Indigenous Rights

I was just reading about Avatar (sorry, I haven't watched it yet) and I was reminded of The Man's propensity to wipe out or enslave any new people he comes in contact with. Supposing that the next decade or two will see the rise of White Flight to some Third World country, and supposing that the white settlers will try to set up some libertarian regime in the New New World, I would like to make clear some things about indigenous modes of subsitence which not everyone will find as legitimate under an individual rights framework but which I consider to be fully legitimate under individual rights.

Water sources and waterways that are used collectively are more than likely owned collectively. This doesn't make me a socialist or a tree hugger. Individuals have the right to homestead, and they have the right to homestead in groups. If a water source is used in a way that excludes other uses of it (for example, drinking excludes pollution), then it is appropriated for a particular use. And in the case that this use is made by many people in general (which is most of the time), the water source is owned by the "unorganized public". No local official has the authority to just declare whole waterways the property of some corporation. You would need the consent of the owners for that to be legitimate, and in the case of rivers, the "owners" are every single person who regularly drinks from, boats in, swims in, plays in, and fishes in that river. I'm not saying privatization is always and in all places illegitimate. I'm just saying that transfer of title is illegitimate without the consent of the owner, and in the case of rivers that's pretty hard to get.

Indigenous people and concerned settlers have the right to coerce people to stop polluting. Most environmental "reform" I see provides ways for companies to basically buy licenses to pollute. And unfortunately, I've heard a few self-styled libertarians show support for arrangements like these when they speak in favor of people being free to do whatever they want to anybody and anything else, so long as they compensate for damages. If you have a right to remain whole in your person and things, then you have a right not just to demand compensation for aggression against you, but you also have a right to use a certain amount of force to stop the aggression. We have no reason to suppose that the deformed baby sold his right to bodily integrity by being conceived to a woman who was a member of a group whose officials received money in "compensation" for dumping. If you want to buy "dumping rights", you have to follow a procedure similar to the one mentioned above. And if you didn't get dumping rights under that kind of procedure, then you don't have a right to pollute (which is basically dumping on other people's property, and in some cases amounts to poisoning people), and anyone who wants to has the right to force you to stop.

Land that is frequently and regularly used collectively is more than likely owned collectively. Again, this doesn't make me a socialist or a tree hugger. It's just that the labor of the "unorganized public" appropriates land just as legitimately as individual labor, and that the right of access connected to first use is held by each individual first user and bequeathed to each subsequent user. This means, basically, that each indigenous person is a co-owner of regularly-used open land. (Which, quite frankly, looks to me like the more "natural" method of land appropriation and ownership - personal homes and gardens aside, since humans first settle land "together" and first use resources together.) Since every user of the land is "naturally" an owner of it, frequently-used open land cannot legitimately be sold by anyone who is not expressly given that permission by every single person who has gathered food in that land. If that permission is not given by every single owner, then the purchase is void. If you did not buy land according to the method prescribed here, then any use of "your" land that deprives individuals of resources they traditionally had access to is an act of theft, and the deprived indigenous people have a right not just to demand compensation from you, but also to force you to stop using "your" land that way.

Just wanted to set some things straight here. Didn't want to see libertarian property theory used to justify the next ethnocide, genocide, or mass subjugation...