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AlotOfReading | on: Meta's memo to employees rolling back DEI programs
You'd be surprised then. Indigenous property rights aren't homogenous. Many lacked the kind of exclusive ownership that we have in Western systems. (Some) Inuit recognized communal band lands for example, where a particular individual within that band might have rights to a particular resource location while they used it, but their usage was governed by complex systems of traditions and they couldn't necessarily exclude others from separate resources in the same physical location.

Pueblo groups had extremely strong ideas about property lines, but those properties were often analogous to modern corporations where individual families could own "shares" in the property, and exchange those for other shares in other properties to reallocate ownership. Areas within a property could also be "rented" to others, or the entire property reclaimed by the government.

The best way I can summarize it is that native Americans tended to have much more fine-grained ideas about what property rights entail than our Western systems. Capabilities based security vs role based security, to really force the analogy into computing.

mitthrowaway2 | parent | next
Is that really different than traditional Western societies? Medieval European societies had complex systems governing shared rights and ownership of common grazing lands and forests, for example. Those rights changed over time (such as through the Inclosure Acts) but it's not a concept alien to western societies.
AlotOfReading | root | parent
There's probably an interesting comparative discussion that I'm not remotely qualified to have on medieval European property rights, but there's enough history of colonial settlers wildly misunderstanding indigenous property systems that I don't know a better word than "alien".
ethbr1 | root | parent
"Misunderstanding" seems perhaps overly charitable to the colonial settlers.

Possessing of enough military force to ignore others rights would be more historically descriptive.

Even if they had fully understood all the nuances of indigenous property rights, they still would have stolen the land. Confusion was just a fig leaf.

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WalterBright | parent
> The best way I can summarize it is that native Americans tended to have much more fine-grained ideas about what property rights entail than our Western systems.

Capitalism has very fine-grained ideas about property rights. Consider corporations, for just one example. There are multiple kinds of shares about who owns what rights to the corporation. Then there are all the contractual obligations that, in essence, transfer specific property rights. There are the web of rights that workers have over it. Then there are the rights the government has over it, via tax obligations and regulations. Layer on the concept of "stakeholders" that layer on more ownership rights.

ponow | root | parent
We need one title one owner. Shared ownership is confusion. Governmens shouldn't run interference between managers and stockholders.