Today I am sharing Chief Theresa Spence's press release on the day following a meeting with Canadian government officials. Note well, co-optation is ever the mark of power mongers under systems designed to perpetuate inequality.
From opposite ends of the planet, the wisdom of indigenous grandmothers who represent the people's needs over the profit motives of the corporations whom our governments currently represent.
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Corporations, like marriages, have exactly as many legal powers as legislatures and courts give them.
Canada is an interesting case of the influence of the Israel lobby. Suddenly, a couple or three years ago, Canadian prime ministers were toeing an extreme Zionist party line, leading me to speculate at the cost of renting a democratic government in a nation of a given size.
I would hope that English law (as opposed to our own Anglo-American legal tradition, as it's called by its practitioners) has enough consistency to bear out what Chief Spence claims for it, such as distinguishing what rights to the land (property law professors speaks of the bundle of sticks representing the various rights to land that may be created, bought, and regulated, such as the right to exclude) were transferred in treaties with native peoples.
But Harper's relationship with Zionism at the moment doesn't give me much hope that he would care about this other case of indigenous rights.
Let me mention a meeting that took place at Portland's law school when I was there, part of a conference on Indian law. (That's what they call it, these practitioners: I took the course, and the gist of it seems to be, in US law, the "Indians" always lose the point in issue.) This evening meeting was entirely, excepting maybe a lawyer or two, and me, members of Maine's tribes. You couldn't tell that by looking at them through a biologist's eyes. But the quality of listening at the meeting was absolutely tremendous. Those two hundred (probably that many) could have participated respectfully and effectively in a meeting with Mr. Harper. That remark of his does show the differential cultural values at work, or, I should say, his assumptions of both what other people value and whether those values are, as property law would say, exclusionary. I guess I mean, the definition of a bigot is he assumes the other guy is as hard-hearted as he is: he assumes the worst about other people. Thus, little trivialities like skin tone give him cause to take the maximum precautions.
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