Nov 4, 2015

The huge, often violent struggle over land and land rights throughout the world has often come down to a simple one syllable word. Here's a paragraph from The Haida Gwaii Lesson that describes the conflict.

       "It has always been rather difficult for the European colonial mind to understand native peoples’ relationship to land, or grasp the difference between living on and living with the land. In all their struggles, communications and litigations with government and extractive industry, that tiny one-word difference has been the hardest message for the Haida to get across. That is why they felt compelled in 2004 to draft and issue a Land Use Vision, which is merely a statement of their land values and a description of a land tenure system they believe will work for them and the government. For them living with the land is not only right living, it is in the end the only way to survive. Living on the land is seeing it as a platform, a substrate upon which life and economics proceed without much concern about what’s underfoot. Living with land is the aboriginal way. And individual ownership of it is to most aboriginal communities of the world a mistake. In the aboriginal worldview land does not belong to people, people belong to the land."   

 For full text of the Haida Land Use Vision go to :

 http://www.haidanation.ca/Pages/documents/pdfs/land/HLUV.lo_rez.pdf