I know “landlords bad”, but I feel like this could at least get a very historically fucked over group of people to… not be as fucked over? I mean it’s their ancestral land (technically, all of Vancouver is) so I’m not sure if it’s actually appropriate for socialists who support decolonisation to say what they shouldn’t do with it. Because let’s face it, Canada, if it ever becomes socialist, will probably be literally the last country to do so – speaking as someone who lives there.
Would they even count as landlords in this case? I can see some parallels to the Chinese model for land ownership, since it’s not individual people owning the land or charging rent but the government for a collective group.
IDK, what do you think?
So how do we reconcile decolonisation and LandBack, the idea of literally giving the land that was unjustly taken from Indigenous peoples, back to them, which I would assume socialists support, and the socialist idea of collective land ownership? Especially in places where the Indigenous population is a very small minority?
Say if Canada magically went socialist tomorrow, what should be done between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations in terms of land control and representation within the government?
Establish committees with indigenous peoples to democratically decide through consensus what should be done with the land taking into consideration the historical dispossession of these indigenous groups. Make the land restore its use-value, not let it become a commodity preserving exploitative practices
Would that be for all land or just reserve land (I honestly don’t like the idea of reservations in a socialist setting, shouldn’t the indigenous people have input on all land in a place like Canada, since it was all theirs to begin with?)
I mean, in this case in Vancouver, the indigenous nation the land belongs to did have a direct referendum on whether the project should go through, and a great majority agreed. Though I would assume in a socialist environment, the idea of charging rent for non-Indigenous wouldn’t be an idea so readily bounced around, unlike a capitalist system where literally everyone else around you is making money off charging rent?
IDK, this is something I need to study the theory more.