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

Because Native history is a narrative history, not written, the exploration into claims includes an examination of written as well as oral history, and archaeological material, as well as government records (Canadian, British, French (as well as other supporting material), Catholic and other church records.

A short explanation from the Indian Claims Commission:
"With the benefit of a wealth of information from elders, community members and historical documents, legal counsel for the parties are asked to provide written and oral submissions to the Commissioners on the facts and law to assist them in determining whether the Crown owes an outstanding "lawful obligation" to the First Nation. Again, the oral submissions are recorded and transcribed to assist in the Commissioners' decision-making process."

The Federal Claims Process
http://www.indianclaims.ca/english/about/claimsprocess.html
A claim starts within a First Nation. The First Nation researches the claim and submits it with supporting documents to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. The Specific Claims Branch of that department does its own research and, with the Department of Justice, assesses the claim to determine if the claim establishes an "outstanding lawful obligation" on the part of the government.

If the federal government does not believe it has an outstanding obligation, the claim is rejected and the Department of Indian Affairs informs the First Nation that it will not negotiate a settlement. The First Nation can then take the claim to court or to the (Indian Claims) Commission for an inquiry.

The Commission Inquiry Process
http://www.indianclaims.ca/english/about/claimsprocess.html#S4

I must admit I am feeling a certain amount of frustration with some posts in this thread - the ones putting out generalisations along the lines of reparation doesn't work, or it's not warranted etc. I do wonder if this is coming predominantly from Engish researchers. At the risk of my own generalisation I can say that in NZ it's the English immigrants that often have a hard time understanding treaty claims here (the Scots and Irish having much less trouble, for obvious reasons).

For those who still think this is a hypothetical conversation, can you please accept that some of us live in countries where historical injustices have been acknowledged and 'reparation' has been paid. There are mainstream legal and legislative processes in place to enable this to happen, and while they aren't perfect, they do go some way to redressing the wrongs. For the most part this system works in NZ. In other places like Australia, there is still a very long way to go.

Would it be useful to have examples of where 'reparation' has actually worked?

I also feel there is alot of repetition in this thread - eg the idea that it's all in the past. I know that if you live in a country that has no recent history of colonisation it is harder to understand the issues involved, but I think there have been copious examples of why this is not 'all in the past'. What is still not understood about this?

I'm not saying the actual situations are hypothetical, just wondering about simplified cases to try and get some idea of extreme positions, since reality will always lie somewhere between the extremes. Examining the points at which reparation could be seen to be hard to justify can help clarify things.

People who had been living somewhere for generations before Europeans appeared have an excellent case to claim ownership of land, but there must be some grey areas.
For instance, people who took the land from previous occupants by force seem to have at least a lessened moral right to claim foul if someone else comes along and does the same to them. If there's a historical distance beyond which their own ancestor's actions can be forgotten, then there's presumably some time after which their claim should fail in turn.

Here are a few examples of how governments have handled land claims and/or redress:

-Nunavut: http://www.gov.nu.ca/Nunavut/English/about/road.shtml
-Gwich'in Land Claim Settlement: http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/G-11.8/ (posted earlier)
http://www.gwichin.nt.ca/landClaimAgreement.htm
-Delgamuukw v. the Queen http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/1997/vol3/html/1997scr3_1010.html (Thanks Anhaga)
-Redress for Past Government Wrongs (Issue position paper for working group)http://www.pch.gc.ca/progs/multi/wcar/advisory/redress_e.shtml
-Reparations to Japanese-Canadians: "Redress for Japanese Canadians was achieved mainly through lobbying and negotiations with the Government over a period of about 4 years, but with a great deal of internal struggle and hard work done within the Japanese Canadian community. A Strategy and Negotiation Committee was responsible for the movement. It was viewed as a moral issue - loss of rights and freedom and reparations was not pursued through the courts. The people of Japanese ancestry were only about 40,000 in number so there was no economic pressure to bear. But a comprehensive study was done by Price Waterhouse called "The Economic Losses of Japanese Canadians after 1941" that put into perspective for ordinary Canadians, the losses suffered by those who were affected. A number of circumstances at the time paved the way for a settlement in September 1988. The American Government signed an agreement in August 1988 and the Conservative Governement in Canada under Mulroney did the same. A lot of education was necessary through the media to make people aware that this was a justice issue, a Canadian issue." http://www.najc.ca/najcsite/resources/questions.htm

"A parliamentary committee took the lead in supporting the campaign for redress as early as 1947. The public accounts committee recommended a public inquiry. The James Henry Bird commission recommended repayment and of 1,434 claims for over $7 million, $2.5 million was repaid." http://www.parl.gc.ca/infoparl/english/issue.htm?param=69&art=117

-Residential School claims: http://www.irsr-rqpi.gc.ca/english/questions.html
http://www.irsr-rqpi.gc.ca/english/index.html

I can't help but notice a lot of people have taken half of my argument and ignored the rest. My post didn't end after I said that righting a specific unequality is impractical after a generation. (Impracticle in this sense meaning less practical than other solutions with the same outcome rather than impossible)

What I am trying to say is that identifying current inequalities and righting them is more efficient than identifying past inequalities, trying to trace them through to current inequalities and then trying to get people who possibly benefited from past unequalities to compensate the people who currently could have been disadvantaged by the past unequality.

Certainly repairations are better than doing nothing, I wouldn't contest that, however I don't think that they are the ideal solution.

About the mona lisa example. You have the situation you've described (The son of the theif has it and has been identified, the theif is dead) It's a work of art, the important question is where do you put it so that the most people who want to see it can get access to it? Also it's fraglie and future generations may conceivably want to see it so who is best qualified to look after it and ensure it isn't damaged is an equally valid question. Where it was a generation ago is nowhere near as important as where would be best for it now.

I'd consider that the ideal world soultion. In the real world you can't do it that way. You can't expect people not to be greedy and you certainly can't expect people to be able to distribute everything to it's ideal location. Taking this into account the question of 'What are the reprecussions of the irrational actions people will take if we put it here?' into account, in which case your going to have to give it back to the place it was stolen from.

However the same argument applies conversly to the repairations situation. Your not going to get people to swallow the idea that they should give up their homes, buisnesses, money to people who they've never met who have some claim they're not aware of. You can, however, persuade them to pay taxes and have them manifest in terms of various benefits for the weaker members of society. The people who are disadvantaged as a result of what happened to their ancestors see some rescources trickle through from the people who benefited to them. Currently it's not enough, the minimum wage isn't high enough, free healthcare isn't good enough, equal hiring practicies aren't even approaching being sufficient. But you've got a much better chance of evening out past mistakes that way than by trying to get people to give up rescources directly.

In an ideal world ignoring the past, looking at where you are now and deciding what the best thing to do about it now, is the best approach. In a practicle one, it's the most likely to work.

'What I am trying to say is that identifying current inequalities and righting them is more efficient than identifying past inequalities, trying to trace them through to current inequalities and then trying to get people who possibly benefited from past unequalities to compensate the people who currently could have been disadvantaged by the past unequality.'

It may be more efficient (although I have my doubts) but such action in the specific context of Canada would go against almost three hundred years of British law. There are many cases where following the law may not be the most efficient course, but I expect you are not suggesting that summary execution of suspected murderers, for example, would be an appropriate solution to the murder rate.

Getting back to the original question (ignoring reparations for the moment) raise your hand if you are willing to acknowledge that present societal challenges (ongoing land claims negotiations in Canada, for example) are directly traceable to colonial activities of European Governments or Powers devolved from European Governments.

And, Acid:

your response to the Mona Lisa example is called the 'Elgin Marble Reply', right? I feel safe in suggesting that most people (outside a certain radius from the British Museum) would feel quite comfortable saying 'the kid should be forced to return the painting'. The fact is that courts around the world, certain conventions of international law, and British law itself have repeatedly affirmed that inalienable aboriginal rights exist and that aboriginal artifacts should be returned to the aboriginal nation which has collective ownership of those artifacts where such nations can be identified (which identification is in most cases exceptionally easy to demonstrate).


The Mona Lisa example was intended to be an exceptionally simple model of the situation that we in the post-colonial world face every day. Would it have been easier if it had been a car that had been stolen? Or a house?

Kea: I too have been feeling a little bit of frustration over the type of responses that have frustrated you. I am again reminded of my friend who could accept reparations for descendents of dispossessed Japanese Canadians from 1941 but couldn't even consider the idea -- the barest suggestion -- of reparations for First Nations children forcibly removed from their parents in the same year, never mind reparations for First Nations dispossessed thirty years earlier.

I don't understand it, frankly.

With the Elgin marbles, there is a side-issue of who is actually authorised to approve the removal of goods from a particular nation. If it's done by a colonial authority or a puppet government, it's on very dubious grounds both morally and legally.

I suppose it gets to greyer areas when an unrepresentative home-grown ruler appropriates goods and sells them on to foreigners. If it was a case of a despotic Italian prince in the 17th century selling masterpieces that have passed through various hands and ended up in a modern museum, it'd be hard to justify the museum handing them back. If it was a case of goods taken by Hitler from Germans in WWII and sold on, there's a stronger case for return even if the only difference with the other case is one of time.

However, there is a clear parallel between the marbles and land-rights issues, in that at one point hardly anyone living nearby would really have bothered thinking about who actually *owned* the marble friezes at all, just as in many places no-one would have bothered thinking about who owned land.

In the cases where treaties exist, I can't see any legal or moral basis for breaking them.

What are the current criteria used to determine membership of a particular native group? If it's all a matter of ancestry, what will eventually happen if populations become increasingly mixed?

For me it would be that, as I have expressed elsewhere, I consider inheritance in general to be a bad thing.

If you have someone whose parents were unfairly disinherited, and someone whose parents had nothing to start with, should the state not help them equally?

Of course, in one situation it is the state that disinherited one set of parents in order to provide services to the other set of parents.

There are two sides to the British North American context: One is the moral question, which, of course, has a great degree of personal opinion in it; the other is the legal question which, really, is very, very clear and has been very clear for several centuries.

Let me start by saying that the article is absolutely typical of the one-dimensional view of the past favoured by certain types of Socialist, to describe it as biased, bigoted and narrow-minded is to compliment it.

Moving on to the thread

"The very best answer I've ever seen to the issue of reparations, where the question was along the lines of "But *I* didn't do the harm! Why should I pay for damage done by my distant (or not so distant) ancestors?" came from RAF Wing, a Native American researcher whose U number here I'm too lazy to look up just now."

This is applying a very general question to a precise case. The Native American tribes were doubtless defrauded and massacred, and are entitled to reparations - but they are hardly a typical 'colonial' case. Firstly they were robbed, not by a colonial power, but by the natives who had shaken off their colonial roots, and thus lacked empire support. Secondly they did not benefit in anyway from the exchange, rarely the case in other colonial exchanges.

Here is some typical one-dimensional thinking. - "Britain stole a vast amount of wealth from India during its conquest and profited greatly from its ownership until independence

Great Britain also injected a 300 year leap in technology onto the Indian people - introduced democracy - and eventually saw thousands of British people put out of work and the British linen industry destroyed by the Indian traders who used the technology they'd been given to undercut the mill owners in England who had to pay higher wages.

No doubt some of that wealth trickled down into British society as a whole but most went to a narrow elite

OF course the wealth of India was widely distributed amongst the people Most of these people owned NOTHING, they were treated as virtual slaves by the local Raj. Indeed they became immeasurably better of under the British as they were introduced to modern agricultural techniques, and roads were made for the transport of produce, and bandit gangs were broken up.

McKay
British rule did have beneficial as well as detrimental effects for India, I wouldn't deny that,but -

1)300 year technological leap - this could have been achieved by trade. Why was conquest and colonial exloitation neccessary?
2)Introduced democracy - Only reluctently and when their rule was being challanged.
3)Destroyed our linen industry - Because theirs was more competitive, just as the Indian cotton industry had been destroyed by the British.

The wealth was not widely spread in India under the Mughals and other native rulers. The Mughals were very corrupt by that stage by their history. However they were based in India. British rule saw much of Indian riches go to Britain either as plunder or taxes.

As for the Indian people becoming better off yes eventually. Suggest you read a little about how India was exploited when the East India Company ran it. We can't tell how India would have developed without European interference so to say that Indians were better off because of British rule is just speculation.

>>>>"The very best answer I've ever seen to the issue of reparations, where the question was along the lines of "But *I* didn't do the harm! Why should I pay for damage done by my distant (or not so distant) ancestors?" came from RAF Wing, a Native American researcher whose U number here I'm too lazy to look up just now."

>>"This is applying a very general question to a precise case. The Native American tribes were doubtless defrauded and massacred, and are entitled to reparations - but they are hardly a typical 'colonial' case. Firstly they were robbed, not by a colonial power, but by the natives who had shaken off their colonial roots, and thus lacked empire support. Secondly they did not benefit in anyway from the exchange, rarely the case in other colonial exchanges."

I would argue that this is applying a very general question to an extreme example, and that the Native American nations were indeed robbed by a colonial power. That power would be White Americans moving steadily westward and stealing land that was already occupied. I'd also question the long-term "benefit" to other colonized nations, in general.

As to reperations...

They need not be strictly financial, and can be of some real benefit, as in the case of Afermative Action programs in the United States. The theory behind those programs was that you couldn't suddenly implement color-blind policies and claim that the playing field was level. We'll hire the most qualified person for the psoition regardless of race" sounds fine until one realizes that the opportunity to become qualified has not been afforded equally. I'd go as far to argue that making reperation through laws regarding social policy accomplishes more than making reperation by throwing money at some group of people.

http://aad.english.ucsb.edu/docs/Cahn.html

"President Lyndon B. Johnson argued that fairness required more than a commitment to impartial treatment. In his 1965 commencement address at Howard University, he said:

"You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you're free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates or opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates .... We seek not...just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result."

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/gov/bl_gov_aa_02.htm

"Prior to 1974, Kaiser Aluminum hired only persons with prior craft experience as craft workers at its Gramercy, Louisiana plant. Because blacks traditionally had been excluded from the craft unions, only 5 of 273 skilled craft workers at the plant were black. In response, Kaiser together with the union, established its own training program to fill craft jobs with the proviso that 50 percent of new trainees were to be black until the percentage of black craft workers in the plant matched the percentage of blacks in the local labor pool. The Supreme Court held this program to be lawful."

Now, going back to the original question on this thread, whether or not a person thinks reperation is valid, whither or not a person thinks that "the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children," We have to acknowledge that the so-called "first world" exists, in so small part, because of the willingness of Western Europe and White North Americans to exploit other cultures.

NBY

It wasn't until the 1950s, after the end of British rule in India that one saw an actual "middle calss" develop.

After the British left, the beaurocracy that they created and left (some could say saddled) India with needed workers. There were already a mercantile class which served the British, but it was the office-worker that became the middle class. If there is anything that India succeeds at it is the art of beaurocracy.

When we visited India in 1968, there was an estimated 1 million people living on the streets of Bombay (now Mumbai). Many of these people had jobs but had nowhere to live. The creation of jobs outstripped the creation of housing. As well, people began flocking into cities from the countryside where poverty and hunger was rampant... only, of course, to find things not much better in the cities.

Contributing to the problem of homelessness was the poor condition of much of Bombay's residential housing. "The Report on the development plan for Greater Bombay, submitted to the State Government in 1964, stated that out of about seven lacs tenements in Greater Bombay as on March 31, 1961, 23% of them containing 18,000 buildings would need extensive repairs in the next fifteen years and about 1,000 of them would have to be immediately demolished. 10,000 buildings would have a life of about ten years, and 7,000 a life of fifteen years." http://www.supremecourtonline.com/cases/8255.html

And, of course, there was also Indira Ghandi's campaign to "beautify" Bombay and other major centres by tearing down the many shanty-towns (or basti) where a good many of those who had no other homes lived. Here is a good look at what a basti looks like http://www.asiasource.org/graphics/achinto1.jpg

There was a basti lining the sides of a rough track leading to the old fort at Worli. This basti is approximately 600 years old and home to Kolis, traditional fishermen. The "street" was a muddy track which was both sidewalk, public gathering place, and toilet (very apparently), We looked in several of the shantys and found them to be spotlessly clean, despite the squallor outside. http://www.archidev.org/article.php3?id_article=257

As with many such places in India's urban areas, developers have long been eyeing such places. When we were there, the government was trying to force the people to move into apartment buildings built for them. Since these people refused to move to the buildings which were 4 miles from the sea, the buildings constructed for them sat empty. The government refused to house any of the million or so homeless in them.

Apparently, they succeeded in evicting the fishermen. Worli is now the second largest commercial area in Mumbai with many very posh residential buildings: http://www.indiaproperties.com/research/articles/trends/mumbai.asp#Worli

For a really interesting read, here is the writ against the Bombay Municipal Corporation launched in 1985 by a goup of people suing for the right to housing. Pretty enlightening. Many of the people had been living on the pavements and/or shanties since 1960....

"pavement dwellers and the slum or basti dwellers, who number about 47.7 lakhs, constitute about 50 per cent of the total population of Greater Bombay, that they supply the major work force for Bombay from menial jobs to the most highly skilled jobs, that they have been living In the hutments for generations, that they have been making a significant contribution to the economic life of the city and that, therefore, it is unfair and unreasonable on the part of the State Government and the Municipal Corporation to destroy their homes and deport them" (a lakh is a traditionally-used number unit and equals 100,000, so 47.7 lakhs is 4,770,000)
http://www.elaw.org/resources/text.asp?id=1104

One of the reasons why my father chose not to return to India after getting his degree in the US was that he saw that he could never be more than a petty beaurocrat or journeyman engineer in India. He would have been forced to live at home because finding a home would have been impossible; the cultural confinement was oppressive, not just the caste-system but within the Parsi community which dominated the manufacturing and mercantile sectors -- very strict rules about who he could and could not consider marrying, who he should and should not do business--; and pervasive corruption requiring bribes in order to get into university, to graduate, to get jobs, to get favours, to police, to lawyers, to gangs (which simply replaced the Thugs), politicians and on and on.... My grandmother paid for a commission for my father in the Indian Army (My father chose to stay in the Canadian Army. He spent the war transferring from unit to unit to dodge his orders to join the Indian Army, much to the ire of his well-connected mother).

Much of this is the legacy of the British, not just the Rajahs. Under the British, in order to get anything done, one needed to bribe in order to get just about anything done. The British favored certain groups (the Parsis were one because of the fact that they spoke a number of languages and were able to act as middlemen (my family name comes from Dobash which translates as go-between or steward) between the British and other groups. Parsis were functionaries, lawyers, purveyors of goods, merchants, traders (my GGgrandfather on one side was involved in the tea-trade and his family made their money as merchants, on my grandfather's side they were lawyers and bankers. Both families were the two riches families in Bombay. My grandmother never let my grandfather forget that she was forced to "marry down" because there were no eligible men in her "level" in the community).

After the end of British rule, the Parsis continued their businesses and the Hindus filled the new positions of Indian beaurocrats (the higher levels that had been filled by the British).

A note on Thugs... while the cult group called Thugs (or Thugees) were destroyed under the British, there are many gangs alive and well in India.

There are various gangs involved in organized crime in various cities and the more urban areas and smaller, rural communities are at the mercy of bandit-gangs which steal from people who can ill afford to be stolen from.

There are also poaching and skin gangs which are involved in the lucrative trade in endangered and restricted aniumals: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/950825.cms

Corruption is still rife in Indian business and politics.

"The latest report by TI, entitled Corruption in South Asia - Insights & Benchmarks from Citizen Feedback Surveys in Five Countries, identifies high levels of corruption encountered by citizens attempting to access seven basic public services. In India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, 100% of respondents that interacted with the police during the past year reported encountering corruption. In Bangladesh, this figure was 84% and in Nepal, 48%. In their experiences with the judiciary, nearly all Indian (100%), Sri Lankan (100%), and Pakistani (96%) households polled reported paying bribes. Judicial corruption was also significant in Bangladesh (75% of users) and Nepal (42 % of users).

After the police and judiciary, land administration was identified as the next most corrupt sector across the region, according to the experiences of South Asian households. In Pakistan, 100% of respondents with experience with the land administration authorities reported corruption and in Sri Lanka this figure was 98%. Land administration was somewhat cleaner in Bangladesh (73% of users reported corruption), India (47% of users) and Nepal (17% of users)." http://www.transparency.org/pressreleases_archive/2002/2002.12.17.south_asia_survey.html

http://www.transparency.org/pressreleases_archive/2002/dnld/south_asia_report.pdf

I wasn't trying to say that British colonial rule had been totally beneficial to the world - though there are parts where it clearly was, I was saying the article itself was totally one dimensional.

Mudhooks - So much I could talk to you about here - The company I work for last month sent me on a course - 'Offshoring to India - Issues in intercultural co-operation,' - The company office is in Mumbai, and they talked about movement in the area, and a little about the caste system. However it all went a little pear-shaped when I asked how they felt morally about the explotation of the Indian people.

I've grown up in one of the most intergrated cities in England, I've had Indian friends since the age of 11 (40 years), and they bring in a bloke who's been to the company office to tell me how to react to Indians, and how to understand the differences between what they say and what they do - along with a graduate of course.

I failed totally in trying to get them to appreciate there was anything wrong in the enclaves that have grown up around the office, or the fact their cleaners, and some of their workers, were living in 'shanty towns'

Seems people can just close their eyes to anything.

I knew I had this link somewhere - another side of colonialism -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4343791.stm

<>

well I can't think of anywhere where it was totally beneficial, very few things ever are
still I'd be prepared to admit that it is almost certain that there is nowhere the effect was totally bad either

Certainly, colonialism has been very, very good for some (my father's family, for instance), but for the vast majority, it had little or no impact until after the British left, and only for the worse.

Part of the problem with India was that in the 60s, for the West, India had pretty well dropped off the radar. India wanted and needed technology and one of the countries which had a great influence over India's development was the Soviet Union. India developed their "5-year plans", modelled on the USSR's "plans". Of course, as every one now knows, the USSR's 5-year plans were not as successful as the USSR would like to have every one believe. They were less successful in India because India was attempting to drag much of its nation out of the Iron Age and into the Space Age.

Unfortunately, India was all too willing to latch onto grand plans without regard for the ability to successfully pull them off, for the impact on the people and the actual need or efficacy of the thing they were trying to build or produce.

India has spent (and continues to spend) money of gigantic dam projects which flood millions of acres of land that could be put to better use, displace millions of people, and which never produce the amount of electricity expected, are badly built, and clog up so fast that they becomne useless. Any yet, they continue building.

The fact it, dam projects are very, very lucrative.... for the people who get bribes throughout the planning and building or the project. If it is lucrative for the politicians and businessmen, you haven't a hope of ending the waste of money and land by stopping such projects.

I would dearly love to go back to visit India. Unfortunately, I think my memories would be better than the experience of revisiting would be.

The moment which really impressed upon me the dichotomy that is India was one morning, I was looking out the window of my grandparent's house in Mumbai, in a wealthy neighbourhood. In a vacant lot next door, there was a huge pile of garbage (no garbage removal in those days) and there was a garbage-sifter --a small boy going through the trash looking for anything that was saleable.

Any day, one saw such things.... naked gurus walking down a street of posh shops.... a cow grazing on weeds in pavement in front of the home of the wealthiest person in Bombay.... a family burning the body of a relative on the beach behind one of the new apartment buildings for well-heeled socialites and movie stars.... but for me, that was the moment which started me thinking about the rights and wrongs of the world.

The Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development on the issue of the effectiveness of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Process (for Indian Residential Schools claims) has tabled its report on hearings. The report is entitled "Study on the effectiveness of the Government Alternative Dispute Resolution Process for the resolution of Indian Residential School Claims." http://www.parl.gc.ca/committee/CommitteeHome.aspx?Lang=1&PARLSES=381&JNT=0&SELID=e17_&COM=8972

I have only skimmed it, myself, so far. However, I do have a few opinions which unfortunately, because of my job*, cannot offer on the subject and on the report.

*My work is related to the ongoing litigation process.