Split Thread Land Ownership

JoeMorgue

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JoeMorgue
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"Ancestral Land" is such a dumb concept anyway. If that was really a thing we had to worry about we'll all be crammed shoulder to shoulder in Olduvai Gorge.

We can't just snap our fingers and make it so the Colonial Age never happened and we can't do anything about it now.

Nobody owns something just because your ancestors at one point owned it.
 
JoeMorgue said:
"Ancestral Land" is such a dumb concept anyway. If that was really a thing we had to worry about we'll all be crammed shoulder to shoulder in Olduvai Gorge.

We can't just snap our fingers and make it so the Colonial Age never happened and we can't I don't much care for us to do anything about it now.

Nobody owns something just because your ancestors at one point owned it.
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What's so impossible about doing something?
 
JoeMorgue said:
"Ancestral Land" is such a dumb concept anyway. If that was really a thing we had to worry about we'll all be crammed shoulder to shoulder in Olduvai Gorge.

We can't just snap our fingers and make it so the Colonial Age never happened and we can't do anything about it now.

Nobody owns something just because your ancestors at one point owned it.
Click to expand...
Quite right, that would require something like say a treaty recognizing said ownership, or maybe a supreme court decision affirming that ownership, if only the Lakota had either of those things...:rolleyes:
 
JoeMorgue said:
"Ancestral Land" is such a dumb concept anyway. If that was really a thing we had to worry about we'll all be crammed shoulder to shoulder in Olduvai Gorge.

We can't just snap our fingers and make it so the Colonial Age never happened and we can't do anything about it now.

Nobody owns something just because your ancestors at one point owned it.
Click to expand...

What if the Supreme Court gave it to you? This isn't a claim - it's settled already.

ETA: OK I'm a little slow.
 
I didn't say anything about who legally owns the land now people calm the hell down.
 
JoeMorgue said:
"Ancestral Land" is such a dumb concept anyway. If that was really a thing we had to worry about we'll all be crammed shoulder to shoulder in Olduvai Gorge.

We can't just snap our fingers and make it so the Colonial Age never happened and we can't do anything about it now.

Nobody owns something just because your ancestors at one point owned it.
Click to expand...
That is an argument that might have been suitable before the US signed the treaty. Nobody is expecting a rewind back to 1492. Just honor the treaty.
 
JoeMorgue said:
"Ancestral Land" is such a dumb concept anyway. If that was really a thing we had to worry about we'll all be crammed shoulder to shoulder in Olduvai Gorge.

We can't just snap our fingers and make it so the Colonial Age never happened and we can't do anything about it now.

Nobody owns something just because your ancestors at one point owned it.
Click to expand...

How about you signed a treaty with the US government guaranteeing you the land then they turned round and took it off you anyway to blow up a mountain and refused to give it back when the courts told them to?
 
JoeMorgue said:
I didn't say anything about who legally owns the land now people calm the hell down.
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So what exactly was the point of your original comment about 'Ancestral Land' then? If you knew that the Lakota had legal title to the land then it was utterly irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
 
Garrison said:
So what exactly was the point of your original comment about 'Ancestral Land' then? If you knew that the Lakota had legal title to the land then it was utterly irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
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Because of the side-discussion about Trump supporters using "Go back where you came from" language.

Group X legally holds the... "title" (or deed or mortgage or whatever) to the land. Doesn't matter if they just got off the boat yesterday or crossed the Bering Straights Ice Bridge 100,000 years ago.

How far back your ancestry goes in an area has absolutely zero impact on anything. I wouldn't own my house more or less because my father owned it and my father owned it before him. What matters is my name is on the mortgage now.

I own a house I purchased yesterday exactly as much as I own a house that has been in my family for generations.
 
JoeMorgue said:
"Ancestral Land" is such a dumb concept anyway. If that was really a thing we had to worry about we'll all be crammed shoulder to shoulder in Olduvai Gorge.
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I think everybody on earth, in some way, lives on stolen land.

Best try to find a way to use what we have, rather than pine for what dead ancestors had.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Because of the side-discussion about Trump supporters using "Go back where you came from" language.
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You do know that when people say "go back to where you came from" they're not talking about a geographical region within the US, right? They mean go back to where your ancestors are from. If they're saying it to a black person, they mean Africa. If they're saying it to someone of East Asian descent, they mean East Asia.

The reason this is particularly stupid when it's said against Native Americans in America is that America is where their ancestors are from. So which continent do the people shouting think they're talking about?

The answer is that they're not thinking at all. It's just a racist thing to say reflexively when you think that you own a country because you're white.
 
Ancestral land and legal ownership of land are two separate concepts. Joe said nothing about legal ownership so any criticism of his post related to this is irrelevant.
 
Lenny Henry's response to Enoch Powell's suggestion that people like him should be given £1000 to go back where they came from:

"I think it's a great idea. It's only twenty quid for the train back to Birmingham".
 
But that's the key difference.

Where you came from, not "where people vaguely like you were generations ago"

I know this puts me at huge odds with a lot of liberal and progressive people but someone who is born somewhere and someone was born somewhere and their "ancestors" can trace their lineage back have exactly the same right to claim "ownership" of said land.
 
JoeMorgue said:
But that's the key difference.

Where you came from, not "where people vaguely like you were generations ago"

I know this puts me at huge odds with a lot of liberal and progressive people but someone who is born somewhere and someone was born somewhere and their "ancestors" can trace their lineage back have exactly the same right to claim "ownership" of said land.
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Agreed. The only sense in which I am not a native American (note the lack of capitalization on "native") is a sense in which some arbitrary line has to be drawn in the past to distinguish native and non-native, This aligns with my previous post about all of our ancestors coming from Africa.
 
JoeMorgue said:
But that's the key difference.

Where you came from, not "where people vaguely like you were generations ago"
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Do you honestly, in your heart of hearts, think that when racists shout "Go back to where you came from" at BAME people they mean that they should return to their houses?
 
JoeMorgue said:
But that's the key difference.

Where you came from, not "where people vaguely like you were generations ago"

I know this puts me at huge odds with a lot of liberal and progressive people but someone who is born somewhere and someone was born somewhere and their "ancestors" can trace their lineage back have exactly the same right to claim "ownership" of said land.
Click to expand...

You could just own up that you didn't know about the treaty or the Supreme Court decision and made a dumb remark rather than indulge in this positively Trumpian effort to pretend your 'Ancestral Land' comment meant something else entirely.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
You do know that when people say "go back to where you came from" they're not talking about a geographical region within the US, right? They mean go back to where your ancestors are from. If they're saying it to a black person, they mean Africa. If they're saying it to someone of East Asian descent, they mean East Asia.

The reason this is particularly stupid when it's said against Native Americans in America is that America is where their ancestors are from. So which continent do the people shouting think they're talking about?

The answer is that they're not thinking at all. It's just a racist thing to say reflexively when you think that you own a country because you're white.
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George Carlin did a great routine about bigots in America. That we should send all the blacks back to Africa. As for the Indians we adopt the theory that they came from Asia. The solution for them is to put all those welfare people to work filling in the Bering Strait and charge the Indians a buck a head to go home.
 
JoeMorgue said:
But that's the key difference.

Where you came from, not "where people vaguely like you were generations ago"

I know this puts me at huge odds with a lot of liberal and progressive people but someone who is born somewhere and someone was born somewhere and their "ancestors" can trace their lineage back have exactly the same right to claim "ownership" of said land.
Click to expand...

I'm not really following.

Property ownership is a weird thing. So is the idea of inheritance. How can anyone own land? You say you bought the land? From who? And why was it theirs? At some point in the past owning a piece of land was little more than putting a stake in the ground. Oh, they brought it from the US government. Where did they get the land? Oh, they bought it from France. And how did France procure it? They simply claimed it.

So does merely yelling "dibs" constitute a right of ownership?
 
acbytesla said:
So does merely yelling "dibs" constitute a right of ownership?
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Technically, yes. The part people leave out is that it is only step one. Step two is beating up anyone else who comes along and yells "dibs". Presto! Legal ownership.
 
acbytesla said:
I'm not really following.
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You're going through old court records one day and found out that my great grandfather had stolen 1,000 dollars from your great grandfather and both men died before restitution could be made.

How much do I owe you at this point in time?
 
JoeMorgue said:
"Ancestral Land" is such a dumb concept anyway. If that was really a thing we had to worry about we'll all be crammed shoulder to shoulder in Olduvai Gorge.

We can't just snap our fingers and make it so the Colonial Age never happened and we can't do anything about it now.

Nobody owns something just because your ancestors at one point owned it.
Click to expand...

No, but they were given reservations to move to. Those were legal treaties that despite being disregarded at various times after, have been held up by the SCOTUS. So it is their land, actually.

I posted a link upthread.

What happened with the badlands after the treaty was signed, is that white people invaded (gold was discovered). Later there was a settlement reached where money was paid for the absconded land. But a number of the tribe felt they were not represented in the negotiations. They refused the money because they felt that meant they had sold the land which they didn't want to do.

It remains unsettled. But when Native Americans claim they own the land, they actually do in most cases.
 
Garrison said:
Quite right, that would require something like say a treaty recognizing said ownership, or maybe a supreme court decision affirming that ownership, if only the Lakota had either of those things...:rolleyes:
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I seem to have been a bit wordy there. You said it so much better.
 
JoeMorgue said:
You're going through old court records one day and found out that my great grandfather had stolen 1,000 dollars from your great grandfather and both men died before restitution could be made.

How much do I owe you at this point in time?
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Legally? Probably nothing. Statute of limitations

Morally? Impossible to say.

Are you responsible for your grandparent's debts? What if you never received a dime of inheritance? But what if you got to go to the best university and were able to parlay that education into millions? Maybe that $1,000 was the key difference between you living a life of luxury and me being homeless?

The problem of course is drawing a direct link.
 
I legally own the land beneath my house because I purchased it from the prior legal owner, who purchased it from the prior legal owner, etc. if it turns out one of those people did not have legal possession, then neither do I. I would be in trouble, although I have deed insurance, can sue the illegitimate owner, etc. No one says, “Oh that’s just history, let’s move on.” The bank was very clear on this.

Was “my” land originally stolen from the native tribes? Probably, although thankfully for the moment they are not contesting it.
 
acbytesla said:
Legally? Probably nothing. Statute of limitations

Morally? Impossible to say.

Are you responsible for your grandparent's debts? What if you never received a dime of inheritance? But what if you got to go to the best university and were able to parlay that education into millions? Maybe that $1,000 was the key difference between you living a life of luxury and me being homeless?

The problem of course is drawing a direct link.
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In the USA debts and credits are established before the estate is settled and outstanding debts are paid for from the estate. If the debts exceed the value of the estate the inheritors receive nothing but are not legally obligated to pay the outstanding debts from their own money.

But yes the moral imperative can be different.
 
Giordano said:
In the USA debts and credits are established before the estate is settled and outstanding debts are paid for from the estate. If the debts exceed the value of the estate the inheritors receive nothing but are not legally obligated to pay the outstanding debts from their own money.

But yes the moral imperative can be different.
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But of course this scenario is more complicated than that. The estate has been settled and time has passed. Clawing back ill-gotten gains is difficult under the best of circumstances and impossible in most.
 
Giordano said:
I legally own the land beneath my house because I purchased it from the prior legal owner, who purchased it from the prior legal owner, etc. if it turns out one of those people did not have legal possession, then neither do I. I would be in trouble, although I have deed insurance, can sue the illegitimate owner, etc. No one says, “Oh that’s just history, let’s move on.” The bank was very clear on this.

Was “my” land originally stolen from the native tribes? Probably, although thankfully for the moment they are not contesting it.
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"Legally" just means the government sanctions it. It doesn't mean you or anyone morally owns the property.

We've all heard the story of Native Americans selling the island of Manhattan for about $30 of goods. We think "what a steal". That was exactly what the natives thought. The concept of owning land was absurd to them.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
No it wasn't, and nothing about that legend is accurate.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/12657/was-manhattan-really-bought-24 [Mentalfloss: Was Manhattan Really Bought for $24?]
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If you read the article, you'll see that it doesn't say that the legend is false. It only says it is highly questionable. Still, it wouldn't surprise me at all that the story was fabricated or highly exaggerated.

My actual point is the idea of land ownership is really a questionable concept.
 
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acbytesla said:
My actual point is the idea of land ownership is really a questionable concept.
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Property rights are an arbitrary creation of society. A rather useful one for societal purposes, for the most part. Still, this topic would likely be better to discuss in a more appropriate thread.
 
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