Waging War, Making Peace by Barbara Rose Johnston Susan Slyomovics

Author:Barbara Rose Johnston, Susan Slyomovics [Barbara Rose Johnston, Susan Slyomovics]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781598743432
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2008-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

LOST INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE LAND-BASED RIGHTS

In Chagos, islanders controlled land around their homes, which they used for gardens, crop rearing, and keeping livestock. This practice had roots dating to the kitchen gardens of Chagossians’ enslaved ancestors and the earliest settlements on the islands. In many cases, Chagossians occupied the same land for generations, farming and working land passed down from their elders. Young adults also had the right to leave family homes and claim unoccupied community land, building new homes with construction materials provided as part of their work compensation. In addition to having personal and family-held lands, Chagossians also enjoyed communal access to a wide range of Chagos’s resources from its seafood-rich waters to its coconuts and other fruit-bearing trees to its open spaces and cemeteries.

To estimate the value of individual and collective land-based losses the Chagossians have suffered, it is useful to distinguish between three categories of harm. The first consists of the market value of the private possessory interests the Chagossians enjoyed in the islands prior to their expulsion. The second consists of their collective interest in both the economic development and political identity of the islands as the archipelago’s indigenous people (Vine 2003). The third consists of the economic and psychic value of the right to live in and use the islands. These three categories of loss can be analogized to: (1) an individual’s loss of one’s home in a particular territory; (2) a population’s loss of political sovereignty over the territory in which they live; and (3) the population’s loss of the right to live in and use the territory. Each of these property rights has value independent of the other two, and all three must be accounted for to properly measure the losses the Chagossians have suffered.

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