"The point, today, is that we must reject the categorical 'coloniser' argument. With mockery, whenever possible."
"Humans have always moved around, and humans have always fought over patches of land. I've written in the past about 'snapshot geography,' a phrase coined by Jonah Goldberg that explains how people select a particular moment in time as their determinant of who is the proper owner of a particular patch. Those who drop the 'coloniser' truth-bomb almost invariably base their snapshot on skin colour, no matter that doing so may lump bitter enemies into a single group....
"The point, today, is that we must reject the categorical 'coloniser' argument. With mockery, whenever possible. It's a fraudulent assertion that relies on the very racism and bigotries that its users claim to be fighting."
~ Peter Venetoklis, from his post 'Selective Colonisers' [hat tip Louise Lamontagne]
3 comments:
Nearly every single Treaty claim in decades past based on claimed tribal boundaries needs to be re-read in light of that idea of 'snapshot geography,' especially given all the tribal movements caused by and causing the events of the Musket Wars (most especially Ngāti Toa's violent migration south).
Got ya ridicule and mockery right here...
That's a very good point. Without insisting on an arbitrary snapshot as the determinant of proper ownership, it only leads to infinite regress. If we say the proper owner was the Maori tribe that possessed the land at European settlement, what about the tribe that possessed it prior to them, who were often driven off with violence? The only rational starting point for arbitrating conflicting ownership claims can be the point at which objective law (that recognised property rights) came into effect and became predominant in a locality.
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