Who Owns the Land?
by Chuck Schultz
People who originally lived in America were called Indians. Aborigines in India are called Adivasi. I thought of India as being an ancient civilization without aborigines living there. But there are dozens of groups claiming to be indigenous because India has regulations concerning indigenous land claims. Defining indigenous groups in India is not easy. After all, waves people have occupied the subcontinent for millennia. Before India was occupied by British, Macedonians, Persians, Mongols, and other invading hordes, there were people in India. And there are still a few dozen languages spoken in India.
Like America, all continents have “indigenous” groups. Ascertaining who are indigenous is like deciding when time began. I read that we are all descended from one group who lived in Africa. If we all have common ancestry in Africa no one is indigenous anywhere else. A native of a place is someone who was born there. In 1843 there was a political party called the Native American Party, white men born in the United States who were defensive about immigrants.
People with a long ancestry in America had ideas about property and land ownership at a variance with the invading Europeans. They also had different ideas about governance or leadership. Europeans identified someone they could call a chief, and bought land from him that didn’t belong to him. Then they concluded that other natives had no right to be there. Migrations have occurred in every continent and island group. You can name many of the barbarian throngs who migrated to Europe. In Britain alone there have been Picts, Celts, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Britons, and more.
Peoples are organized in many ways: as nationalities, states, tribes, religious groups, etc., and clans exist within tribes that exist within ethnic groups. As peoples migrate, they often combine with peoples they encounter or groups combine for protection against them.
Europeans have a penchant for drawing lines for their convenience. Many people have borders imposed upon them without regard to what effect those borders have. It doesn’t matter that Kurds, rather than having their own nationality, form part of the nationality of four different countries. It doesn’t matter that Native Americans and native Africans are assigned to areas that are problematic for their accustomed existence. Many African countries contain groups of people with different traditions, languages, and ways of life.
When a People invade a territory they typically consider the previous residents insignificant. The occupiers or other outside group declare what parameters the residents must adhere to, while their primitive ideas are given no credence. The residents are told that they must have a formal government, laws, and a legal justice system. In fact, they must have a nation with borders.
When Europeans first encountered indigenous peoples on other continents they assumed that they should act as Europeans. They should have similar ideas of modesty, have an authority that could speak for all, and have ownership of property. When ideas about sexuality change, other cultures are expected to accept the new guiding principles. Each culture has its customs, which are enforced by rules, laws, or convention. Some types of clothing, such as neckties, are not functional but are symbols of status.
A society’s customs work for that society. Foreign policy is commonly developed without the values and customs of the foreigners in mind. How arrogant is it to tell someone else how to live?