“Land” shouldn’t belong to anyone. I’m very skeptical of people saying any piece of land belongs to any specific ethnic group, that just sounds like an ethnostate to me.
This is because you’re looking at this issue in a vacuum and applying western forms of universalist thought to it.
When indigenous peoples talk about “owning” land they probably arent talking about it in terms of anglo “ownership” through a law and contracts. I have no clear understanding of what they actually mean but its clear they arent speaking in anglo legal terms. Furthermore, im pretty sure they also dont want any sort of “ethnostate”, because why would they want a “state” or consider shit like “ethnicity” the way anglos do?
Also its ironic how they were all genocided and driven of their ancestral lands by crackers who declared such “terra nullis” and established white ethnostates.
I have no clear understanding of what they actually mean
Then why are you speaking for them? I’ve been around and spoken to plenty of rez folks around where I live and they are every bit as capable of being greedy capitalist shitheads as any white person. This comes across as some kind of “noble savage” romanticism.
Please specify where I said that indigenous conceptions of land back are somehow better than the anglo legalist contract based system to substantiate your “noble savagery” claim.
Im saying shit because im confident enough to admit i dont know what they mean, and thus not make any unfounded anglo idealist claims about landback creating “muh ethnostates” and how akshually nobody should own land because “muh terra nullis”. Notice how those arguments are colonist projection and how I never said the indigenous peoples do not have the capacity to be exploitative capitalists.
I disagree, but maybe this is just semantics. I’m not a Georgist but their tenants are not bankrupt - land is power and a means of its own. Related, if land belongs to no one then no one has authority over another on what they can do with it, and anti-social forces can exploit the power gap. Ideally it belongs to everyone/everything (ecosystems) in that all uses should be considered and allowed outside of what harms other uses, beyond some kind of reasonable consideration (unfortunate loophole?). So really it should be in the hands of the public, through nations or councils or otherwise. I think we’re on the same page I’m just an obnoxious pedant.
E: a second pedantic thought is to reconsider this not as a support of ethnostates, but as retroactively acknowledging the democratic wishes of oppressed peoples and their ancestors, to try and repatriate their agency in deciding what should happen on the space they primarily used and called home. If we had our ideal situation, much of what has happened would not have happened because it was largely done against their wishes, so mitigating that going forward through land back is one option. But I agree with others it seems this is not being done in good faith. Not sure what other ways exist that can acknowledge wrongdoing without letting bad actors exploit it long term.
