h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

and by 'paingul' of course I mean 'painful'

2 different issues, reparations and accepting what really happened
since I don't believe in collective guilt personally I also find it impossible to feel pride in what our ancestors did
surely if you claim to feel pride over (say) Wellingtons victory over Napoleon (which was argueably a good thing) you would have to feel guilt over some of his actions in India. Personally I might be glad or sorry over events in history but I do not feel they are ocasions for guilt or pride on my part.

"It's not just the rights that derive from treaties between the aboriginal peoples and the French Crown, the British Crown, or the Canadian Government that form a fundamental part of Canada's supreme law: it is also 'the existing aboriginal' rights, the rights that the aboriginal peoples have had since long before Europeans ever thought about a new world."

I agree... As I said earlier, by signing treaties and by entrenching in law the acceptance that these treaties exist as legal documents, signed between sovereign nations, also acknowledges the rights of the original owners of the lands to reparation for lands taken without treaty (the previously-mentioned unceded lands).

Here is the preamble for the Gwich'in Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement.

WHEREAS the Gwich'in, from time immemorial, have traditionally used and occupied lands in Yukon and the Northwest Territories;

WHEREAS the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes and affirms the existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada;

WHEREAS Her Majesty the Queen in right of Canada and the Gwich'in, as represented by the Gwich'in Tribal Council, have negotiated in order to achieve certainty and clarity of rights with respect to ownership and use of land and resources;

WHEREAS Her Majesty the Queen in right of Canada and the Gwich'in, as represented by the Gwich'in Tribal Council, on April 22, 1992, entered into a comprehensive land claims agreement that, in exchange for the release by the Gwich'in of certain rights and claims as set out in the Agreement, defines certain rights that the Gwich'in shall have, and confirms the treaty rights of the Gwich'in that are unaffected by that release;

WHEREAS the Agreement further provides that the Agreement will be a land claims agreement referred to in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 and that approval by Parliament is a condition precedent to the validity of the Agreement;

NOW, THEREFORE, Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:

1992, c. 53, Preamble; 2002, c. 7, s. 175(E).

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I tend to agree about that, Oojakapiv. It's an issue in New Zealand, but the truth of the situation is, that although many Maori are disadvantaged, they are no more so than many white people, so that Analiese's stricture doesn't apply to most non-Maori people here. (Though some have benefitted by the actions of their ancestors and continue to do so, they are a minority.)
<<< Apple

This is a common argument put forward by some New Zealanders but it is misleading. Maori make up something like 15% of the population, and yet their negative statistics (health, justice, education etc) are way out of proportion to their numbers.

So while it is true that there are disadvantaged non-Maori in NZ, when you look at people living below the poverty line, Maori make up more than their 15% (which is what the number should be if they were no more disadvantage than anyone else).

In terms of white priviedge here, it's true that most pakeha (white NZers ) are unaware of the benefits they have that came as a result of Maori land theft and treaty violations by the Crown.

For instance, a large part of NZ's collective wealth comes from farming. In the South Island Maori sold blocks of land to Pakeha in the 1800s. However when the Pakeha land dealers drew up the maps they included land that Maori hadn't intended to be included (Maori had no intention of selling off their own food resources). Part of the agreements were also that 'tenths' were to be kept aside for Maori use. This never happened.

Maori have always been aware ot these injustices and have been fighting them where and when they can for the last 150 years, so it's not just a matter of something bad happened then, and we have to fix it now. These were injustices according to the values and laws of the time (which is why in NZ the treaty settlements are finally happening).

There were also more personal issues such as where Maori women married Pakeha men, and when those Maori women died their land went to their Pakeha husbands (according to Pakeha custom not Maori). When these Pakeha men abandoned their Maori children, or where the child was a girl, the descendants of those children became dispossed of land. Pakeha men then remarried white women and their Pakeha descendants ended up owing land at the expense of Maori.


In a more recent example, this year the NZ government passed legislation that directly took away existing Maori sovereignty over the seabed and foreshore. The governement did this because the courts here had granted Maori leave to apply for ownership status on seabed and foreshore that they had customary access to since prior to contact with Europeans.

This is land theft (and it's not the first time special legislation has been passed to legally control Maori). It's inherently racist and it's 2005.


I give these examples because there is this notion both at home and abroad that NZ treats/treated it's natives so much better than the Australians and North Americans.

>>The 'reaping the benefits' idea sounds fine in theory, but on closer inspection doesn't bear up because it simply wasn't the person's choice to be born where they were - it was an accident of birth.
<< Oojakapiv

I can't get my head around what you are saying there Oojakapiv. I wonder if it is because you are assuming that the issue is one of blame. It's not. It's about acknowledgement and responsibility. I am not to blame for what my ancestors did. But I do have a moral obligation to redress the wrongs that I have benefitted from. Or are you saying that no-one currently benefits from the land that was stolen in the 1800s?

In NZ no individual is expected to give up privately owned land or wealth to compensate Treaty claims. We all pay through the tax take. What is wrong with that? We are all benficiaries of the collective wealth, so why shouldn't we pay reparation collectively?

I posted on this thread just before I went to bed and had an odd dream:

A judge ruled that I had to go back to where I'd came from and pay repairations to everyone who was still disadvantaged because of it. So they chopped off my lower torso and legs and sent them to irland (since im half scottish and the scots came from irland) Then they sent my left arm to Italy (since there was some roman in me) my right arm to Germany (since there was some angle in me) and my chest to Neverland (Yes where peter pan comes from. Also the saxons came from there. It was a dream, it didn't have to be accurate) Finally my head was allowed to stay in england because I had some Jute blood (who were native britains of course)

Then my right arm sent some cash to my left arm (for bringing it into a losing war) and some more to my head (for bringing it into a winning war) my head passed on some of the money to my legs (for various invasions over the years) but they gave some of it back (for their raiding activities) My chest got to keep it's money.

In conclusion you all owe me for the therapy :P

In a more relevant part of the post, I think the line is drawn when whomever commited the origional crime dies. It should be a case of looking at who is disadvanteged today and doing what you can to right that wrong. Not a case of looking and whos ancestors disadvantaged whoelses ancestors and trying to clean it up that way. 'Here have £X because you didn't get a fair start' is better than 'Here have £X because you didn't get a fair start because your father didn't get a fair start because his father didn't get a good start because my grandfather stole his fathers land' if only because it's a lot easier to actually adjudicate.

Acknowladge that something happened, feel sorry that it happened. Fine. But unless you've invented time travel trying to put it right is going to be impracticle. It makes much more sense to deal with the situation now rather than only trying to fix an unfairness once you know exactly what caused it.

Oh and while I remember I'm fairly sure there is a law against enacting retroactive legislation in britain. Of course theres also a law that says a governing bodies can't make laws that bind themselves so they can always repeal it. Or they could repeal the second law. Paradoxtastic.

What a dream especially as we are all African anyway.

It is a tough one why should i accept any responsibility for the battle of CUlloden, the triangle slave trading or the decimation of Scandivaian forests and fishstocks.

For most of them I wasnt even born then and the others have little or notheing to do with me as I rarely use fossil fuel fueld transport.

That's the way most people think of it and to be fair I can see why. People for some reason get the idea that with responsibilty for bad things has to come guilt and some sort of punishment.

"Where there's blame theres a claim"

When infact its about the fact that whitey has been stacking the deck in his favour for the past 400 hundred years or so. Its just as much about recognising the fact that the struture of society keeps women from acheiving too.

I cant see people saying they are willing to give up their advantages even if it means everyone having a fairer and hopefully better time together. It is happening slowly but it has to be universal or some selfish person or group will just see any restitution as a chance for them to hang on to what they have while using their advatages to hoover up evn more power and money.

Or am I just being too pessimistic?

one love
one love

'I think the line is drawn when whomever commited the origional crime dies.'

What about my Mona Lisa example? If it is a question of theft, do the thief's children get to keep the ill-gotten gains of their father? I'm not saying that the children are guilty or that they are responsible for the crime, but I do think there is an obligation for restitution and I would argue that the children of the thief have no particular right, either morally or legally, to retain the stolen goods. What about the property the Nazis took from death-camp victims? Should attempts be made to return it to the victims' families?

As far as retroactive legislation: when discussing North America, the British legislation concerning this issue goes back to 1763 and it is under that legislation as well as subsequent legislation passed by the British Government and later the Canadian government that legal action is being taken in Canada today. There is absolutely no talk of retroactive legislation (I'm not sure where that red herring came from).

And this talk of impracticalities and so much time passing is rot. In the case of my friend that I mentioned earlier, I knew his grandparents, the ones who were given the land that is still today under dispute. This is a case not only within living memory of a few really old people: this is a cas within my memory concerning land within the boundaries of a Canadian Provincial Capital city. There are people walking down my back lane right now making their living going through garbage cans who have a reasonable legal claim upon the land on which I live. I also have a reasonable legal claim. What is to be done with these competing claims? The way we've tried to do it here over the last few decades, with varying success is to have representatives of the people with competing claims sit down and work out compromises appropriate to each situation. But the first step has to be an acknowledgement that something wasn't right and that something isn't right and that something needs to be done.

I think the point was that if people are going through other people's rubbish to earn a living then something needs to be done regardless of whether they have a legal claim to land somewhere or not.

No.

Its their own fault that they are doing that its a level playing feild.

So Im told atlest.

'if people are going through other people's rubbish to earn a living then something needs to be done regardless of whether they have a legal claim to land somewhere or not.'

Exactly. And what needs to be done is to address the root of the problem, which is in some cases the fact that they have been dispossessed of their cultural and economic inheritance. Until that underlying problem is addressed, the entire society is diminished.

Being hypothetical, taking one philosophical extreme position, it's arguable that an individual is on dodgy ground when arguing on their own behalf for recompense for anything that happened before they were concieved.

Given the virtual randomness of the events around conception, it's effectively certain that the existence of a given individual now is dependent on all the events that could have had the slightest influence on their parents before conception.
If Bob's father had his business confiscated 50 years ago, and Bob is under 49, then Bob would never have existed had the business *not* been confiscated (or if any of a near-infinite number of pieces of history had been different). There may have been some other child conceived instead, but it wouldn't have been Bob. His *parents* may have had a nicer life, as might their hypothetical parallel offspring, but Bob himself never could have benefitted.
The parents may well have wished to pass the business onto their children, but there isn't any overlap between possible worlds where they kept the business, and possible worlds where Bob *was* one of their children

Possibly, restitution might seem to make more sense on a group basis - Bob might argue that his people deserve restitution for land taken from them, even if he himself has chosen not to benefit, but if the appropriation was long ago, the entire population of his people now may effectively be dependent on the fact that it had happened (as well as an infinite number of other factors) for their very existence.

In one sense, everyone alive today has benefitted from the entire history of the universe before their conception having been precisely what it has been.

Precisely no-one living now who is descended from a slave transported to the New World >100 years ago would have been living now in Africa in luxury (or in abject poverty) had the slave trade not existed. Equally, no white supremacist now living would have been living in a better or worse state had slavery not been abolished when it was, or if their country had actually become white-only long ago, and stayed that way. They would simply not be in existence.

From that perspective, unfair acts that took place while someone now living was already alive seem possibly more redeemable than older ones.

Present-day inequalities seem worth attacking for their own sake, whatever (or however old) the cause.

I can see that there can be a serious deterrent aspect to restitution - if it imposes a penalty on governments and individuals now, it may deter other people from taking things unfairly in future, but that only seems likely to be effective in the case where it is reasonably soon after the fact - if I think that land I buy legally but immorally now might be taken back from my great-grandchildren, it wouldn't have much deterrent value if I was the kind of person who would be happy buying land of debatable ownership.

"when whomever commited the origional crime dies."

So, as long as the perpetarator dies before the victim, all is well,

We aren't talking about one person committing a crime against another. We are talking about governments either allowing crimes against groups of people, or governments, themselves, committing crimes against groups of people. We have laws and we have expectations that our governments will uphold those laws and act within those laws. When they don't, we should expect that they compensate for damages and for real property lost by the victim(s).

Likewise, when, for instance:
-governments which enact laws which force children from certain cultural/religious groups away from the care their parents and into Residential Schools from the age of 6 until the age of 18 where they physical and sexual faced abuse, often with the knowledge of the government and religious bodies who ran the schools
-governments that enact laws which force certain religious/cultural groups out of their homes and into concentrations and/or death camps
-governments which enact laws that make it legal for its citizens and businesses and other non-governmental bodies to discriminate against certain cultural/religious groups
-governments which actively commit or incite their citizens to commit genocide against a particular cultural/religious group
-governments which enact laws or otherwise condone the discrimination against one group by another, which causes disadvantage

why should the victims of such actions not be apologised to, payed compensation for loss of real property and livlihood, and for psychological damage?

We hear a lot of "Well, I didn't do it. Why should I pay?"... to which I say...

1) you, as inheritor of the property/land/society benefitted from the crime
2) if it happened to you, you would damn well want to be compensated
3) it is the society as a whole who pays, for the most part, so why are you wingeing
4) because, as members of a society, have to acknowledge the crimes of our parents and out grandparents, whether we like it or not
5) if you or your parents or grandparents stood by and allowed a crime to happen, you aided and abetted a crime and are as culpable as the person committing the act
6) if one lives off the avails of crime, one is, by law, guilty of a crime even if the are unaware that a crime took place
7) those who continue to deny a crime took place, in the face of mountains of evidence, are guilty of a crime, as well

As I said before, comparing modern reparations and land-claims issues with the Battle of Culloden, who "really owns Britain", and whether Homo sapiens must comepnsate Homo Australopithicus is nonsensical.

As Rev. Paperboy noted with the article he posted about the active denial-propaganda about the sex-slaves of the Japanes Army by certain right-wing entities and the press in Japan, crimes are not perpetrated once, but over and over and over. Long after the last sex slave dies and long after the last person responsible for forcing women into slavery, the crime will live on and continue to be committed by those who deny it and victimize the descendants of the victims.

By making official reparations, whether in the form of an apology or in the form of monetary compensation, for a crime, the government is officially acknowledging that a crime took place. It becomes a legal admission of guilt and can be pointed to when someone well into the future says "That didn't really happen."

I don't understand why, if (as in the example, here in Canada, of the Japanese froced out of their homes, businesses and livlihoods and into concentration camps, never to see their homes, property and valuables again) the people who benefitted (both the people who actually got the property and the government which gave them the property) should not pay compensation to the people who owned or would have inherited the property and valuables and to compensate them for the lost livlihood.

It is all very convenient to say.... "We don't know if the original owner wouldn't have left it to his son or sold the property, anyway, so how can we compensate on the basis of "IFs"?"

What a person would have done with the property or posessions is of no matter to the fact. They owned the property worth X number of dollars. The property is worth Y dollars today. The original owner of the property did not get to enjoy the use and enjoyment of said property (which includes the fair-price value, had he been able to sell the property at a fair price during his lifetime).

Whether he would have sold it a week after it was taken or his gggrandson would have sold it a week from tomorrow is of no matter. It was worth X amount, he didn't get the use and enjoyment (which includes benefitting from the sale) of it. His children did not get the use and enjoyment of it. It is, therefor only right that a fair-price compensation be paid to the person or his rightful heir(s), amounting to the contemporary price and a fair compensation on the interest for the intervening years.

Why is it that nobody has responded to my Mona Lisa example?

If somebody steals something of great value and keeps it hidden for decades and his offspring takes possession of the stolen property (of much appreciated value now) upon the death of the thief, does anyone out there really believe that we should all just throw up our hands and say 'well, who knows what would have happened' or 'statute of limitations' or 'tough luck'?

This is fundamentally the legal and moral situation of the cases that to which Mudhooks and I have alluded.

If it will be of any comfort to you, Anhaga, I apologise for all of us, our children and grandchildren unto the seventh generation for no one having responded to your Mona Lisa example....

Bloody good analogy, anhaga....

Actually, there is a good thought. The Bible gives an example of restitution....

Exodus 34 v. 7
Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

Sorry... not restitution....

Did you cite this one yet, Mudhooks?

Delgamuukw v. the Queen

'Aboriginal title encompasses the right to exclusive use and occupation of the land held pursuant to that title for a variety of purposes, which need not be aspects of those aboriginal practices, customs and traditions which are integral to distinctive aboriginal cultures. The protected uses must not be irreconcilable with the nature of the group's attachment to that land.

Aboriginal title is sui generis, and so distinguished from other proprietary interests, and characterized by several dimensions. It is inalienable and cannot be transferred, sold or surrendered to anyone other than the Crown. Another dimension of aboriginal title is its sources: its recognition by the Royal Proclamation, 1763 and the relationship between the common law which recognizes occupation as proof of possession and systems of aboriginal law pre-existing assertion of British sovereignty. Finally, aboriginal title is held communally. . .

Aboriginal title at common law was recognized well before 1982 and is accordingly protected in its full form by s. 35(1). The constitutionalization of common law aboriginal rights, however, does not mean that those rights exhaust the content of s. 35(1). The existence of an aboriginal right at common law is sufficient, but not necessary, for the recognition and affirmation of that right by s. 35(1). . .

n order to establish a claim to aboriginal title, the aboriginal group asserting the claim must establish that it occupied the lands in question at the time at which the Crown asserted sovereignty over the land subject to the title. In the context of aboriginal title, sovereignty is the appropriate time period to consider for several reasons. First, from a theoretical standpoint, aboriginal title arises out of prior occupation of the land by aboriginal peoples and out of the relationship between the common law and pre-existing systems of aboriginal law. Aboriginal title is a burden on the Crown's underlying title. The Crown, however, did not gain this title until it asserted sovereignty and it makes no sense to speak of a burden on the underlying title before that title existed. Aboriginal title crystallized at the time sovereignty was asserted. Second, aboriginal title does not raise the problem of distinguishing between distinctive, integral aboriginal practices, customs and traditions and those influenced or introduced by European contact. Under common law, the act of occupation or possession is sufficient to ground aboriginal title and it is not necessary to prove that the land was a distinctive or integral part of the aboriginal society before the arrival of Europeans. Finally, the date of sovereignty is more certain than the date of first contact. . .

the Crown is under a moral, if not a legal, duty to enter into and conduct those negotiations in good faith. Ultimately, it is through negotiated settlements, with good faith and give and take on all sides, reinforced by the judgments of this Court, that we will achieve what I stated in Van der Peet, supra, at para. 31, to be a basic purpose of s. 35(1) -- "the reconciliation of the pre-existence of aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the Crown". Let us face it, we are all here to stay.'

http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/1997/vol3/html/1997scr3_1010.html

Were there any cases where it wan't clear which of a number of native tribes were actually occupying or in posession of a given area of land at the time when the crown declared sovereignty?


Regarding the Mona Lisa example, it is an extreme case of identifiable portable property. Most portable property is rather less well-known.
Whether stolen goods are handed down as an inheritance or repeatedly traded on the open market, if it's not reasonable to expect people to recognise them as stolen, after some period of time has passed, from at least one perspective it *is* unfair to expect the current owner to hand them back to descendants of the original owner.
Just as an open market transaction could be considered to have conferred a degree of legitimacy on a subsequent good-faith owner, in the case of inheritance, the inheritor has actually recieved goods as the result of a supposedly open legal process.

In the case of money (the most anonymous of property), I'd expect that once it has passed beyond the hands of the original thief, it is out of reach, though one could start making a case for recovery of *equivalent* property from the original thief, if that thief is identifiable.

Presumably, uncertainty is also another issue. After many generations, not only is harder to reliably establish that a given artifact was stolen, but it is extremely hard to determine to whom it should be given even if it is determined to be stolen.

Land is at another extreme - though theoretically perfectly identifiable, (since it isn't portable), the issue commonly is one of the legality of various documents of ownership, and the rights of various people to do things on or under the land.