the father of liberalism and us po' indians

an assignment from my POLI 300B class:

“God gave the world to Adam and his Posterity in common,” states John Locke in Chapter V of his Second Treatise of Government. With man’s dominion over the world and its bounty divinely granted the stage was set for the subjugation of Indigenous peoples and the theft of their lands. Locke’s view on property is rooted in man’s inalienable property in his self and his labour. By extension, “Whatsover…he hath mixed his Labour with…thereby makes it his Property." Locke goes beyond the previously accepted doctrine of Terra Nullus. His views on property, dominion and appropriation were an advance in colonial thinking.

Like many of his contemporaries, Locke believed that America was a land of unlimited plenty. He uses the analogy of one man drinking from a river and the negligible impact on another’s ability to drink from the same river. Further, Locke believed that man’s right to subdue, cultivate and improve the earth through his labour granted him the right of appropriation. And while his logic recognized the Indian’s right to that which he hunted or fished, Locke believed that the Indian of the Americas wasted the land he occupied. He believed the Indigenous ways of life and political organization to be inferior to that of the European stating, “There cannot be a clearer demonstration of any thing, than several Nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in Land, and poor in all the Comforts of Life; whom Nature having furnished as liberally as any other people…”

Interestingly, this rationalization did not prevent the forced removal of the semi-sedentary, corn-farming Kanienkeha people who once lived where the city of Montreal is now located. This is indicative of the circumstantial nature of all colonial rationalizations. Despite thoughtful philosophy and the damage caused and/or justified, one cannot ignore the reality of colonial “necessity.” The modern reality and legacy of colonialism is that it has become increasingly inconvenient, morally and economically, for state governments in the Americas to truly reconcile with Indigenous people.