Commons, Enclosure, and Resistance in Kahnawá:ke Mohawk Territory

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LAW 343 Dispossession Enclosure

Notes

transformation of communally held lands into individually held, commodified rectangles

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ungoverned spaces in which self-interested individuals tend to over-exploit the land

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users of commons around the world have carefully regulated their collective and individual actions to ensure sustainable use over long periods of time

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monetization of land and wood in this context created open-access conditions that, in turn, reinforced colo- nists’ beliefs that the Maori were incapable of effective self-governance.

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Kahnawá:ke customary law concerning land tenure was designed to allow as many community members as possible to have access to a piece of land for small-scale agriculture, as well as free firewood.

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any uncleared piece of land was available to the person who was willing to clear and cultivate it. That piece, in turn, became available to others if left uncultivated for three consecutive years. A person was not to claim more land than he or she could work without hired help

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Any Kahnawakehró:non had the right to cut trees for personal use (not for sale), regardless of where the tree stood, and no one had the right to stop another person from doing so

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customary laws showed them to be opposed to the enclosure of their seigneurial lands and the commercialization of wood on those lands

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not all Kahnawakehró:non agreed with the customary land laws. A small number wanted a land tenure regime in line with Canadian norms

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In the context of this power vacuum, trees were cut at will by Mohawks and non-Mohawks, by night and by day, and often for sale

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those who had requested the order-in-council represented a small minority of the community, and that many of those did not have legitimate title

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order- in-council turned out to be largely unenforceable because the department had no idea where lot boundaries ran or who was legally authorized to hold land

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To be eligible for a location ticket, a person would have to be a literate, morally upright, debt-free male

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Indian Act was designed to legally transform Indians into non-Indians en masse and to destroy Indigenous communities by having each enfranchised per- son take a part of the reserve from communities.

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Canadian government was trying to deal with a food and resource crisis on the Prairie West that was, in part, of its own making

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in view of their previous vociferous resistance as well as the colonial power relations at play, their cooperation should not be interpreted as agreement

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instructed to assign monetary value based on a land market in which only Mohawks could participate, which had the effect of greatly lowering valuations

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Answers to most questions are written in standardized English phrases and never written in the hand of the claimant.

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‘any information I might get from the individual Indians would be very unreliable and inaccurate.’

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imminent loss of property without adequate compensation. 65 These wealthier men were typically the class of Mohawks the dia had some- times been able to count as allies, and several years into the survey even these had been lost to the department.

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Roads and paths would cease to be useful, and barns would be separated from fields. The ecological, geographical, and cultural logics that had determined the original layout of the lots would become subservient to the bureaucratic logic of the rectangle and the grid

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The dia involved itself in land transactions only to attempt resolution of difficult disputes, and it would often do so with reference to the Walbank map and data. 84 The Walbank data thus allowed for the prosecution of anyone who continued to cut wood on others’ lots or claim new land by working it

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In the context of a geography of land tenure that had been in constant flux, the 1880s represented one moment in ever-changing land and property relations. Walbank’s cadastre froze that particular moment in time and preserved and privileged the boundaries it demarcated.

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The refusal of many Kahnawakehró:non to abide by the constraints of the Indian Act, along with dia ineptitude, meant that many post-1885 land transactions went unrecorded. In some cases those who inherited certain lots were never informed, or generations went by without anyone checking records for a lot. As a result, one major concern about land in Kahnawá:ke today is multiple ownership or ‘‘unsettled estates’’ – more than half of lots are owned by a number of people, often hundreds. 87 This is seen as a blessing by those who want to see undeveloped landscapes preserved

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