Our Journey, Columbus Day
It's Columbus Day! And Day 71 of my little journey. I'll be heading up to Canada in a couple of days for the Open Ed "OE Global" conference. When I first went in 2019, to Milan, I found this was a very European-dominated event, but maybe that was because it was in Europe and the organizers were Italians. I imagine it might be quite a bit different in Edmonton. Based on the program, a lot more inclusive of indigenous ideas. There's a persistent but not really explicitly-stated belief that incorporating some elements of native culture will promote sustainability. I think the reason for it is that most native cultures had a different idea of collective responsibility and property. Europeans once had a concept of social responsibility that was similar, but since Roman times, their idea of property has been a bit messed up.
What I mean by this is that there are so many reports of Indian societies in North America where "no one would go hungry until the last grain of corn had been eaten". Where there was consensus rule rather than democracy, so people had to stay at the bargaining table (probably actually a council fire) until everyone agreed. This meant everybody had to understand their own priorities and expect to give up something in order to come to agreement. Democracy (especially a strict 2-party duopoly) has no such requirement. You only have to get 50% plus one to vote with you. Then, "to hell with the other side and their needs."
A big element of the difference between Native society and modern America, I think, is the persistence of institutions. Not only corporations, which are now imagined to be immortal persons, but government, where ancient senators hang on for six terms and then vote (whether or not they understand what they're casting their vote for) on the day they die. Graeber and Wengrow documented enough cases to establish a pattern, of people in native societies electing leaders when they were needed (like for war or a seasonal bison hunt) and then reverting back to anarchy when coordination was unnecessary. And then when they once again needed leadership, they were careful to insure a different set of leaders were elected, to prevent power from becoming entrenched.
In the US, we inherited a class system (much as we'd like to believe otherwise) and corporations outgrew their original purpose to become members of the ruling class. When they were first granted in colonial and early republic America, charters of incorporation were designed to let a group of people do something that was in the public interest. The first corporation in America, aside from the colonial charters that established places like Virginia and Massachusetts Bay, was for Harvard College in 1650. In the early nineteenth century, there was an explosion of incorporation to establish businesses like New England textile mills. Stock ownership and limited liability were both important in the success of these corporations and this industry, and incorporation rapidly became about securing profits for shareholders rather than public goods for society.
But the biggest difference between the native world and what replaced it in North America, in my opinion, was the approach to property. In Roman law, the three "properties" that established ownership were usus (the ability to use a thing), fructus (access to the "fruits" of the thing), and abusus (the ability to destroy the thing with impunity). As I understand it, many native cultures embraced "usufruct" property but stopped short of the idea that anyone could without penalty destroy anything they "owned". There's a lot that can be said about the social underpinnings of these traditions, such as native societies that were mobile and avoided accumulating goods or practiced gift exchange. Or the counterintuitive idea that land and natural resources can be "owned" by individuals (or by corporations) in a sense that includes destruction, rather than held in temporary trust from previous generations and for the next. So maybe the Canadian organizers of this conference are right, and it would be valuable to try to really (and not just rhetorically) learn something from indigenous cultures.