Author: Daniel Kemmis Publisher: Island Press ISBN: 161091113X Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 295
Book Description
In the eight states of the interior West (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming), 260 million acres -- more than 48 percent of the land base -- are owned by the federal government and managed by its Washington, D.C.-based agencies. Like many other peoples throughout history who have bristled under the controlling hand of a remote government, westerners have long nursed a deep resentment toward our nation's capital. Rumblings of revolution have stirred for decades, bolstered in recent years by increasing evidence of the impossibility of a distant, centralized government successfully managing the West's widespread and far-flung lands. In This Sovereign Land, Daniel Kemmis offers a radical new proposal for giving the West control over its land. Unlike those who wish to privatize the public lands and let market forces decide their fate, Kemmis, a leading western Democrat and committed environmentalist, argues for keeping the public lands public, but for shifting jurisdiction over them from nation to region. In place of the current centralized management, he offers a regional approach that takes into account natural topographical and ecological features, and brings together local residents with a vested interest in ensuring the sustainability of their communities. In effect, Kemmis carries to their logical conclusion the recommendations about how the West should be governed made by John Wesley Powell more than a century ago. Throughout, Kemmis argues that the West no longer needs to be protected against itself by a paternalistic system and makes a compelling case that the time has come for the region to claim sovereignty over its own landscape. This Sovereign Land provides a provocative opening to a much-needed discussion about how democracy and ecological sustainability can go hand in hand, and will be essential reading for anyone interested in the West and western issues, as well as for all those concerned with place-based conservation, public lands management, bioregionalism, or related topics.
Author: Professor James Charles Smith Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN: 140948470X Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
This book explores the relationships between property and the concept of sovereignty from a number of different perspectives. It distinguishes between the dual meaning of 'sovereignty' in property discourse - political sovereignty and owner sovereignty. The contributors discuss the nature of sovereignty in both senses, applying it to a wide range of topics such as the evolution of property rights in fragile and conflict-affected nation states, and notions of sovereign property in new worlds. A section on the Arts illuminates the relationships between property, sovereignty, and culture, and a further section investigates regulatory property and governmental control over resources. The book concludes with an exploration of sovereign shaping of private property entitlements to achieve instrumental ends. This interesting collection will be valuable to those in the fields of legal philosophy, property theory, international and comparative law, and political sociology. This book explores the relationships between property and the concept of sovereignty from a number of different perspectives. It distinguishes between the dual meaning of ‘sovereignty’ in property discourse - political sovereignty and owner sovereignty. The contributors discuss the nature of sovereignty in both senses, applying it to a wide range of topics such as the evolution of property rights in fragile and conflict-affected nation states and notions of sovereign property in new worlds. A section on The Arts illuminates the relationships between property, sovereignty and culture and a further section investigates regulatory property and governmental control over resources. The book concludes with an exploration of sovereign shaping of private property entitlements to achieve instrumental ends. This interesting collection will be valuable to those in the fields of legal philosophy, property theory, international and comparative law, and political sociology.
Author: Tim Mueller Publisher: LSU Press ISBN: 0807128864 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 151
Book Description
The land of Louisiana has nourished Native American people since 4000 b.c. Not often thought of as “Indian country,” this southern state has some of the oldest and best-preserved Indian burial sites in the world, as well as distinct native cultures that continue to flourish in the twenty-first century. Nations Within combines amazing photographs with the voices and perspectives of Native Americans to unveil the past and glimpse the future of the four federally recognized sovereign Indian tribes of Louisiana—the Chitimacha, Coushatta, Tunica-Biloxi, and Jena Band of Choctaw—showing how these particular groups have sustained their heritage and managed to thrive despite poverty, discrimination, and near extinction. The oldest, the Chitimacha, have resided along the Atchafalaya Basin for more than six thousand years and achieved federal recognition in 1919. This community has kept its identity through French and Spanish colonial governments, as Acadians flowed into the region, and even as mainstream white American culture seeped into its indigenous way of life and displaced its native tongue. The Tunica-Biloxi tribe, which began efforts to gain recognition in the 1930s and finally achieved that goal in 1981, can trace its roots back to the sixteenth century. Located near Marksville, this nation once considered renting its land for fifty dollars a month as a garbage dump but now owns a multimillion-dollar business that benefits the tribal members and has recovered a fascinating collection of artifacts attesting to its long history. The Coushatta began their journey from Georgia to Louisiana in the late eighteenth century, eventually settling along the southeastern reaches of the Red River. Attaining sovereign status in 1972, the tribe has maintained its basic social tie, the family unit or clan, and continues to practice traditions handed down for centuries, such as the ritual shaving of infants’ hair, flute music, basket weaving, and Indian fry bread. The youngest of the nations is the Jena Band of Choctaw, which chose the Trout Creek area in central Louisiana as its home instead of continuing the trek with other Choctaw forced west along the Trail of Tears. Securing federal recognition only in 1995, the Jena Band focuses its efforts on paving its economic future, raising the educational level of the tribe, and improving health care options for members. This wonderfully conceived book follows some of Louisiana’s many Indians through everyday life as they preserve their culture and prepare for the future within an increasingly complex world. Photographs and text together tell the uniqueness of each tribe and the shining strength of its people.
Author: Thom Kuehls Publisher: U of Minnesota Press ISBN: 9780816624676 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 226
Book Description
How should we think about politics in a world where ecological problems - from the deforestation of the Amazon to acid rain - transcend national boundaries? This is the timely and important question addressed by Thom Kuehls in Beyond Sovereign Territory. Contending that the sovereign territorial state is not adequate to contain or describe the boundaries of ecopolitics, the author reorients our thinking about government, nature, and politics. Kuehls argues that changes in technology and the scope of governmental aims have rendered conventional ecological and internationalist aims anachronistic - and ultimately ineffective - in the face of impending environmental collapse. He questions the process by which land is transformed into an object of sovereignty - into "territory" - demonstrating how representations of political space that are premised on territorial sovereignty fail to come to terms with much of what is involved in ecopolitics. Ultimately, Kuehls critiques an orientation that privileges a certain utilitarian relationship between humans and nonhuman nature, one in which the earth is largely interpreted as given to humans. Deeply humanistic and challenging conventional wisdom, Beyond Sovereign Territory will be of interest to readers of environmental politics, geography, international politics, and political theory.
Author: Edward Onaci Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 1469656159 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
On March 31, 1968, over 500 Black nationalists convened in Detroit to begin the process of securing independence from the United States. Many concluded that Black Americans' best remaining hope for liberation was the creation of a sovereign nation-state, the Republic of New Afrika (RNA). New Afrikan citizens traced boundaries that encompassed a large portion of the South--including South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana--as part of their demand for reparation. As champions of these goals, they framed their struggle as one that would allow the descendants of enslaved people to choose freely whether they should be citizens of the United States. New Afrikans also argued for financial restitution for the enslavement and subsequent inhumane treatment of Black Americans. The struggle to "Free the Land" remains active to this day. This book is the first to tell the full history of the RNA and the New Afrikan Independence Movement. Edward Onaci shows how New Afrikans remade their lifestyles and daily activities to create a self-consciously revolutionary culture, and argues that the RNA's tactics and ideology were essential to the evolution of Black political struggles. Onaci expands the story of Black Power politics, shedding new light on the long-term legacies of mid-century Black Nationalism.
Author: Lloyd L. Lee Publisher: University of Arizona Press ISBN: 081653408X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 217
Book Description
A companion to Diné Perspectives: Revitalizing and Reclaiming Navajo Thought, each chapter of Navajo Sovereignty offers the contributors' individual perspectives. This book discusses Western law's view of Diné sovereignty, research, activism, creativity, and community, and Navajo sovereignty in traditional education. Above all, Lloyd L. Lee and the contributing scholars and community members call for the rethinking of Navajo sovereignty in a way more rooted in Navajo beliefs, culture, and values.
Author: Ezrah Aharone Publisher: AuthorHouse ISBN: 1524601330 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 233
Book Description
The Sovereign Psyche is not just the title of the book. More importantly The Sovereign Psyche is the motivating consciousness, intellect, and willpower that is necessary to materialize what the book defines as "Self-Authentic Freedom" as opposed to "Chattel Freedom." Chattel freedom is when the value of a people is predicated upon the extent to which they serve the interests and institutions of others. As such, this work asserts that there is no such thing as intellectual or institutional equality, and that Black/African people have been unknowingly thrusted into an intellectual and institutional war, where second-place finishers either experience varying degrees of chattel freedom or they could end-up dead. Regardless of the issue, genuine solutions entail what we as Black/African people intellectually and institutionally do for ourselves. If "Black Lives Matter" we must channel the end-uses of our intellect and the resources of our institutions to not only prove and enforce it, but also leverage powers to penalize and/or repudiate violators. Although this work centers upon Black/African people, the sovereign functions and frameworks herein are universal in application, being that todays world rotates upon systems of sovereignty and power, not beliefs in democracy or equality. In this context, the sovereign concepts and criteria presented are far more rational than radical. The central question is, to what extent will Black/African people harness the willpower and employ the intellect of The Sovereign Psyche to actualize our own systems and institutions of self-authentic freedom, government, and development, without apology or permission? This work offers the ideological apparatus to make this possible, just as others are doing all around the globe.
Author: Michael Ross Fowler Publisher: Penn State Press ISBN: 9780271039114 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 220
Book Description
In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, it is timely to ask what continuing role, if any, the concept of sovereignty can and should play in the emerging &"new world order.&" The aim of Law, Power, and the Sovereign State is both to counter the argument that the end of the sovereign state is close at hand and to bring scholarship on sovereignty into the post-Cold War era. The study assesses sovereignty as status and as power and examines the issue of what precisely constitutes a sovereign state. In determining how a political entity gains sovereignty, the authors introduce the requirements of de facto independence and de jure independence and explore the ambiguities inherent in each. They also examine the political process by which the international community formally confers sovereign status. Fowler and Bunck trace the continuing tension of the &"chunk and basket&" theories of sovereignty through the history of international sovereignty disputes and conclude by considering the usefulness of sovereignty as a concept in the future study and conduct of international affairs. They find that, despite frequent predictions of its imminent demise, the concept of sovereignty is alive and well as the twentieth century draws to a close.
Author: Carwil Bjork-James Publisher: University of Arizona Press ISBN: 0816540152 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
In the early twenty-first century Bolivian social movements made streets, plazas, and highways into the decisively important spaces for acting politically, rivaling and at times exceeding voting booths and halls of government. The Sovereign Street documents this important period, showing how indigenous-led mass movements reconfigured the politics and racial order of Bolivia from 1999 to 2011. Drawing on interviews with protest participants, on-the-ground observation, and documentary research, activist and scholar Carwil Bjork-James provides an up-close history of the indigenous-led protests that changed Bolivia. At the heart of the study is a new approach to the interaction between protest actions and the parts of the urban landscape they claim. These “space-claiming protests” both communicate a message and exercise practical control over the city. Bjork-James interrogates both protest tactics—as experiences and as tools—and meaning-laden spaces, where meaning is part of the racial and political geography of the city. Taking the streets of Cochabamba, Sucre, and La Paz as its vantage point, The Sovereign Streetoffers a rare look at political revolution as it happens. It documents a critical period in Latin American history, when protests made headlines worldwide, where a generation of pro-globalization policies were called into question, and where the indigenous majority stepped into government power for the first time in five centuries.
Author: Dominic O'Sullivan Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 9813341726 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 220
Book Description
This book explains how recognition theory contributes to non-colonial and enduring political relationships between Indigenous nations and the state. It refers to Indigenous Australian arguments for a Voice to Parliament and treaties to show what recognition may mean for practical politics and policy-making. It considers critiques of recognition theory by Canadian First Nations’ scholars who make strong arguments for its assimilationist effect, but shows that ultimately, recognition is a theory and practice of transformative potential, requiring fundamentally different ways of thinking about citizenship and sovereignty. This book draws extensively on New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi and measures to support Maori political participation, to show what treaties and a Voice to Parliament could mean in practical terms. It responds to liberal democratic objections to show how institutionalised means of indigenous participation may, in fact, make democracy work better.
Author: Daniel Kemmis
Author: Professor James Charles Smith
Author: Tim Mueller
Author: Thom Kuehls
Author: Edward Onaci
Author: Lloyd L. Lee
Author: Ezrah Aharone
Author: Michael Ross Fowler
Author: Carwil Bjork-James
Author: Dominic O'Sullivan