Maine's constitution has unprintable sections
mitsc.org
mitsc.org
> Sections 1 and 2 of Article X were also redacted in 1876. They covered when the first Maine legislature would meet, when initial elections would be held, how Senate and House seats would be allocated as between the counties and towns, and what the initial terms of Maine’s elected and appointed officers would be.
In reality it seems like the redaction was done to eliminate from the printed copies provisions specific to the implementation of Maine’s separation from Massachusetts.
Sounds like a great way to sell "hey let's not talk about that whole Wabanaki thing" without having to come right out and say "hey let's not talk about that whole Wabanaki thing." A political tactic as old as the hills: package your unpalatable agenda in something that sounds totally reasonable on its face. I'm not saying that's definitely what happened here, but I am saying that just because they also stopped printing other sections and billed it as something benign doesn't necessarily mean that was the actual motivation.
I doubt you can make a claim on the self imagined apathetic response of a faceless group of people 150 years ago. You "doubting" isn't any more valid. I don't see it as unreasonable that institutional discrimination existed in 1876.
As far as the facts: 1) The legislature and courts in Maine were ignoring the treaty obligations long before this change.
2) There is no evidence that this made it easier to ignore treaty obligations
3) The change had no bearing on actual application of the law with respect to treaties
4) The vast majority of the content marked for redaction is procedural, describing the how the state of Maine would be formed. When elections happen, who gets the guns, and who has the treaty obligations.
5) Treaty obligations are not typical contents of constitutions, nor do they need to be to be binding.
I dont think that you need to deny the existence of institutional discrimination to make this case
The change took place one month before the courts decided against the Passamaquoddy Tribe in a land ownership case. The state would have been under treaty obligation to compensate them for losing the case - except that you are right, and Maine never really felt obliged to uphold those treaties.
Instead, the courts found that the Passamaquoddy Tribe has to pay compensation for Granger’s costs and damages (he won his land claim).
> 2) There is no evidence that this made it easier to ignore treaty obligations
Correct. There is no direct evidence, only inferences based on the people involved and how it benefited Maine over the Passamaquoddy Tribe.
In any case, those treaty obligations are still valid now, so continued redaction would suggest that relationships between the state and tribes still isn't that important or worthwhile.
> 5) Treaty obligations are not typical contents of constitutions, nor do they need to be to be binding.
That point seems irrelevant. Maine's obligations do exist, and they are binding, due to the Articles of Separation that were incorporated into Maine’s constitution.
"As part of that division, Maine assumed all the “duties and obligations” Massachusetts had as regards the “Indians within said District of Maine.” The Articles also required that its terms and conditions “be incorporated into, and become and be a part of any Constitution, provisional or other, under which the Government of the said proposed State, shall, at any time hereafter, be administered; subject however, to be modified, or annulled by the agreement of the Legislature of both the said States; but by no other power or body whatsoever." The Articles of Separation were included in the Maine Constitution as Section 5 of Article X. This was one of the Sections redacted from printed copies in 1876." - https://www.mitsc.org/library/research-report-on-the-1876-re...
Re 2) see 1
Re 5) I agree, but You missed my point. My point was that you don't need an alternative motive explanation for reacting them. They were binding either way, and this type of content normally isn't in constitutions, so redaction as simplification seems entirely plausible. They didn't need the parts about voting days and how Maine and mass will split militia guns either.
1) negligence? ("Oh, we didn't see the text was there")
2) the belief it was historical cruft of no importance (so why say it was still in effect?)
3) the belief it was a minor thorn that could be swept under the rug, but of no current impact
4) the belief it was a thorn with near-term impact on a pending case - and a case the redactionists likely knew about.
5) something else?
You seem to be saying that #2 is the most likely, so #4 should be dismissed.
My point was the relationship between the Passamaquoddy and Maine have changed since the 1800s - and certainly improved since the Carter era. Why continue with the redaction given that points 1-4 would seem to put a chill on that relationship?
Absolutely. to answer your questions.
>2) the belief it was historical cruft of no importance (so why say it was still in effect?)
It had to stay in effect because the text said it could not be altered or removed without the approval Massachusetts. The cruft Hypothesis is supported by the fact that the sections were suggested by a panel charged with identifying cruft, discussed as cruft, and 99% of the material WAS cruft.
>4) the belief it was a thorn with near-term impact on a pending case - and a case the redactionists likely knew about.
This is undermined by the fact that legally, the change has no impact and said so. Maine was already routinely ignoring treaty obligations. The best argument that can be made here is that it was some sort of implied signal or dog whistle to to the court, emboldening it to keep doing what it was doing. But then again, that supposes that the a signal was both necessary and needed to be covert, in a time where people casually and openly ignored their treaty obligations.
Putting this together, I think it is most likely that people (redactionists and voters) felt it was cruft. The Passamaquoddy tribe was down to a few hundred people in the mid 1800's out of Maine 600,000.
>My point was the relationship between the Passamaquoddy and Maine have changed since the 1800s - and certainly improved since the Carter era.
I have no problem whatsoever with reversing the redaction. I just dont think we need to invent or believe an unlikely conspiracy theory to justify doing so. It is just as easy to say they thought this was cruft then, but we dont now, because we think it is important to highlight and honor our agreements.
>Why continue with the redaction given that points 1-4 would seem to put a chill on that relationship?
I honestly dont understand what this means. Are you saying that we should actively define history as to not put a "chill on the relationship"? If so, I think this is the kind of revisionist history that other people are reacting to. We shouldn't need to build some loosely supported theory about why and how things happened, if the goal is to simply reverse a redaction.
That interpretation - which may be correct, but there is little evidence one way or the other - isn't that much better. It reflects the then wide-spread view of Euro-Americans that their culture to be superior, and the native tribes should be treated essentially as children or second-class citizens, with inferior claims to white people and the state.
> The Passamaquoddy tribe was down to a few hundred people in the mid 1800's out of Maine 600,000.
Don't forget the Penobscot, who also had treaty obligations.
I have a hard time accepting the "cruft" hypothesis. The tribes had non-voting representation at the capital, and https://umaine.edu/nativeamericanprograms/wp-content/uploads... shows the Euro-American population of Maine were mighty annoyed by those 'few hundred people' in the mid-1800, for example;
"Perry citizens collectively petitioned Maine twice in 1839, complaining that Indians took birch bark from their land to make fishing torches and that they dismantled fences around their farms for firewood.67 In all these attempts to obtain retribution for damages, many of which supplied ample evidence, the Maine legislature dismissed the requests. Maine had not sorted out the idea of property and homeland, the latter of which entailed the continual use of resources. Ambiguities remained around absolute property title to the land, especially around harvesting resources."
and
"In April 1857 Maine governor Joseph Williams wrote to the Indian agent expressing his “displeasure” about repeated trespass by the Passamaquoddy on private property in Perry. He stated that the charges violated the 1794 treaty in which the Indians agreed not to molest any townspeople."
That was less than 20 years before the redaction.
> It is just as easy to say they thought this was cruft then
So why did the well-trained lawyers of the constitutional committee think it was cruft?
> I honestly dont understand what this means
I mean is there any interpretation of the history which justifies keeping the text redacted when there are ongoing and improved relationships between Maine and the tribes?
If the text continues to be redacted, why shouldn't is be interpreted as a continuation of the history of treating the local tribes as cruft?
Granger has been trying to get the courts to recognize his claim since 1855. https://legislature.maine.gov/backend/app/services/getDocume...
Several of the people involved in the redaction were in a position to know about the lawsuit (see "Mocikuwin mawi (Passamaquoddy for: Old Boys Club Decisions)" at https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/3283/page/5208/... )
As https://mainemorningstar.com/2023/10/09/a-matter-of-not-hidi... says, "The reason officials had for redacting sections of the Constitution are still being debated due to sparse historical evidence", but there are enough connections that surely people were talking about it then.
There are several views. Yours seems to be the members of the 1876 commission were either negligent when they redacted the state's obligation to the tribes, or believed it wasn't relevant any more. Neither put them in a good light.
On the other hand, there is enough evidence to cast strong doubt on the 'At the time, I doubt anyone was talking about it' statement.
The fact remains that the redaction exists, there doesn't seem to be a good reason for it, and none of the suggested reasons seem like something to perpetuate.
I feel like this section doesn't really _answer_ that. Like, it has the _what_, but not the _why_.
Very odd. I was expecting it to either be some sort of particularly arcane issue with actually printing (maybe characters not representable in Unicode?), or, at an outside chance, obscene material.
Vaguely reminded of Charlie Stross's Laundry Files, where Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act is itself secret, because it self-classifies under Section 2.
[1] "until such enumeration shall be made..." https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri...
You can find the text at https://www.legislature.maine.gov/lawlibrary/sections-of-the...
The motivation is very obvious - they wanted to conveniently forget their treaty obligations.
https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/3283/page/5208/...
The 5-4 ruling, Gorsuch writing for majority, is a really interesting read: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-9526_9okb.pdf
Essentially, both liberals and conservatives can agree that... if the United States entered into a treaty... and the United States government never explicitly overrode that treaty... then it still stands.
Which, fair, but still nice to see recognition even when the question has repercussions for the eastern half of Oklahoma, the state is opposed, and the facts are inconvenient.
I think it would be more accurate to say that liberals and Gorsuch, who is uncharacteristically liberal on native american issues, can agree. Gorsuch's footnotes do a good job imo of making clear that the four conservative dissenting votes have very little respect for the treaties and promises made.
> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
It's satisfying to raise issues above the partisan or ideological divide, but if the people that call themselves conservative consistently find ways make the law protect their own while restraining others, as four of them try to do here, then its naive to assume that the issues are really transcendent of that.
> The Articles also required that its terms and conditions “be incorporated into, and become and be a part of any Constitution, provisional or other, under which the Government of the said proposed State, shall, at any time hereafter, be administered; subject however, to be modified, or annulled by the agreement of the Legislature of both the said States; but by no other power or body whatsoever."
They couldn't remove the sections because the terms of their statehood had them inherit obligations from Massachusetts that supersede their state constitution.
> In 1967, Maine’s first Indian affairs commissioner, anthropologist Edward Hinckley, discovered Maine had received $30,000 from Massachusetts in compensation, but the state never actually set aside new land for the tribes.
If you're Mass. and you created those articles for a reason then I wouldn't find it surprising if you didn't want to help Maine throw them out after they've already violated your will at least once.
All of that is secondary to the fact that they did renege on their promises repeatedly and unabashedly for the next century. Hiding the sections from print could have been an attempt to stop legal challenges before they started, it could have just been out of spite. Who knows, maybe they were very eco-friendly and were worried about all that wasted paper! I find it quite silly to extend such extreme benefit of the doubt to the state government that we already know wanted to escape those treaties and successfully did so before, during, and after passing this amendment.
If you created those articles, you were probably dead by 1870, and definitely dead by 1967. Any generation of lawmakers would have been willing to renegotiate the terms if it benefited them.
>find it quite silly to extend such extreme benefit of the doubt to the state government that we already know wanted to escape those treaties and successfully did so before, during, and after passing this amendment.
I said that the US at that point cared so little about honoring treaties with Native tribes that I doubted they'd bother formally amending a constitution to do so. That's not giving them the benefit of the doubt.
I see where you are coming from here, but I see actions like this as one of many that contribute to creating the environment where they can pursue the goal of violating the spirit of the law. They probably could have gotten away with much the same without any one anti-native action including this one, but the collective effect is a government system and electorate that endorses and upholds an unjust status quo.
There was a 1874 court case where Granger claimed he owned the land by a deed granted the same year Massachusetts signed a treaty with the Passamaquoddy Tribe. The court decided for Granger. Under the treaty obligation, "it was Maine’s duty to compensate the Passamaquoddy for the value of the lost land, and to pay the Tribe's court costs and damages—neither of which happened."
Maine couldn't simply change its constitution as the Articles of Separation requires "bars Maine from altering the Articles of Separation without the consent of Massachusetts and requires their inclusion in the Maine Constitution."
To be clear, it appears there is no smoking gun which explicitly says this is the reason, but the people involve knew, or likely knew, about the case when developing the 1876 change.
There is a 2022 paper on the topic titled “‘It May Be Questionable’: Granger v. Avery and the Redaction of Article X, Section 5 from the Maine Constitution“ at https://www.academia.edu/60751074/_It_May_Be_Questionable_Gr... which may have more.
> If the constitutional commissioners who proposed the 1875 suppression of Section 5 intended to ensure the state’s obligations were forgotten, they were successful. Rather than protecting the Indians’ trust lands, Maine authorized some tracts to be flooded by dams, others to be annexed for the laying out of highways, and thousands more acres transferred to white owners. In no case was compensation given to the Indians, in violation of treaty obligations. In 1893, Maine courts even ruled that the Passamaquoddy tribe didn’t exist because it lacked sovereign powers.
https://www.pressherald.com/2015/06/01/legislation-would-put...
"The forgetting" has nothing to do with the constitutional change. Most people don't know or care about the contents of their state constitutions.
Redaction wasnt useful legally or generally in the violation of indian treaties.
https://www.mainememory.net/sitebuilder/site/3283/page/5208/...
What exactly is the meat of this conspiracy theory. That The judges were duped with misleading constitutions? That it was some sort of government psyop to influence public sentiment in the long run by distributing misleading documents?
This essay is a good summary of the situation
https://www.academia.edu/60751074
The whole thing is worth reading, but I'll copy and paste a relevant portion here.
> It is likewise remarkable that the court did not rule on Granger until after the legislature agreed to the put the redaction before voters and that final judgement did not come until after voters had given the redaction final approval, ensuring that the part of the constitution con-taining Maine’s responsibilities regarding Native treaties was no longer being printed right when Maine became liable for paying the tribe for its lost treaty land and covering the costs of safe-guarding that land. After the redaction officially took effect on January 1, 1876, Maine never compensated the tribe for the fifteen islands it lost due to the ruling. It also charged Granger’s damages to the Passamaquoddy Trust Fund in defiance of the unprintable Article X, Section 5. In 1878 the Committee on Indian Affairs strongly suggested that these actions violated the terms of Article X, Section 5, but the government remained silent. The redaction of Article X, Section 5 all but authorized the existing and ongoing practice of disregarding Maine’s constitutional obligations regarding Wabanaki treaties made with Massachusetts.
With that said it's worth mentioning that many laws, even in the U.S., aren't exactly printed or documented per say. Plenty of countries have unwritten constitutions; for example in Canada there is no mention of the Prime Minister in any constitutional document, it exists by legal convention.
I'm amazed Canada has retained this system of government for so long.
The system works because the country is still relatively healthy. Nobody really cares at the end of the day what leadership style the country has, as long as the leadership ensures that the laws represent the ethics, that there is some concept of justice, and general healthy HDI (whether it's safety, work opportunities, housing, education, whatever).
Democracy is usually seen as some way to achieve this, but there is also a sharp difference between healthy democracies and democracies that start and end at the ballot. You can equally have dictatorships that are just as healthy, if not healthier, than many democracies (for example the UAE or Oman).
Why? What current problems would changing this fix?
First off its the king of canada, which technically is a separate position that just happens to be held by the same person (personal union), with same succession rules, and also a treaty where everyond is supposed to agree before changing succession rules.
More importantly it is a constitutional monarchy. The crown can't just do what it pleases but is bound by the constitution.
A big part of that is the king must listen to the advice of the prime minister/the privy council, and that the prime minister must have the confidence of the legeslative branch.
In practise the king lacks pretty much all power. There are a couple edge cases (fire the governor general maybe) and still a lot of soft power, but he is essentially a distant figurehead.
E.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Rideau_Hal... when it was unclear if payette would resign willingly or have to be fired.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Canadian_p...
Still nonetheless i would consider these edge cases that only happen rarely.
Then again, I live in Massachusetts, and historically we're...not huge on kings here.
However i think most canadians just dont really care and it would be a big fuss to remove the king. Anytime anyone tries to change the canadian constitution everyone tries to get their interests in so its easier to just let sleeping dogs lie. See also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meech_Lake_Accord
Also, considering the case of a secret substitution: You're appealing to the supreme court, referring to the publicly known constitution, but your case is dismissed based on the notion that your appeal refers to an invalidated section, but you're not allowed to know, what the actual, valid section is. This is Kafka at his best.
EDIT: And because I watched it on Sunday. Remember as always ENGLAND PREVAILS!
So, the things you like in a constitution are not set-in-stone and can be overturned, but so can the things you don't like.
Statutes can always be tossed or repealed, but our rights may only be overturned via amendment (Gödel's hack).
Unfortunately we've not had anyone who respects our liberty for some time. It's a shame - I think the 'loose arrangements/don't be legal-heavy' approach is what brings the most freedom, you're let alone and the common law governs interactions only when necessary. I am sure someone can point out why it isn't perfect but it is much more preferable to many other governments.
Now that feeling that the government is more on our backs is growing. (Online "safety" bill? What in Blighty!? Who asked you to decide what was "safe" for me??)
Interesting to see how it plays out conversely in the US, where it was all written down in what the founders thought was unambiguous language, but now the goal is to stuff the Supreme Court with judges who will interpret the constitution with a bias towards the way your side prefers.
Magna Carta II: It's Time For Payback.
No. What happens is that successive acts of Parliament overrule more and more of Magna Carta, until there's only one or two clauses still in effect.
When we say "The UK doesn't have a constitution", we mean that there are no laws governing what legislation Parliament can enact, other than international treaties; and those can be repudiated even without any act of Parliament - a treaty can be revoked by stroke of the executive pen.
"This is because Latin doesn’t have articles; as a result, the Latin phrase “Magna Carta” doesn’t require a “The” in front of it. "
Seems to me the grammar police are overstepping their jurisdiction and we're going to have to get the interlingual grammar courts involved to sort this out.
Hope they do it soon, because English lets its speakers participate in government and this Latin sounds like a threat to democracy.
> [F3 (5A) In a householder case, the degree of force used by D is not to be regarded as having been reasonable in the circumstances as D believed them to be if it was grossly disproportionate in those circumstances.]
> (6) [F4 In a case other than a householder case,] the degree of force used by D is not to be regarded as having been reasonable in the circumstances as D believed them to be if it was disproportionate in those circumstances.
does not “give householders carte blanche in the degree of force they use against intruders in self-defence” (ref: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43652308) – in essence, making the legal situation basically the same as before this amendment was made. (Apparently the lawmakers didn't quite understand how a “self-defence” legal defence worked in court, when they were writing this one up.) As I understand, as of the ruling, there's no legal distinction between “disproportionate force” and “grossly disproportionate force”.
Sure, the High Court didn't overturn it… except for the part where they basically did. They also “quashed with prospective effect” an amendment to primary legislation (the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988) made by a statutory instrument (The Copyright and Rights in Performances (Personal Copies for Private Use) Regulations 2014). There are many other instances of primary legislation on the books that manifestly say one thing, but that according to the High Court mean something different.
[1] https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2021/10/18/michael-foran-par...
Not that I'm claiming the US model is inferior in some way, of course. Constitutional questions are complex and heavily dependent on a country's history and culture. One apparent weakness of the US system is that enormous power is placed in the hands of a group of unelected officials, appointed and approved by the current executive and legislature, who then wield that power for life. I could make that point by pointing out that the law on one of the most contentious issues, abortion, has been determined for decades by the partisan composition of the supreme court rather than by public opinion. I could say something like "the US constitution is there to prevent the hoi polloi having a say" but it wouldn't make any point worth making or lead to a reasoned discussion. The issue is rather more nuanced than that.
Sorry to say, discriminatory behavior is fairly common in anarchic systems (see, evolution, mating impulses).
You need a bit of discrimination in order to not discriminate.
Don't like it? Rewrite the laws of physics! (maybe fix the whole good and evil thing too while you're at it)
You can call it something besides "citizenship", but maybe we're talking about different terms, or you have a more technical definition implying more than simply membership under a governing party?
Either way, this is the basic definition of a citizen, so trying to divorce the two seems futile to me:
"A citizen is a member of a political community who enjoys the rights and assumes the duties of membership."
Being in the position of abolishing _birthright_ citizenship is a very different stance than abolishing the practice of citizenship outright. I think you are speaking of "second class citizenship" e.g. immigrants or temporary who do in fact benefit from and are expected to follow the laws of the land, but who do not get e.g. voting rights.
I.e. perhaps the view is the equalize all practical citizens under the law (which is possible but difficult to do wrt to land ownership and community security, especially).
Countries would still be governed by those who live within their borders, but you wouldn't be discriminated against based on your place of birth, e.g., you could move around freely.
Or, maybe more practically, greatly ease the requirements of immigrating and becoming a citizen of countries.
If you govern a population without a land, you are practically instantly at war with some other population because both populations will want their way of life as well as their property rights enforced around the place they call "home". For a current example, see the palestinian exile population, who have a government but no land of their own, thus leading to constant conflict with their host countries.
If you govern a land without a population, you are lacking any kind of compass and attachment to values. Land alone is a dead thing, and a government cannot just be recruited from land, it has to be people doing the governing. Basically, there is nothing to govern without a society.
Citizenship can have a number of definitions, but the loosest one is something like "currently inhabiting the land area of that corresponding government". You may change those definitions, introduce various classes of citizenships, modify the ways in which it can be obtained. But for the aforementioned reasons, any definition that doesn't involve something like "a citizen is strongly associated with a land area and comes from a corresponding populace (governed by a corresponding government)" is a weak and fragile definition that will not last the test of time and human interactions. Note that the government part is in parentheses, because actually governments are far more interchangeable than population and land area.
The article claims they have no territory, but what they mean is there is no territory capable of supporting a military + institution. I don't know this is a practical counterexample.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that clubs and private militaries, and independent autonomous intelligence agencies exist, even if they are on the extreme end of what could be considered a "government".
In feudal Europe, most people were serfs or vassals; they came with the land, a bit like trees and game. The only people with rights were aristocrats, and then only really if they had land. Poor people might have had some rights in law, but the judge was the local baron; it was meritorious for the sovereign to promulgate "the King's justice", but it didn't happen much.
The change came with the Age of Revolutions; rights are something you have to seize. To my fury, I remain not a citizen, but a subject, because the English Revolution was led by landed gentry, not by the populace.
The idea of universal rights is a fine idea; but not having been seized, they don't exist.
Entitlements are antithetical to equality. Continually attempting to right wrongs from the past simply carries them forward.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor–state_dispute_settlem... )
That's sort of how the world works. If you can't defend it (through power and/or political will - you have strong friends that you have a mutually beneficial relationship with) then it's not your land. There's literally no group of people that have lived on some piece of land since the dawn of humanity. In fact there have been untold thousands of groups of people wiped off the earth because another group decided they wanted to live on the land they once lived in.
C'est la vie?!
Is that what you'd say if a few guys with guns came and pushed you out of your home, so that they can live there? Historically, it's correct: that's how the world works.
Hey, at least you're honest.
Now if a few guys with guns pushed me out of my home my nation state would send more guys with better guns to remove them and my property would be back in my possession.
The current government tend towards ‘truth and reconciliation’ is an attempt (or at least a gesture) to investigate and rectify these wrongs and treaty violations.
I’m sure the same holds in the US in areas where there was not a wholesale genocide.
I only say that to caution advocating for other countries to adopt the approach Canada has taken. I am of the view there were a lot of classic examples of well intentioned policies with disastrous results.
At the same time, I don’t know enough about the issue to offer alternative policy without worrying about the sensitivity of the issue.
The logic of ‘conquest->hegemony’ does not quite work in parts of North America because the ‘conquest’ was not a traditional one, but rather because of duplicity and breaking treaties, which- in a rules based order- typically have methods of restitution.
Parts of the USA, like the Russian conquest of Eurasia, were traditional conquests where the invaders drove out the inhabitants by force, but that is not a universal narrative in the European colonization of North America.
Second, what do you think winning a war means?
It's not always -- usually? almost never? -- a matter of one side eliminating or crushing the other to the point of abject subjugation. Rather, once there's a clear "winner", the losing side is usually willing to accept a unfavorable treaty that gives the victor whatever land or trade benefits they were after, and in return for the losing side not saying "fuck it" and trying to take as many people as possible with them, the winning side generally agrees to leave existing power structures largely intact and leave them some part of what's theirs.
If you decide they're going to live then yes. You need to show them that if they can't or won't unconditionally surrender and change their ways then they will in fact be abjectly subjugated and their lives will be miserable. Eventually enough of them will agree that it's not worth it. That was more or less the the USA approach with Japan in WW2. The thought being that they will fight to the death if they feel there's any sliver of hope. So nukes were dropped which showed there was not and that it wasn't worth fighting anymore.
The other option is to just slaughter them. This has been used more frequently throughout history.
After the atomic bombings -- and the Soviet advance -- Japan accepted these conditions, unconditionally, instead of holding out for better terms, like retaining conquered territory.
(Edit: Now, if you want unconditional surrender, the German Instrument of Surrender, now there's an unconditional surrender.)
The idea that as victors, the treaties you entered into with the opposing side are somehow not meant to be upheld is not a righteous notion. The US' repeated violation of promises made to the various first nations is a detestable part of our nation's history. That modern jurisprudence has starting to uphold treaties our country entered into and never formally revoked is a good thing. A nation should be its word, not merely a bludgeon.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-9526_9okb.pdf
JUSTICE GORSUCH delivered the opinion of the Court.
On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise. Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever. In exchange for ceding “all their land, East of the Mississippi river,” the U. S. government agreed by treaty that “[t]he Creek country west of the Mississippi shall be solemnly guarantied to the Creek Indians.” Treaty With the Creeks, Arts. I, XIV, Mar. 24, 1832, 7 Stat. 366, 368 (1832 Treaty). Both parties settled on boundary lines for a new and “permanent home to the whole Creek nation,” located in what is now Oklahoma. Treaty With the Creeks, preamble, Feb. 14, 1833, 7 Stat. 418 (1833 Treaty). The government further promised that “[no] State or Territory [shall] ever have a right to pass laws for the government of such Indians, but they shall be allowed to govern themselves.” 1832 Treaty, Art. XIV, 7 Stat. 368.
And at that point you don’t have much space for the colonial powers left.
To avoid being evil? To be the sort of people who keeps promises?
https://www.penobscothistory.com/historic-preservation/12-tr...
The Penobscot Nation, the oldest government in the Western hemisphere, has never been conquered.
There's a pretty vocal minority on HN (and in tech generally) that are unapologetic supporters of might-makes-right and wholly against the rule of law. It's at least a bit refreshing from the usual set of people who are against the same but too mealy-mouthed to say it outright.
There's no monopoly on arms in this country. Every able-bodied male between 17 and 45 is in the militia and we keep a gun behind every blade of grass.
If it takes the species with it, so be it.
On average it takes two decades for a victim of childhood sexual abuse to disclose their abuse… successful victories of your imaginary “might” at that remove are virtually non existent relative to the number of victims.
The Penobscots, one of the member nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy, have never been displaced from Indian Island (since settling there ~11k years ago), and acquired significant additional land holdings since the 1970s.
How do you know that? If they took land from another tribe 9k years ago do you think we would have a record of it? What if another tribe took the land from them 8k years ago and 7k years ago they took it back? Do you think we can actually determine if that happened?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9th_millennium_BC
I used to live on the next island over (French Island), and your clueless questioning of Penobscot sovereignty is disappointing. Would you also suggest that maybe Natufians should control the Levant?
That is my point. You made a claim but have no evidence to prove it.
>I used to live on the next island over (French Island), and your clueless questioning of Penobscot sovereignty is disappointing.
I don't think you understand what my point even is if you think I am doubting anybody's sovereignty.
>Would you also suggest that maybe Natufians should control the Levant?
I don't think being the earliest inhabitants of an area gives permanent ownership. My issue is we are told we need to give back land to the previous owners. It just seems ridiculous that we should do that when many of the tribes we took the land from did the exact same thing we did.
I'm not claiming anything, it's right there on https://penobscotnation.org. Reach out to Chief Francis or the council if you have questions on their assertions.
> I don't think you understand what my point even is if you think I am doubting anybody's sovereignty.
Good to hear, that doesn't really seem to be the case among Mainers. Note that the Penobscot River has legally been a citizen of the Penobscot Nation since 2018. The State of Maine has repeatedly disputed their claims and legally challenged their sovereignty, finally losing their battle to control pollution in the river last year: https://www.nrdc.org/stories/22-year-court-battle-ends-justi...
> I don't think being the earliest inhabitants of an area gives permanent ownership.
Okay, so who should control the Levant then?
I understand how one could extrapolate from other geopolitical tensions, but there doesn't seem to be much uncertainty in this case regarding Penobscot claims. Yes they lost most of their wider territory through illegal treaties, but they never lost their "capital" on Indian Island. I'm not aware of any other New World peoples who weren't displaced from their ancestral headquarters by European settlers and have maintained continuity of government since before Columbus set sail.
The Penobscots asserted their claim on over half of the land in Maine in the 1970s, and reached a settlement for over $80M in 1980, which they've used to acquire more territory [1]. The only question has been over sovereignty, specifically in terms of environmental rights, with the State of Maine taking on both the tribe and the feds in their failed battle for control over the river.
1. https://generationallandscapesblog.wordpress.com/sugar-islan...
I interpreted your statement as you making the claim. I didn't realize you were just repeating the tribe's claim.
I have no reason to believe they never fought another tribe and took their land. Perhaps they were the original inhabitants of the island, but perhaps not.
Frankly, I don't trust people who refuse to acknowledge taking land from others when their history allegedly goes back thousands of years.
>Okay, so who should control the Levant then?
My preferred solution is to build a time machine and convince the British to retain control over the area. Since that isn't happening the only short term solution I see is for some third party to take control over the area (British Mandate style). Once this third party takes over they can stop the attacks between the two sides and then work on a long term solution. Israel is too militarily strong to be able to easily be taken over so I don't really think it is practical though.
>I understand how one could extrapolate from other geopolitical tensions, but there doesn't seem to be much uncertainty in this case regarding Penobscot claims.
I'm not doubting their claims that they controlled the area when the Europeans came. I'm doubting they didn't kill, steal and cheat others to get the land.
The thing that annoys me about all these Native American claims is how people who are otherwise skeptical about historical claims just accept the Natives' claims without question. It is not just with this tribe, but with all of the tribes. I think it is just a continuation of some sort of Noble Savage Myth or something like that.
>Yes they lost most of their wider territory through illegal treaties, but they never lost their "capital" on Indian Island. I'm not aware of any other New World peoples who weren't displaced from their ancestral headquarters by European settlers and have maintained continuity of government since before Columbus set sail.
My argument isn't that the Europeans took the land from them, but they likely took the land from other tribes. We know native tribes frequently killed each other and displaced tribes.
If killing, cheating, stealing and displacing people is not a legitimate way to gain land then pretty much every country is illegitimate. Eventually we just have to move on. Is there a single group of people that hasn't done bad things to obtain the land and government they have? Europe has mostly moved on and there is rarely (I know Russia/Ukraine is happening) fights about regaining land lost in generations past. It sucks for people to lose land, but I don't see any solution going forward.
If we go back to the Levant example, what is the solution? Keep the existing borders and call it a day? Pro Palestinian people aren't chanting from the river to the sea for no reason. What if we give all the land to the Palestinians? Well the Israelis will feel like they just lost their land and the conflict will continue. Give all the land to Israel? Palestinians will feel like they just lost their land and will fight to get it back.
The only long term solution is get people to accept the principle of forgive and forget. Until people can accept they may not have the land their ancestors had there will continue to be conflicts over land. Maybe some slight adjustments to the existing borders need to be made for cultural, religious, and language reasons for this to work, but until we can move on from past offenses we will continue to kill and displace one another.
In regards to the natives, I don't know what the best way to make everybody feel whole. I don't think stripping land from nonnatives whose families have lived their for generations is the right way to solve this. That is the same thing the Europeans did to the natives. It will continue the animosity over the land. Forgive and forget seems like the only real solution. We may need to make some slight adjustments to borders though. I think giving the natives a few years to file any lawsuits and then calling it good is the solution. If you didn't get your lawsuit in or discovered additional land you think belongs to you, then you just have to forgive and forget.
Let's look at this from a normal legal situation. You own an item that was stolen by thief A. Thief B then steals it from thief A. Should your item be returned to you or to thief A? Your logic would indicate thief A. Nobody thinks that would be the right solution and yet when it comes to native lands nobody cares. I just want some consistency.
If you recognize them as the rightful owner at the time, make an agreement for exchange, then the burden of consistency is on you. Buyers remorse is not sufficient to unwind your obligations while retaining the property.
Another way of resolving this is simply recognizing that conquest does not create obligation, but diplomatic agreement does. It is a matter of integrity and honor, literally, in the sense of do you honor you commitments or are you a liar.
While repugnant to some, I think this is quite clear. In the cases where settlers simply took land by force of arms, they created no legal or honorable obligation. Where they took land by legal agreement, they have created an obligation.
Im saying that if you fully acknowledge someone to be the rightful owner and something, you dont get to change your mind about paying them, and call them a thief with no new information, and then keep it for yourself.
IF the US somehow discovered evidence that it bought stolen land, and chose to pay or return it to the original holder, that would be one thing.
Simply not paying and keeping something for yourself make YOU the thief and a liar too.
Once these treaties expire, assuming they are ignored, the land does become stolen.
I don't expect the tribes to be unreasonable about the land and take up land-grabs, it will likely just be a matter of taxes going to one entity instead of another.
Something being costly does not absolve you of your moral, legal, and honorable obligations. It is not a justification for ex post facto recontracting.
I would like to see the government uphold it's obligations, stop acting weird exceeds these obligations, I work towards permanent Solutions where advantageous. This may include buying out of contractual obligations for purchasing Indian land and rights
Because individual actors and even nations are discontinuous over the thousands of years we are talking about, we are stuck with treating racial and ethnic lineages as the actors, blurring the lines. The Thief and victim can be the same. Lets say a deceased grandfather (A) was robbed by a now deceased son (B), depriving the living grandchild (C) of their ancestral property. Living Indians, party C, are the decedents of both the thief and victim. It still makes more sense that the stolen goods should go back to them, than stay with recipient of the stolen goods.
Anchoring back to reality, I think the whole thief analogy is bogus. At the time treaties were made with Indians, possession by conquest was considered a valid means of acquisition, and Indians were held to be in sufficient standing to enter agreements.
Rationales which try to retroactively invalidate the historic land ownership by natives, and thereby invalidate contractual obligations, are logically bankrupt if they dont also attempt to identify a rightful owner to return the property to.
Not only is our opinion irrelevant; our opinion has been abundantly demonstrated to be awful in every single way. We need to stop.
Giving it to the last inhabitant, yes possibly conquerer, is really the only choice we have (apart from doing nothing and stealing the land) - to put things back the way they were.
The scope of government is to uphold the agreements it makes, not unravel the interactions of other parties going back to the dawn of humanity.
We didn't consider it stolen when we first made the agreement.
You aren’t a sovereign if you don’t rule within your claimed borders.
This is, of course, notwithstanding the fact that wars of conquest are illegal in our modern system of international law precisely because they represent an act intended to steal another nation’s sovereign territory… you seem to thing such wars become legal if the invaded party doesn’t successfully prevent the invasion from starting at all.
Yes, the de facto situation is that successfully prosecuting a genocide means successfully stealing land, as happened in what became the USA, but it doesn’t alter the fact that the land was very definitely (in the case of the USA both de facto and de jure) stolen.
Yes, wars of conquest are "illegal" today but that's not a real thing - it's just a declaration by some group of humans who wish it to be. They certainly weren't "illegal" in previous times so any land acquired then is clearly not "stolen".
The tribal structures that still exist in many parts of the world aren't really about preserving culture or identity anymore; to me they seem to be mostly about preserving the power of a handful of tribal elders, and upholding discriminatory practices both inside and outside the tribe. Those structures are a relic that wouldn't have survived anyway, European colonists or not, and casting them aside now, and joining the rest of the world in the 21st century is neither shameful nor bad.
Just to be clear: I applaud anyone who wishes to celebrate their culture and their identity, and I think having those preserved enriches our world. But staying within the confines of a preserve, where life is hard and opportunities are few, just because you were born there, makes no sense to me. You can be both proud of your heritage and a citizen of the 21st century.
So the question, then, is this: are tribal entitlements necessary for the preservation of something worthwhile, or are they merely tools to further disadvantage a group that is already severely lacking in opportunities? If it's the first, there is a place for them. If it's the second, it's time they were dismantled.
Even though the parent comment was terse, this comment shows why we shouldn’t be downvoting / flagging opinions into oblivion. Free speech and listening to opposing views can bring about meaningful discussions and help is all understand the world better.
Flagging uncomfortable topics because they violate modern wokeism is a disturbingly Orwellian practice.
So in this way, the “entitlement” of land use reserved for native Americans actually results in chronic disadvantage.
A more complete assessment:
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_r...
I mostly agree with your overall gist, but I will poke a little hole here just for completeness: What does all the world have to offer? A spectrum of other cultures? Today yes, but only because the process of loss and homogenization you just said was a good thing has not yet completed. Give that same process a few more generations and the whole world will be the same, and any differences won't matter at all. It's already almost like that today. When I go on vacation on the other side of the world, it's hardly any different. If it weren't for the history and the interesting ancient structures, there would hardly be any point in travelling from any place to any other place.
The process is not complete, and so today, sure, there is still a lot of point to travel. But that is merely mass and inertia and it's eroding away.
Life is getting better in certain material ways, which are undeniably valuable, but it is not getting richer. It WAS getting richer for a while when communication and travel gave more people more access to the wide varied world than was possible before, but now, that wide varied world is becoming less varied, and so the richness is decreasing.
> I mostly agree with your overall gist, but I will poke a little hole here just for completeness
So I guess, your comment was non sequitur? I mean I assumed since the grandparent comment was about entitlements, and the parent comment about entitlements, that your response poking a hole in their argument about entitlements was also about entitlements.
I mean if you’re just saying “diversity is good” we can agree with that. But this whole thread stems from the Maine’s constitution entitlement rights for Wabanaki having been removed from print.
I could have reached for the same cheap "are you mentally abberrant?" but did not. That alone does in fact perversely make me aberrant I guess, in that it feels like the norm to do that when one can't figure out if they are actually right and if so how to articulate it. Attack the personality if you fail to attack the argument. Anything but admit you said something silly once you've said it.
That's not strictly true. There are real tribes in the jungles of South America and southeast Asia, for example, who still live in the forests, cook food they raise, and live in thatch/mud/bamboo houses.
I would argue that these tribes' rights (especially property ownership of land where they have houses and raise food right now) matters more than arguments about things that happened more than a hundred years ago in developed countries.
I think of Andrian Berry’s warnings about a world state. I fear a world monoculture is one step in that direction. (Just googled him, seems time has been unkind to his books and reputation. Still, his Next 10,000 Years was so inspiring to me, not so much for the specifics but for the vision and the first-principles thinking around how we may get stuck.)
Culture, unlike genetics, is fluid and easily changed (compared to genes)
For something like what your suggesting to occur, the loss of attention, or the inability for loss of attention span would have to become heritable.
At the moment, assuming the internet does erode attention span, those whose attention spans were most eroded would have to be heavily selected against. That means, their loss of attention span or their propensity to lose attention span with internet use would have to pass through gamete into the next generation.
If it’s not heritable, then the Amish are not “immune” because as soon as the Amish moves across cultural lines which is inevitable (many of which do, they routinely leave that culture) they’d be faced with the same issues. On the flip side, many within the non Amish community who choose not to use the internet would flourish without being Amish. (Since internet usage and its loss of attention span would be cultural and easily changed)
Natural selection only works on the level of the genes. Unless aspects of culture can be attributed to genetic diversity, then they are simply fluid, and not something that can aid in their reproductive advantage.
One could argue that the Amish do hold some genetic differences that make them seek out the culture they hold, and be as fertile as they are, but that’s definitely not clear to be the case.
If such cases were true, then perhaps one might argue for cultural diversity as a proxy for genetic diversity. But I don’t know that there has been any support to show cultures are genetically heritable. In fact I believe the opposite has been shown, when taking or moving populations out, they easily assimilate, showing that those cultures are definitely not heritable.