If any value including justice is made an absolute with no limitations, we
end up with a mess of insoluble complications, and much of what is
ultimately solvable benefits the lawyers far more than the victims, as Ed
Weick notes.
Is there such a thing as collective guilt? Are all whites legally liable to
compensate all Indians for the undoubted injustices? Or do we sort it out on
the basis of family history? Ed makes a good case that his Central European
ancestors had nothing to do with exploiting the first nations. I suppose I
could do the same. My German great-grandfather was certainly not a very
successful exploiter; in the mid 1870's he was in the workhouse (Victorian
workfare) at Berlin [Kitchener], Ontario, and so poor that he literally sold
my three-year-old grandfather to a prosperous merchant who wanted to adopt
him.
Even if we go with collective guilt, we find messy situations that cannot be
sorted out.
Do we prosecute the descendants of Danes for the extirpation of independent
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the eighth century, which same Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
were founded by driving out the Celts?
Do the modern Italians have to make reparations for the damn near successful
Roman genocide against the Jews under Vespasian (68 A.D.)?
Do the modern Jews have to make reparations (and to whom?) for the multiple
genocides against Palestinian tribes in the Old Testament period? To cite
just one example of many, God is presented as ordering King Saul (ca. 1010
B.C.E.) to commit a genocide against the Amalekites: "This is what the Lord
Almighty says, '...Now go attack the Amalekites and totally destroy
everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and
women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." (1
Samuel 15:2-3) As is well known, the Old Testament records that God deposed
Saul because he failed to carry out this order to the letter. However, the
genocide was completed in the expansionist reign of King Hezekiah (720-692
B.C.E.) "They [families from the clan of Simeon] killed the remaining
Amalekites who had escaped, and they have lived there to this day."
All this is NOT meant to suggest that we can ignore Indian land claims or
the claims arising out of the World War II Holocaust. It is meant to suggest
that striving for absolute justice creates more problems than it solves. In
justice as in medicine we need to do a kind of triage, ignoring the cases
which are past help, dealing first with the most serious cases which can be
remediated (but probably not fully healed) and leaving to the end the minor
cases.
Victor
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Rosenstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: July 29, 1999 10:13 PM
Subject: Re: Canadian Indian Claims
| If there is no such thing as obligations to past generations, then the
| idea of History is nullified. If an action such as a genocide has no
| force after a given number of years, then as long as one can get away
| with it for the requisite period, the action has no value except to let
| others know what can be gotten away with. Consequently, except for a
| nuclear winter in which the slate is wiped clean, there is no justice.
|
| Robert
|
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