’s a recognizable difference between a tribe collectively defending exclusive access to certain land, and the concept of transferable, heritable private land interest.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Yes and no. Even in the US, commons-deeded land between multiple people is still a thing. Albeit one that lawyers hate to mess with because it's more work for them. For purposes of this thread, exclusive control of an area, absent other claims, would certainly entitle indigenous American peoples to ownership of that land.
      - throwway120385 2y ago
        We even form corporations to try to deed land as a group. That's the entire purpose of an HOA -- to confer private ownership of community-owned land and equipment among the members of the community as their private land changes hands.
        PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        HOAs do not confer private ownership of land among members of a group. They impose a mutually agreed upon set of rules on everyone who owns land that is covered by the HOA (with one of the rules preventing severance of the property from the HOA).
        jjnoakes 2y ago
- eapressoandcats 2y ago
  Brett Devereaux talks about this in relation to the Mongols and other nomads. Yes they didn’t “own” land but if you trespassed on their grazing pastures they would absolutely use violence against you: https://acoup.blog/2020/12/04/collections-that-dothraki-horde-part-i-barbarian-couture/ https://acoup.blog/2020/12/04/collections-that-dothraki-hord... The notion of a lack of land ownership is just fetishization.
IncreasePosts 2y ago
Well, I feel like the "traditional way of life" argument is okay for why they should get special treatment. But why should anyone get special treatment if they are going to just, essentially, treat it as way to siphon tax revenue from the larger society?
- pshc 2y ago
  Shouldn’t building dense housing in an area with a terrible housing shortage increase the tax base if anything?
- phdavis1027 2y ago
  Because that society committed what are at least atrocities and probably more fairly described as genocide against those societies for like 400 years. A small casino empire seems like the least we could do lol
- colechristensen 2y ago
  I’m perfectly fine with modern corrective actions taken in response to past treaty violations. They were treated with as separate nations in the past and now there are mechanisms for limited forms of self rule on tribal land.
jiggawatts 2y ago
Here in Australia they use the carefully crafted phrase: “the previous custodians of this land”. As in… we are the custodians now.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- stevage 2y ago
  What? No. The phrase is "the traditional owners" or sometimes "traditional custodians". Never previous.
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    Bad memory/paraphrasing on my part. Traditional and previous are near-synonyms.
    - stevage 2y ago
      I don't think that's true. Traditional can also carry the sense of ongoing.
- defrost 2y ago
  I've not seen "previous" used .. eg: W.AUstralian Health acknowledges the Aboriginal people of the many traditional lands and language groups of Western Australia. It acknowledges the wisdom of Aboriginal Elders both past and present and pays respect to Aboriginal communities of today. ~ https://www.health.wa.gov.au/Improving-WA-Health/About-Aboriginal-Health/Welcome-to-Country-and-Acknowledgement-of-Traditional-Ownership https://www.health.wa.gov.au/Improving-WA-Health/About-Abori... is pretty generic for a handwave across the entire state. In specific places, large tracts of land here, the terminology is current custodians - if you recall that whole deal with Mabo and Native Title there are large ares in which the traditional inhabitants are now the current owners under Commonwealth Law that once didn't acknowledge them as human and declared the land Terra Nullius. Mabo decision: https://www.aph.gov.au/Visit_Parliament/Art/Stories_and_Histories/The_Mabo_decision https://www.aph.gov.au/Visit_Parliament/Art/Stories_and_Hist... We acknowledge the Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their continued connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to their Cultures, Country and Elders past, present and emerging. We also acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, who are the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and live, the land on which this exhibition was created, and the land on which Australian Parliament House is situated – an area where people have met for thousands of years.
whimsicalism 2y ago
funny because i feel that your comment plays into the exact same tropes about “indigenous ways of knowing” you critique
BurningFrog 2y ago
The institution of land ownership is very important in farming societies, where land is what produces wealth and health. Societies on the hunter/gatherer spectrum also value their hunting grounds, but in far less strict ways. I'm pretty sure the indigenous peoples that lived by farming had well developed concepts of land ownership, but they were the minority when Europeans arrived.
- skeeter2020 2y ago
  Or really any permanent settlement. Look at say, Northern Inuit vs. Puebloans.
aprilthird2021 2y ago
I have always disliked and told people I disliked land acknowledgements because they are designed to earn the social capital of giving the land back without ever having any intention of doing anything close to that.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by jlhawn 2y ago

WalterBright 2y ago

> The indigenous groups probably didn't even have anything like our modern concept of land "ownership" I doubt they had deeds to land. But they did fight inter-tribal wars over which territory belonged to which tribe. Humans have a very well developed notion of "mine" and "not mine". Saying indigenous peoples did not have this is an extraordinary claim, and would need strong evidence.

santoshalper 2y ago
Also, OUR idea of ownership, at least legally, is based on the idea of usage and access. You may own a piece of land, but not the mineral rights. You can't prevent an aircraft from flying over your property etc. Ownership is a bundle of rights and exclusions. The idea of ownership meaning "who is allowed to hunt on this land" would fit right into our legal framework of ownership.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  I'm also pretty sure that any tribe that built a village and farmed had a very strong notion of my house and my garden. Even animals mark their territory and aggressively defend it.
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    You'd be surprised then. Indigenous property rights aren't homogenous. Many lacked the kind of exclusive ownership that we have in Western systems. (Some) Inuit recognized communal band lands for example, where a particular individual within that band might have rights to a particular resource location while they used it, but their usage was governed by complex systems of traditions and they couldn't necessarily exclude others from separate resources in the same physical location. Pueblo groups had extremely strong ideas about property lines, but those properties were often analogous to modern corporations where individual families could own "shares" in the property, and exchange those for other shares in other properties to reallocate ownership. Areas within a property could also be "rented" to others, or the entire property reclaimed by the government. The best way I can summarize it is that native Americans tended to have much more fine-grained ideas about what property rights entail than our Western systems. Capabilities based security vs role based security, to really force the analogy into computing.
    - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
      Is that really different than traditional Western societies? Medieval European societies had complex systems governing shared rights and ownership of common grazing lands and forests, for example. Those rights changed over time (such as through the Inclosure Acts) but it's not a concept alien to western societies.
      - AlotOfReading 2y ago
        There's probably an interesting comparative discussion that I'm not remotely qualified to have on medieval European property rights, but there's enough history of colonial settlers wildly misunderstanding indigenous property systems that I don't know a better word than "alien".
        ethbr1 2y ago
        "Misunderstanding" seems perhaps overly charitable to the colonial settlers. Possessing of enough military force to ignore others rights would be more historically descriptive. Even if they had fully understood all the nuances of indigenous property rights, they still would have stolen the land. Confusion was just a fig leaf.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
Thanks for this bit of sanity. Arguing that Native Americans didn't have a concept of land ownership, while still having the concept "I'm going to murder you and your compatriots so that I can occupy the land where you live.", seems a bit like splitting hairs.
- dcrazy 2y ago
  It’s not splitting hairs. There’s a recognizable difference between a tribe collectively defending exclusive access to certain land, and the concept of transferable, heritable private land interest.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Yes and no. Even in the US, commons-deeded land between multiple people is still a thing. Albeit one that lawyers hate to mess with because it's more work for them. For purposes of this thread, exclusive control of an area, absent other claims, would certainly entitle indigenous American peoples to ownership of that land.
    - throwway120385 2y ago
      We even form corporations to try to deed land as a group. That's the entire purpose of an HOA -- to confer private ownership of community-owned land and equipment among the members of the community as their private land changes hands.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        HOAs do not confer private ownership of land among members of a group. They impose a mutually agreed upon set of rules on everyone who owns land that is covered by the HOA (with one of the rules preventing severance of the property from the HOA).
        jjnoakes 2y ago
eapressoandcats 2y ago
Brett Devereaux talks about this in relation to the Mongols and other nomads. Yes they didn’t “own” land but if you trespassed on their grazing pastures they would absolutely use violence against you: https://acoup.blog/2020/12/04/collections-that-dothraki-horde-part-i-barbarian-couture/ https://acoup.blog/2020/12/04/collections-that-dothraki-hord... The notion of a lack of land ownership is just fetishization.

IncreasePosts 2y ago

Well, I feel like the "traditional way of life" argument is okay for why they should get special treatment. But why should anyone get special treatment if they are going to just, essentially, treat it as way to siphon tax revenue from the larger society?

pshc 2y ago
Shouldn’t building dense housing in an area with a terrible housing shortage increase the tax base if anything?
phdavis1027 2y ago
Because that society committed what are at least atrocities and probably more fairly described as genocide against those societies for like 400 years. A small casino empire seems like the least we could do lol
colechristensen 2y ago
I’m perfectly fine with modern corrective actions taken in response to past treaty violations. They were treated with as separate nations in the past and now there are mechanisms for limited forms of self rule on tribal land.

jiggawatts 2y ago

Here in Australia they use the carefully crafted phrase: “the previous custodians of this land”. As in… we are the custodians now.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
stevage 2y ago
What? No. The phrase is "the traditional owners" or sometimes "traditional custodians". Never previous.
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  Bad memory/paraphrasing on my part. Traditional and previous are near-synonyms.
  - stevage 2y ago
    I don't think that's true. Traditional can also carry the sense of ongoing.
defrost 2y ago
I've not seen "previous" used .. eg: W.AUstralian Health acknowledges the Aboriginal people of the many traditional lands and language groups of Western Australia. It acknowledges the wisdom of Aboriginal Elders both past and present and pays respect to Aboriginal communities of today. ~ https://www.health.wa.gov.au/Improving-WA-Health/About-Aboriginal-Health/Welcome-to-Country-and-Acknowledgement-of-Traditional-Ownership https://www.health.wa.gov.au/Improving-WA-Health/About-Abori... is pretty generic for a handwave across the entire state. In specific places, large tracts of land here, the terminology is current custodians - if you recall that whole deal with Mabo and Native Title there are large ares in which the traditional inhabitants are now the current owners under Commonwealth Law that once didn't acknowledge them as human and declared the land Terra Nullius. Mabo decision: https://www.aph.gov.au/Visit_Parliament/Art/Stories_and_Histories/The_Mabo_decision https://www.aph.gov.au/Visit_Parliament/Art/Stories_and_Hist... We acknowledge the Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their continued connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to their Cultures, Country and Elders past, present and emerging. We also acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, who are the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and live, the land on which this exhibition was created, and the land on which Australian Parliament House is situated – an area where people have met for thousands of years.

whimsicalism 2y ago

funny because i feel that your comment plays into the exact same tropes about “indigenous ways of knowing” you critique

BurningFrog 2y ago

The institution of land ownership is very important in farming societies, where land is what produces wealth and health. Societies on the hunter/gatherer spectrum also value their hunting grounds, but in far less strict ways. I'm pretty sure the indigenous peoples that lived by farming had well developed concepts of land ownership, but they were the minority when Europeans arrived.

skeeter2020 2y ago
Or really any permanent settlement. Look at say, Northern Inuit vs. Puebloans.

aprilthird2021 2y ago

I have always disliked and told people I disliked land acknowledgements because they are designed to earn the social capital of giving the land back without ever having any intention of doing anything close to that.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]