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> From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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> Subject: Re: primitive communism
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> >Yeah, that's me. PEN-Ler Jim Craven will be on, 5 PM on Thursday.
> >
> >There's a big difference between ending Jim Crow and redoing property
> >relations. Property relations are the bedrock of the capitalist form.
> >
> >Doug
>
> Nobody has any illusions that capitalism will be abolished in British
> Columbia. The real choice is along a spectrum: retain the land for
> traditional hunting and fishing usage; allow some commercial exploitation
> but respect ecology and pay the tribe fair royalties; allow the
> corporations to rape the land and cheat the Indian. Indian
> self-determination would tend to operate within the space of the first two
> options. But Jim and Paul DeMain will have much more information on this,
> I'm sure.
>
> Louis Proyect
>
Response: I suspect that the reasons for the decisions of the
Canadian Government and Courts (I hold both U.S. and Canadian
citizenship) is that the Canadian Government and Courts are a bit
more sophisticated in terms of putting the velvet glove over the ugly
iron fist of capitalism and a bit more sophisticated (than the U.S.
Government and Courts) in terms of understanding that the basic and
most sacred principles, laws, rights, privileges, myths, traditions,
power relations used to protect, santify, ratify, mystify, reproduce
on an expanded scale forms and levels of private property can easily
be used to indict and challenge the very same private property
protected/mystified/sanctioned by the above-mentioned.
For example, among some of the White (descendants of settlers) large-
landowners in the West of Canada (and indeed elsewhere) are claims to
land backed up with White oral histories, traditons, and traditional
names suggesting earliest White inhabitants. As Native Land Claim
Activists have shifted their focus from outright occupations--e.g. as
with the Mohawks etc--to legal challenges using the most sacred
rights, myths, laws and codes of bourgois law and "private property",
the bourgeois courts have been caught in the vice of consistent
application of their own sacred laws etc, somewhat like the U.S.
professing to be the most democratic, moral etc getting caught
supporting the most ugly forces of fascism and repression; it is
cognitive dissonance time.
In the past, the way around the congitive dissonance problem was to
declare: 1) Indians don't have the same concepts of laws governing
private property, they are communalists, "therefore" nothing of value
"to them" was stolen as "their" institutions were not violated; this
argument has broken down inasmuch as brougeois institutions not only
celebrate/protect/reinforce certain laws, power relations, mechanisms
of expropriation etc, they also celebrate--as "eternal", "natural"
and "immutable"--certain "principles" and "concepts" of "private
property" and therefore it only matters that the laws of capitalism--
held "sacred by the Whites"-- were violated in order to indict--as
either not immutable, natural and eternal or as racially applied--
those very same principles, myths, codes, laws, traditions etc. 2);
effective ownership and control of private property is established
not only through occupation of the land but also "improvements to
the land" (Homesteader Laws) and since Indians "live in harmony with
nature" but do not really "improve" the land, "therefore", original
occupation does not establish clear ownership and control or "title"
with the right to sell, selectively utilize etc; 3) Communal lands
are not recognized except under restricted conditons and "therefore"
Tribal lands must be broken up and individualized (Tribe not a
person) for individualized and individual-oriented "private property"
rights, laws etc to apply (the broken-up lands become easy to
expropriate through coercion, unconscionable contracts etc) and
"therefore" Tribal lands or communal lands were never protected under
private property rights, laws and concepts and "therefore" non of the
sacred "private property" laws, myths etc were violated in the
expropriation of Tribal lands; 4) Under the sacred doctrines of
"private property", reparations may be paid to make whole the damaged
parties and if the damaged parties themselves or their "duly elected"
representatives agree to the terms (insider sell- out Indians, BIA
Toadies etc) then the sacred requirements and duties of "private
property" have been satisfied (and therefore protected as sacred and
eternal etc) if reparations are made--and "title" therefore "lawfully"
passes to the new owners and no ones sacred institutions have been
violated--or exposed for what they really are/mean/do.
Jim Craven
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