Communal Land Quotes

What is this you call property? It cannot be the earth for the land is our mother… How can one man say it belongs only to him?

Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.

… in all cases where any tribe or band of Indians has been, or shall hereafter be, located upon any reservation created for their use, … the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, authorized, whenever in his opinion any reservation or any part thereof of such Indians is advantageous for agricultural and grazing purposes, to cause said reservation, or any part thereof, to be surveyed, or resurveyed if necessary, and to allot the lands in said reservation in severalty to any Indian located thereon in quantities as follows: To each head of a family, one-quarter of a section [180 acres]; To each single person over eighteen years of age, one-eighth of a section [90 acres]; …

This is community land that belongs to particular clans, and therefore, it must go back and its administration and the determination as to what to do, must rest in the hand of the communities. That is why you have these committees, among whose members, of course, they will be traditional leaders. You will have these collectives, which must then deal with the land, the issue of communal rights.

The Communal Land Rights Bill then said, since there would be those collectives set up in terms of the other legislation, there was no need for them to set up other structures to deal with the land issues.

Part of the issue around communal land, which became a matter of controversy, is that we are saying that this land must go back to communities. Not chiefs and traditional leaders.

My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon. So long as they occupy and cultivate it they have a right to the soil. Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away.

The land on which the cattle grazed was communal property. It was owned by no one. It was nobody's private farm. It was the common property of the people, shared by the people. So the practice of sharing was central to the concept of ownership of property.

The real aim of land allotment in the Dawes Act was to get at the Indian lands and open them up to settlement. The provisions for the apparent benefit of the Indians are but the pretext to get at his lands and occupy them....If this were done in the name of Greed, it would be bad enough; but to do it in the name of Humanity...is infinitely worse

There are two pieces of legislation that are related. There's the Communal Land Rights Bill. Then there is the legislation that was approved which has to do with the role and the place and the function of the institution of traditional leadership. Now that legislation, not the Communal Land Rights Bill, provides for the setting up of particular committees that would work together with the elected municipalities.

The question arose, how would the communities manage this land on their own. That's why the Communal Land Rights Bill then borrows an institution that is set up in terms of the role and function and powers of the institutional traditional leadership ( borrows that committee and uses that committee).