Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T21:19:17.115Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Aboriginal Property and Western Theory: Recovering a Middle Ground*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2009

James Tully
Affiliation:
Philosophy, McGill University

Extract

During the last forty years, the Aboriginal peoples of the Americas, of the British Commonwealth, and of other countries colonized by Europeans over the last five hundred years have demanded that their forms of property and government be recognized in international law and in the constitutional law of their countries. This broad movement of 250 million Aboriginal people has involved court cases, parliamentary politics, constitutional amendments, the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the development of an international law of Aboriginal peoples, and countless nonviolent and violent actions in defense of Aboriginal systems of property and cultures. The Aboriginal peoples of New Zealand, Canada, and the United States have been at the forefront of the movement, and it is in these countries that the greatest legal recognition has been achieved.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Burger, Julian, First Peoples: A Future for the Indigenous World (New York: Anchor Books, 1990)Google Scholar, for an overview; see ibid., p. 15 for the figure of 250 million, not including Africa. See also Fieras, Augie and Elliott, Jean Leonard, The Nations Within: Aboriginal-State Relations in Canada, the United States, and New Zealand (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

2 See, for example. Kymlicka, Will, Liberalism, Community, and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).Google Scholar

3 Although I believe my argument could be extended to other countries, this essay is restricted to Canada and the United States.

4 See Singer, Joseph William, “Sovereignty and Property,” Northwestern University Law Review, vol. 86, no. 1 (1991), pp. 156Google Scholar; Wilkinson, Charles, “Native Sovereignty in the United States: Developments during the Modern Era,” in Aboriginal Sell-Determination, ed. Cassidy, Frank (Halifax: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1991), pp. 219–32Google Scholar; Slattery, Brian, “Understanding Aboriginal Rights,” Canadian Bar Review, vol. 66, no. 1 (1987), pp. 727–83Google Scholar; and Slattery, Brian, “Aboriginal Sovereignty and Imperial Claims,”Google Scholar in Cassidy, , ed., Aboriginal Self-Determination, pp. 197219.Google Scholar

5 “Aboriginal and common-law system” refers to both the Aboriginal and common-law modes of argument, authoritative traditions, and concepts, and the institutions of property and practices of cross-cultural negotiation these modes of argument are associated with. The locus classions for this approach is Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations [1953], trans. Anscombe, G. E. M. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), sections 240–42.Google Scholar See Tully, James, “Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy: Understanding Practices of Critical Reflection,” Political Theory, vol. 17, no. 2 (05 1989), pp. 172204CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and compare Bobbitt, Philip, Constitutional Interpretation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), pp. 141–77Google Scholar, and Patterson, Dennis, “Conscience and the Constitution,” Columbia Law Review, vol. 93, no. 1 (01 1993), pp. 270307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 For judicial and government deviation from the Aboriginal and common-law system, see Ball, Milnar, “Constitution, Court, Indian Tribes,” American Bar Foundation Research Journal (now Law and Social Inquiry), vol. 1 (1987), pp. 1139Google Scholar; Clinton, Robert N., “The Proclamation of 1763: Colonial Prelude to Two Centuries of Federal-State Conflict over the Management of Indian Affairs,” Boston University Law Review, vol. 69 (1989), pp. 329–85Google Scholar; and the works cited in note 4 above.

7 Worcester v. the State of Georgia, 6 Peter 515 (U.S.S.C. 1832), p. 542Google Scholar, reprinted in Marshall, John, The Writings of Chief Justice Marshall on the Federal Constitution (Littleton, CO: Fred B. Rothman & Co., 1987), pp. 426–27.Google Scholar

8 For international law, see Davies, Maureen, “Aspects of Aboriginal Rights in International Law,” in Aboriginal Peoples and the Law, ed. Morse, Bradford (Ottawa: University of Carleton Press, 1991), pp. 1647, esp. pp. 3740.Google Scholar Although there is agreement that the Aboriginal peoples are not conquered, there is less agreement on what their status is. The United Nations' forthcoming declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples may clarify this. See Discrimination against Indigenous Peoples: First Revised Text of the Draft Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1989/33 (1989).Google Scholar

9 See, for example, Churchill, Ward, The Struggle for the Land: Indigenous Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide, and Expropriation in Contemporary North America (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1991)Google Scholar; and Clinebell, John Howard and Thomson, Jim, “Sovereignty and Self-Determination: The Rights of Native Americans under International Law,” Buffalo Law Review, vol. 27, no. 1 (1987), pp. 669714.Google Scholar

10 See, for example, Green, L. C., “Claims to Territory in Colonial America,” in The Law of Nations and the New World, ed. Green, L. C. and Dickason, Olive P. (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1989), pp. 1131.Google Scholar

11 For two different middle positions, see Barsh, Russell and Henderson, James Youngblood, The Road: Indian Tribes and Political Liberty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980)Google Scholar; and Slattery, Brian, “First Nations and the Constitution: A Matter of Trust,” Canadian Bar Review, vol. 71, no. 1 (1992).Google Scholar

12 The argument of Sections II and III is constructed on the basis of detailed historical scholarship in two previous essays: Tully, James, “Rediscovering America: The Two Treatises and Aboriginal Rights,” in Tully, , An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 137–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Placing the Two Treatises,” in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, ed. Phillipson, Nicholas and Skinner, Quentin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 253–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Johnson and Graham's Lessee v. M'Intosh, 8 Wheaton 543 (U.S.S.C. 1823), pp. 567–71Google Scholar, reprinted in Marshall, , Writings of Chief Justice Marshall, pp. 257–61.Google Scholar

14 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)Google Scholar, Second Treatise (II), sections 14, 30, 49, 108, 109; the quote in the text is from section 49.

15 Ibid., II, 30, 38, 45, 50, 87, 107, 108.

16 See Meek, Ronald, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; and Tully, , “Placing the Two Treatises,” pp. 262–66.Google Scholar

17 Locke, , Two Treatises, II, 28, 30, 34, 36, 37, 4143, 4849.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., II, 27.

19 Ibid., II, 36.

20 Ibid., II, 42, 45.

21 Ibid., II, 32.

22 Ibid., I, 130–31; II, 10, 11, 16.

23 Ibid., II, 25, 39, 51.

24 Ibid., II, 37, 40–43, 48–49.

25 Ibid., II, 34, 37.

26 Ibid., II, 40, 41, 42.

27 Ibid., II, 37, 43. For this interpretation of Locke's solution to the “enough and as good” or “sufficiency” proviso, see Buckle, Stephen, Natural Law and the Theory of Property (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 150–53Google Scholar; Arneil, Barbara, All the World Was America: John Locke and English Colonization (London: University of London Ph.D., 1993)Google Scholar; and Sreenivasan, Gopal, The Limits of Lockean Rights in Property (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

28 For a critical survey of the recent literature and a defense of this argument, see Tully, , “Property, Self-Government, and Consent” (forthcoming).Google Scholar

29 Locke, , Two Treatises, II, 30, 38, 87.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., II, 107–8, and the quotation in the editorial footnote to II, 107.

31 Ibid., II, 9, 108.

32 Ibid., II, 107.

33 Ibid., II, 108.

34 Ibid., II, 37, 48–49.

35 Ibid., II, 50. See Tully, , “Rediscovering America,” pp. 164–66Google Scholar, for a defense of this interpretation.

36 Williams, Roger, “The Bloody Tenant…,” in The Complete Writings of Roger Williams (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), vol. 3, p. 250.Google Scholar See Moynihan, Ruth Barnes, “The Patent and the Indians: The Problem of Jurisdiction in Seventeenth-Century New England,” American Indian Culture and Research, vol. 2, no. 1 (1977), pp. 818.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 See Jennings, Francis, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from Its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1984)Google Scholar; and Richter, Daniel and Merrell, James, eds., Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and Their Neighbours in Indian North America (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

38 For these four criteria for statehood and sovereignty in international law, see Davies, , “Aspects of Aboriginal Rights” (supra note 8), pp. 2428.Google Scholar For the argument that Aboriginal nations meet the criteria, see Grand Council of the Crees (of Quebec), Status and Rights of the James Bay Crees in the Context of Quebec's Secession from Canada, submission to United Nations Commission on Human Rights, 48th session (01 27–03 6, 1992).Google Scholar For the widespread recognition of their nationhood in the early modern period, see Richter, and Merrell, , Beyond the Covenant OtainGoogle Scholar; White, Richard, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 305–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Six Nations, The Redman's Appeal for Justice: The Position of the Six Nations That They Constitute an Independent State (Brantford, Ontario: The Six Nations, 1924).Google Scholar For doubts, see generally Anaya, S. James, “The Capacity of International Law to Advance Ethnic or Nationality Rights Claims,” Iowa law Review, vol. 75 (1990), pp. 837–82Google Scholar; and Green, L. C., “Claims to Territory in Colonial America” (supra note 10).Google Scholar

39 See Tully, , “Rediscovering America” (supra note 12), pp. 140–41.Google Scholar

40 Cotton, John, “John Cotton's Reply to Roger Williams,” in The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, vol. 2, pp. 4647.Google Scholar See Moynihan, , “The Patent and the Indians.”Google Scholar

41 This synopsis of Aboriginal property systems is based on numerous anthropological studies. Two of the best are Wallace, Anthony F., “Political Organization and Land Tenure among Northeastern Indians, 1600–1830,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol. 13 (1957), pp. 301–21Google Scholar; and Starna, William A., “Aboriginal Title and Traditional Iroquois Land Use,” in Iroquois Land Claims, ed. Vecsey, Christopher and Starna, William A. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1988), pp. 3149.Google Scholar

42 Bulkley, John, “An Inquiry into the Right of the Aboriginal Natives to the Land in America,” in Wolcott, Roger, Poetical Meditations (New London, 1726), pp. ilvi.Google Scholar

43 Vattel, Emeric de, Le droit des gens, ou principes de la loi naturelle [1758]Google Scholar; reprinted as The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law, trans. Fenwick, Charles G. (Washington: Carnegie Institute, 1902), pp. 207–10.Google Scholar

44 See note 16 above.

45 I defend this claim in “Placing the Two Treatises” (supra note 12), pp. 279–80.Google Scholar For the authors cited, see Pocock, John, Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harrington, James, The Political Writings of James Harrington, ed. Pocock, J. G. A. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; and Smith, Adam, Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. Meek, Ronald, Raphael, D. D., and Stein, L. G. (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1982).Google Scholar

46 Kant, Immanuel, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent”Google Scholar and “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Humphrey, Ted (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), pp. 2940 and pp. 107–44Google Scholar; see esp. pp. 33, 111, 114.

47 Ibid., pp. 112–15.

48 Ibid., pp. 31–32, 124. For the philosophical background to the concept of “unsocial sociability,” see Hont, Istvan, “The Language of Sociability and Commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the Theoretical Foundations of the ‘Four Stages Theory’,” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Pagden, Anthony (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 253–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Kant, , “Perpetual Peace,” pp. 111, 122 and note.Google Scholar

50 Ibid., p. 123.

51 Ibid., p. 119.

52 Ibid., p. 125.

53 Ibid., pp. 118–19.

54 Ibid., p. 118.

55 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).Google Scholar See Lyons, David, “The New Indian Claims and Original Rights to Land,” in Reading Nozick: Essays on Anarchy, State, and Utopia, ed. Paul, Jeffrey (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981), pp. 355–79.Google Scholar

56 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; see Van Dyke, Vernon, “Justice as Fairness-For Groups,” American Political Science Review, vol. 69 (1975), pp. 607–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Rawls, John, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 14 (1985), p. 225.Google Scholar This premise is incorporated in Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

58 See Kymlicka, , Liberalism, Community, and CultureGoogle Scholar; and Buchanan, Allen, Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991).Google Scholar

59 MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Walzer, Michael, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983).Google Scholar

60 For example, see the otherwise impressive work by Young, Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

61 Jennings, Francis, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1975), pp. 128–46.Google Scholar

62 Wharton, Samuel, Plain Facts: Being an Examination into the Rights of the Indian Nations of America to Their Respective Territories, and a Vindication of the Grant of the Six United Nations (Philadelphia, 1781), p. 7.Google Scholar

63 For the context, see Williams, Robert A., The American Indians in Western Legal Thought: The Discourse of Conquest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 257300.Google Scholar

64 Otis, James, Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (Boston, 1764)Google Scholar; Jefferson, Thomas, A Summary View of the Rights of British America [1775], ed. Abernethy, T. P. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943).Google Scholar See Tully, , “Placing the Two Treatises” (supra note 12), pp. 266–75.Google Scholar

65 For this way of articulating the form of mutual recognition expressed in the Royal Proclamation, see Pocock, John, “A Discourse of Sovereignty: Observations on the Work in Progress,” in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, pp. 417–21.Google Scholar The Royal Proclamation is reprinted in Documents of the Canadian Constitution, 1759–2915, ed. Kennedy, W. P. M. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1918), pp. 1821.Google Scholar

66 For the context, see Slattery, Brian, The Land Rights of Indigenous Canadian People as Affected by the Crown's Acquisition of Their Territory (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan Press, 1979)Google Scholar; and Stagg, Jack, Anglo-American Relations in North America to 1763 and an Analysis of the Royal Proclamation of 7 October 1763 (Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1981).Google Scholar

67 Jones, Dorothy V., License for Empire: Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).Google Scholar

68 The quotation is from Shurtleff, N. B., ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (Boston: W. White, 18531854), p. 213Google Scholar, cited in Clinton, , “The Proclamation of 1763” (supra note 6), p. 334.Google Scholar The Mohegan case is in Smith, J. H., Appeals to the Privy Council from the American Plantations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), pp. 417–22.Google Scholar See Clinton, , “The Proclamation of 1763,” pp. 335–36Google Scholar; and Clark, Bruce, Native Liberty, Crown Sovereignty: The Existing Aboriginal Right of Self-Government in Canada (Toronto: McGill-Queens University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

69 Johnson and Graham's Lessee v. M'Intosh, pp. 573–74Google Scholar, in Marshall, , Writings of Chief Justice Marshall (supra note 7), pp. 263–64Google Scholar; and Worcester v. the State of Georgia, pp. 543–47Google Scholar, in Ibid., pp. 427–33. Compare Brian Slattery, Ancestral Lands, Alien Laws: Judicial Perspectives on Aboriginal Title (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan Press, 1983), p. 26Google Scholar, and see quotation accompanying note 7 above.

70 Johnson, pp. 588–89Google Scholar, in Marshall, , Writings of Chief Justice Marshall, pp. 274–75Google Scholar; and Worcester, pp. 544–45Google Scholar, in ibid., pp. 428–29.

71 Johnson, p. 589Google Scholar, in ibid., p. 275; Worcester, p. 547Google Scholar, in ibid., p. 431; Campbell v. Hall, 1 Cowp. 204 (1774)Google Scholar; The Quebec Act, 14 George III, c.88 (1774)Google Scholar; Locke, , Two Treatises, II, 182–85, 192–96.Google Scholar

72 “The Royal Proclamation,” in Kennedy, , ed., Documents (supra note 65), pp. 2021.Google ScholarClinton, Compare, “The Proclamation of 1763,” pp. 354–60Google Scholar; and Johnston, Darlene, The Taking of Indian Lands in Canada: Consent or Coercion? (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan Native Law Centre, 1989).Google Scholar

73 See Wildsmith, Bruce, Aboriginal Peoples and Section 25 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan Native Law Centre, 1988).Google Scholar

74 Compare the similar arguments of Barsh and Henderson, , The RoadGoogle Scholar, for the U.S., and Slattery, , “First Nations and the Constitution,” for Canada (supra note 11).Google Scholar

75 See notes 4, 6, and 11 above for recent court cases and constitutional developments. For a comprehensive analysis of a recent Canadian lower court denial of the normative framework (based on the four sets of Eurocentric assumptions summarized in Section II) which has been successfully appealed, see Cassidy, Frank, ed., Aboriginal Title in British Columbia: Delgamuukw v. The Queen (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1992).Google Scholar

76 See, for example, Green, L. C., “Claims to Territory in Colonial America,” pp. 99105, 110–11, 116–23Google Scholar; see also the examples in note 6 above.

77 See Johnston, , The Taking of Indian Lands in Canada (supra note 72)Google Scholar; and Worcester, p. 547Google Scholar, in Marshall, , Writings of Chief Justice Marshall, p. 431.Google Scholar

78 “The Royal Proclamation,” in Kennedy, , ed., Documents, p. 20.Google Scholar

79 There is considerable evidence that Marshall was dissatisfied with his judgment in Johnson and welcomed the opportunity to correct it. See Burke, Joseph C., “The Cherokee Cases: A Study in Law, Politics, and Morality,” Stanford Law Review, vol. 21 (1968), pp. 500–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 Worcester, p. 560Google Scholar in Marshall, , Writings of Chief Justice Marshall, p. 446.Google Scholar

81 Miller, J. R., Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), pp. 83210.Google Scholar

82 Worcester, pp. 544, 548, 551, 553–54, 559–61Google Scholar, in Marshall, , Writings of Chief Justice Marshall, pp. 428, 433, 436, 438–39, 445–47.Google Scholar

83 Worcester, p. 555Google Scholar, in ibid., p. 440; and The Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, 5 Peter (1829), pp. 1420Google Scholar, in ibid., pp. 412–18.

84 Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, The Right of Aboriginal Self-Government and the Constitution: A Commentary (Ottawa, 02 13, 1992), p. 15.Google Scholar

85 Parker, A. C., ed., The Constitution of the Five Nations, or The Iroquois Book of the Great Law (Albany: State University of New York, 1916; Iroqrafts Reprints, 1984).Google Scholar

86 For the history of early treaty relations, see Jennings, Francis et al. , eds., The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and White, , The Middle Ground (supra note 38).Google Scholar

87 The quotation is from the Haudenosaunee confederacy's presentation to the Canadian House of Commons Committee on Indian Self-Govemment (1983), reprinted with commentary in Mitchell, Michael, “An Unbroken Assertion of Sovereignty,” in Drumbeat: Anger and Renewal in Indian Country, ed. Richardson, Boyce (Toronto: Summerhill Press-The Assembly of First Nations, 1989), pp. 109–10.Google Scholar

88 Parker, , ed., The Constitution of the Five Nations, section 84, p. 53.Google Scholar

89 For Aboriginal accounts of treaty negotiations, see Richardson, , ed., Drumbeat: Anger and Renewal.Google Scholar For liberal traditions of federalism commensurable with the Royal Proclamation and Two Row, see Tully, James, “Diversity's Gambit Declined,” in Canada's Constitutional Predicament, ed. Cook, Curtis (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

90 For these examples, see Coates, Ken, ed., Aboriginal Land Claims in Canada: A Regional Perspective (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman Ltd., 1992)Google Scholar; Vecsey, and Starna, , eds., Iroquois land Claims (supra note 41)Google Scholar; and Lazarus, Edward, Black Hills, White Justice: The Sioux Nation versus the United States, 1775 to the Present (New York: Harper Collins, 1991).Google Scholar