🚀 go-pugleaf

David Deilley wrote:
> "Stephen Eggleston" <seggleston@shaw.ca> wrote 
> 
> 
>>{SE} Another wonderful example of Deilly's brilliant dialogue.  I am sure he
>>refers to a redneck Albertan there, 
> 
> 
> No - just an inbred hillbilly of undetermined location
> 
> 
>>{SE} More substantively, 9000 years is the basis of Aboriginal claims to
>>inherent rights.  
> 
> 
> 9000 years had nothing to do with it.
> British law recognized whichever "tribes" occupied the land at trhe
> time of contact as "possessing" that land, and said that this
> "possession" remained intact until it was relinquished in a treaty
> with the British Crown.  (As an aside, most historians agree that the
> motive here was not based on respect for the "tribes," but to prevent
> anyone else (e.g. the Hudson's Bay Company) from doing side deals.)

David, you need to look deeper than Canadian or British law, 
specifically at Francisco de Vitoria [c. 1483-1546].  Here's some info @ 
http://legalminds.lp.findlaw.com/list/newlawbooks-l/msg01304.html
----------------------begin-------------------------
Scott, James Brown. The Spanish Origin of International Law. Francisco
De Vitoria and His Law of Nations. London: Humphrey Milford, 1934.
19a, 288, clviii pp. Frontispiece and portrait. Reprinted 2000 by The
Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 00-036835. ISBN 1-58477-110-0. Cloth. $90.
*  Francisco de Vitoria [c. 1483-1546] is widely considered to be a
founder of international law. Scott holds that Vitoria's 16th century
school of international law and his important Reflectiones, De Indis
Noviter Inventis and De Jure Belli (the text of these are included in
the appendix) are in fact the origin of the law of nations, which was
to become the international law of Christendom and the world at large.
In Vitoria's writings described herein he held that pagans had the
right to freedom and property, declared slavery to be unsound, upheld
the rights of Indians, questioned the Spanish conquest of the New
World in the time immediately following Columbus' discovery of America
which gave rise to his thesis that the community of nations transcends
Christendom. Walker, Oxford Companion to Law 1279-1280.
----------------------end----------------------------

The issue during Vitoria's time was whether the Indian's soul could be 
saved.  If it couldn't, land title would be held by the Pope, as a 
steward of aboriginal rights. Early Conquistadors such as Hernan Cortes 
and it couldn't, but two figures (perhaps more) argued otherwise: Fray 
Bartolom� de las Casas and Alvar Nu�ez Cabeza de Vaca.  The case was 
made in the Council of the Indies and accepted, and what followed was 
international law.  +ALL+ aboriginal title in the Americas flows through 
this legal instrument.

And of course it has nothing to do with paleoindians or paleoirishmen 
who may have inhabited the Americas 9,000 years ago, as you say.

Erik