Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2009
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.
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
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3 Although I believe my argument could be extended to other countries, this essay is restricted to Canada and the United States.
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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. 172–204CrossRefGoogle 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. 270–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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51 Ibid., p. 119.
52 Ibid., p. 125.
53 Ibid., pp. 118–19.
54 Ibid., p. 118.
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