1. Societies of Settlers and Settler Societies. Let us start with making a distinction.

There are settler societies, and there are societies of settlers. Or rather there were societies of settlers. Societies of settlers are not so common today, however that is not where the distinction terminates. Societies of settlers are made up communities of people who have established a residence on a particular piece of unworked or unsettled land. Granted, we will have to define what unsettled exactly means, but let us leave that for latter sections of this essay. That definition aside, societies of settlers are made of people who actually took the action of settling. That is, the people of a society of settlers would have emigrated from a particular community to establish a residence in a location that has no community dwelling in that location. As such, that location would be undeveloped, thus requiring that these settlers develop this particular location to suit their needs. We could imagine of a group of settlers who find an abandoned ghost town that is outfitted with fully furnished houses, all integrated into an equipped infrastructure of roads, a system of water distribution, sewage transportation, etc. We would still consider these people settlers despite the fact that they do not need to develop the location what-so-ever. It is the action of immigrating to a community-less location that is the primary qualification to define someone as a settler. We can think of the development requirement as a contingent feature of settling. However, it might be argued that the settlers cannot lay claim to the land they occupy as they did not apply any labour to this land to make it their own. Granted, this rebuttal only applies if you believe that the Lockean theory of ownership is correct. That is, that you believe you own something when you mix your labour with that object. This theory of ownership is integral in arguments pertaining to which communities are the effective settlers of a particular location. As such, the rebuttal to the given example is probably worth more than the example

itself, as the likelihood of finding a fully furnished town equipped with infrastructure is minimal at best. So for the time being, discount the example, but hold that the Lockean theory of ownership is greatly relevant to the debates surrounding the societies of settlers and settler societies. Settler societies emerge out of societies of settlers. To clarify, a society of settlers is only composed of people who performed an action of settling. In contrast, a settler society includes both the settlers who performed the action of settling, as well as their offspring who did not perform the action of settling. Thus, we would consider the 16th century colonial Europeans, who settled North America, to be a society of settlers. These settlers, their families and eventual offspring would be a part of the settler society to emerge from those original colonies. Thus, we can consider ourselves as North Americans today to be part of a lasting settler society, although not a society of settlers as we did not do any settling ourselves. Much the same can be said about the 18th century settlers of Australia and their eventual offspring. 2. So We Are Part of a Settler Society, Whats Your Point? The distinction between a society of settlers and a settler society is viably relevant in the wake of a realization made by the rather ethnocentric European society that decided to inhabit North America. This realization, of course, being that the savages that they initially displaced whilst settling North America were not savage at all. Rather, these indigenous people, while technologically inferior to the Europeans, possessed a strong society with a government hierarchy that was not so different from that of the European settlers. The initial impressions of savagery given by the Aboriginal peoples appearance, being clothed in skins and furs, slowly began to dissipate as the Aboriginal people became more accustomed to the European culture.

Ultimately, the Aboriginals would gain full grasp of European trade customs and conventions, and furthermore an understanding of European property ownership. Once the Aboriginals had grasped these products of European culture, they would ultimately realize that they had been hoodwinked without a chance to properly assess the deals they made. Ultimately the Europeans, once again being rather ethnocentric, figured that they were doing the Aboriginal peoples a favour by introducing them to their culture, and that the land would be more effectively used in their technologically advanced hands. Advancing some 400 500 years from these initial interactions, into the present, some people today still hold these begrudgingly ethnocentric European views. On the other hand, many residents today that come from European descent now sympathize with the Aboriginal, First Nations people in realization of the inequity of the land deals made in the past, and the poor treatment of the First Nations people that followed those deals. However, these modern residents are only part of a settler society, thus they took no part in the land deals from many centuries ago. In regards to this insight, let us look at four concepts that allow us to better describe the relations between the First Nations people, the colonial society of settlers, and the modern settler society. These four concepts encompass different roles that we can take upon ourselves. This first is that of the victim. A victim is a person who has been harmed by a wrongful action,1 whilst it is a perpetrator who carries out that harm. Neither of these roles are exclusive entities. That is to say, a person may very well be a perpetrator in some aspects and scenarios, whilst being a victim in other aspects and scenarios. Thus, we should not get in the habit of assuming that

Trudy Govier, Taking Wrongs Seriously: Acknowledgement, Reconciliation, and the Politics of Sustainable Peace (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2006), 27.

someone is solely a victim or a perpetrator. There are also varying levels of being a victim or perpetrator. At the primary level of being a victim, you are being directly harmed. As a primary victim might be physically attacked, or robbed, the effects of the harmful action are observably befallen on you. Likewise a primary perpetrator is the agent whom is directly carrying out the harmful action. These agents are the robbers or the assailant. At the secondary level of being a victim, you are not directly harmed by a perpetrator, but the perpetrators actions subsequently do harm you in an indirect way. An example of a secondary victim might be that if your husband or wife were to be detained and beaten, resulting in their hospitalization, it would leave you as a sole provider having to take care of your children and also possibly your husband or wife whilst being under great emotional stress. The antithesis to the secondary victim, the secondary perpetrator, is someone who aids and abets a primary perpetrator. This would be an agent who drives the getaway car, or supplies the gun to the assailant. At the tertiary level, the victims are members of a community that are affected by the harmful act. These might be people who are now weary of their community members and feel unsafe due to the act that was committed. Finally, the tertiary perpetrator is someone who explicitly support the harmful act and argues in favour for that act to be performed.2 The last two roles that need to be addressed are that of the bystander, and the beneficiary. What is unique about both of these roles in contrast to the mentioned victim and perpetrator roles is that neither of these roles are considered to be participatory in the harmful action. There are two types of bystanders. One type of bystander is considered to be neutral in the harmful action, such that in no circumstances would they be able to help prevent the harmful act, thus their inaction is neither harmful nor beneficial. The other type of bystander, the guilty bystander is

Govier, 30-31.

someone who very well could have helped to prevent a harmful act with little to no personal risk, but simply did not. An example of this would be found in the case of Kitty Genovese. Genovese was brutally raped and murdered whilst thirty-eight people on a New York street ignored the screams and neglected to call the police. These thirty-eight people would be considered guilty bystanders.3 The other role we need to address is that of the beneficiary. To be a beneficiary simply means that by the means of a harmful act, you somehow benefited from that harmful acts occurrence. Whether or not you participated in the harmful act is irrelevant in attributing whether or not you are a beneficiary. Thus, if a perpetrator benefits from their harmful act, they too are beneficiaries. Simply, to be a beneficiary does not mean that you are exclusively a beneficiary and cannot take on any other role. So, returning to the unfortunate case of the First Nations of North America, we can now apply these roles to each agent in the problem at hand. Obviously we should regard the First Nations as the victims in this case. The people of the colonial society of settlers shall be regarded as perpetrators, so long as their actions helped the land deals come to fruition. Lastly, the members of the settler society of today shall simply be considered beneficiaries. Yes, even the aforementioned person from present day whom totes ethnocentric claims about how European culture was superior is a beneficiary. The modern ethnocentric person might seem like they should be categorized as a tertiary perpetrator, however they could not have possibly affected the fruition of the land deals made centuries ago, thus they are only a beneficiary.

Govier, 35.

3. Buy It While Its Hot Granting that we recognize that there is a wrong that has been committed that harms the First Nations people at the perpetration of the colonial society of settlers, then what is to say that the beneficiaries are responsible for reparations towards the First Nations people? As previously mentioned, as a beneficiary a person is not necessarily a causal factor in the execution of the harmful act. Surely, if the harmful act happened centuries ago, then the beneficiary is not culpable for the atrocity committed. Sure enough, the members of the settler society are not culpable for that particular harmful act centuries ago. However, that does not necessitate that the present day beneficiaries are not culpable for the transfers of land from generation to generation between beneficiaries. Should we consider that these transfers of land from generation to generation are immoral? It might be argued via the Criminal Code of Canada that these transfers are indeed morally culpable. However, it should be noted that the Criminal Code is not necessarily the ultimate authority on what is necessarily morally dubious, but rather the Criminal Code reflects on the moral intuitions of what amounts to probably hundreds of citizens. That is, through common law ventures we as a society have developed a criminal code that is generally deemed to be relevant to the moral beliefs and actions of our society. Be that as it may, it might still be safer to look upon the Criminal Code at only face value as so we do not delve into any absolutist moral reasoning or some variation of unjustified natural law. None-the-less, looking at the Criminal Code at face value still produces some intriguing results when assessing the possible harm done to the First Nations people by the beneficiaries of present day.

Let us begin with a scenario that is analogous to the present day conflict. Suppose that you are a notorious shoplifter who manages to seize a great number of valuable items from various merchants. Rather than keeping these items for yourself you decide to make a great deal of money by selling them on the black market. Considering that you are shoplifting from local shopkeepers and merchants, most of your clients and customers are simple average citizens who typically do not engage in crime, but simply wish to buy goods at the cheap prices you offer. These average citizens do not necessarily feel that they have done anything wrong as they paid for a product and certainly did not steal it as you have. These citizens then might pass along these products as hand-me-downs to their children, and then their childrens children, and so on. In this analogy we would consider the initial colonial powers, perhaps high ranking military members or politicians, to be the notorious shoplifter. This may seem like an exaggerated line to draw, but if we assume that there is reason to believe that the initial colonial powers neglected to properly inform the Aboriginal peoples of the contents of the land deals they were agreeing to, then by use of misinformation we can say that the colonial powers were effectively performing an act of fraud. This is mentioned in section 380 of the Criminal Code: 380. (1) Every one who, by deceit, falsehood or other fraudulent means, whether or not it is a false pretence within the meaning of this Act, defrauds the public or any person, whether ascertained or not, of any property, money or valuable security or any service, a) is guilty of an indictable offence [] [the rest just describes prison sentence lengths and monetary fines, thus it can be omitted] As such, fraud is a form of theft, and it seems to be less of a stretch to attribute those whom directly participated in the land deals to be in some sort of likeness to a shoplifter. These colonial high ranking members are then re-selling this land to settlers at a marginalized price. To

which, the criminal code has more to say about this kind of business practice. Observe section 354:
354. (1) Every one commits an offence who has in his possession any property or thing or any proceeds of any property or thing knowing that all or part of the property or thing or of the proceeds was obtained by or derived directly or indirectly from (a) the commission in Canada of an offence punishable by indictment; or (b) an act or omission anywhere that, if it had occurred in Canada, would have constituted an offence punishable by indictment.

Essentially this means that possession of stolen property is an offence. Thus, by the standards of our own criminal code, by continually passing these pieces of land down from generation to generation we are committing a criminal offense. Of course, this assumes that we know that the land deals were made under a pretense of fraud, which is wholly unproven. Once again, the Criminal Code of Canada is not the ultimate authority of moral questions. However, it does represent much moral thinking from our citizens. As such, it seems fairly intuitive that acquiring goods or property by means of dishonesty is morally wrong. However, the reasoning behind buying stolen goods does not seem as intuitively wrong. It simply might be that we wish to discourage acts such as theft or fraud. As such, if we punish those who attempt to benefit from harmful acts such as theft or fraud, even if these beneficiaries are not the perpetrator in the act, we will discourage further acts of theft and fraud as there will be lower incentives to commit those acts. If we take this kind of notion to be true we might find that the present day beneficiaries from the Aboriginal land deals are more morally culpable than we had initially thought to be. For now it seems that if the beneficiaries decide to accept the land that was acquired dishonestly, it is providing empirical evidence that obtaining land dishonestly is greatly beneficial to societies. Thus, other societies might attempt to acquire property or land by dishonest means. Some might

argue that a modern day reoccurrence of this kind of land acquisition can be found in the displacement of millions of Palestinians from their original homes in the creation of the Israeli state. Whether or not this was done dishonestly is a very heated debate, in fact, so incredibly heated that both Palestinians and Israelis are clearly ready to die for their side of the argument. As such, I am not going to delve into great detail on the topic of Israeli and Palestinians relations, but simply know that some would call the acquisition of land from Palestine to be dishonest. Thus is it justified to put the beneficiaries of the land deals from centuries ago to task? Not necessarily. If it could be argued that the benefits demonstrated by the beneficiaries provided inspiration to perform other potentially dishonest land deals, then perhaps there might be a weak argument that the beneficiaries are somewhat morally culpable. Although, I suppose some would say that the colonization of Australia in the 18th century is evidence enough to support the notion that North American beneficiaries provided ample inspiration. Clearly the British were, at the very least, not deterred by the results of colonialism in North America. Then again, perhaps this reasoning is stretch a bit too thin and is rather presumptuous of British thinking. If we wish to relegate the notion that dishonest land acquisition is beneficial, then the present day beneficiaries could offer substantial reparations to the First Nations people such that the benefits from the land acquisition are lessened. In a rather extreme example we could offer to pay the First Nations people for every acre of land that was acquired at a current average rate per acre. At an average cost of about $5000 per acre this would cost hundreds of trillions of dollars. Thus, that might not be a wise action to take, but it would certainly demonstrate how beneficial it would not be to acquire land dishonestly. As such, I do think it is to some degree a responsibility of beneficiaries to demonstrate that morally bankrupt actions do not pay.

4. The Lockean Assessment of Land Distribution and Conclusion. As mentioned in the outset of this essay, some might appeal to the Lockean theory of ownership as a means to ascribe land to a certain community over another community. Once

again, the Lockean theory of ownership state that once an agent mixes their labour with an object, they can claim dominion over that object. As such, if I believe this notion, I might be inclined to say that the Aboriginals are entitled to any land that they have mixed their labour with. Any other land is up for grabs. Thus, considering the farming performed by most native communities would have been very small and local, the only amount land that was tilled and mixed with labour would be very small. Simply, the European colonists would have to allow these small parcels of land to be retained by the Aboriginals, wherever these native hamlets happened to lie where there was some basic farming occurring. The rest of the unsettled land would be applicable for European acquisition. As such, if the land deals simply mean that the European colonists were taking over the small settlements made by the Aboriginals, then the beneficiaries today could surely pay for the land that was acquired. However, to make these kinds of claims would be rather insulting to the present day First Nation people, and surely a modest offering of reparations for a few thousand acres of land would be an even more injuring endeavor to the First Nations people. As such, we need address what happened centuries ago and reach mutual conclusions with present day First Nations on the happenings of the land deals with the Aboriginals of the 16th century. Only when we can reach a mutual consensus, and make a moral acknowledgement about what wrongs were committed, can we properly assess what reparations would be appropriate. And, as previously mentioned, we certainly should make some kind of reparation at least to demonstrate that moral wrongs should not reward people.

Reparations As Empirical Evidence That Crime Does Not Pay

By Derek Schimanski

Words: 3364 Philosophy 3460: Philosophy of Peace March 25, 2011 Professor Trudy Govier
Student ID#001129106

Works Cited
Trudy Govier. Taking Wrongs Seriously: Acknowledgement, Reconciliation, and the Politics of Sustainable Peace. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2006.