The Cons of the Law of Preemption

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The law of preemption allowed white settlers to appropriate land by mixing their labor with it. But that law did not apply in the same way to indigenous people. It's clear when we look at the historical record that settlers would routinely destroy crops of First Nations people. So really going back to that Lockean fantasy that America exists as this uncultivated wild is a racial trope.

Featuring Brenna Bhandar on Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land and Racial Regimes of Ownership. The centuries-long history of how dominant conceptions of private property were (and are) made alongside race and racial hierarchies in colonial encounters stretching from Ireland and British Columbia to Australia and Palestine. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Register for the Socialism Conference at socialismconference.org Buy Let This Radicalize You by Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes haymarketbooks.org/books/1922-let-this-radicalize-you