From: smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.celtic,soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: This Favorite Lie Again.
Date: 22 Jan 93 16:39:45 GMT
Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol

In article <llro7kINNnal@news.bbn.com> mbrennan@spca.bbn.com (Maeve Brennan) writes:
>
>While you have touched on the subject of Native Rights, you haven't 
>really explained in detail how it could be applied to the nationalist 
>community of NI.  In one posting you mentioned the Hopi tribe of Arizona, 
>but didn't give any details.  For instance, one of the Hopi's biggest 
>grievances is a land dispute with their Navajo neighbours.  How successful
>has the US government been in mediating the dispute between these
>two tribes?  As with the Unionist community in NI, the Navajo have
>only been in the area of northern Arizona for about 500 years.
>...
>If a united Ireland was ever to come about, would there be
>a need for Settler Rights?

This is actually the crux of the problem, not only in NI, but virtually
everywhere in the world were there is any form of persecution or unrest
based on ancestry.  The fact of the matter is that there are few, if
any people in the world who can claim to be descended from the original
inhabitants of wherever they live.

To take NI as an example -- we have the 'Irish' Irish (predominantly
Catholics) claiming to be oppressed by the conquering 'English' Irish
(mostly Protestant), since these 'English' Irish took over the country
a mere few hundred years ago.  However, most of these 'Irish' Irish are
Gaels -- they didn't originate in Ireland, but rather invaded Ireland
from Scotland, taking over from the Picts, about 1000-1500 years ago.
So, by the same arguments they use, they don't belong there either, and
ought to move back to Scotland where they belong.

The Picts, in turn, conquered Ireland sometime back between the Bronze
Age and the Iron Age, and so are really interlopers as well -- though
I'm not sure who they took over from.  (The reason you don't hear much
about them is that they were completely wiped out by the Gaels.  I
suppose there may be a lesson in this, but it's not a very pleasant
one.  Something along lines of 'if you're going to take over a country,
kill off all the indigenous inhabitants, because otherwise they'll come
back to cause trouble in a few hundred years'.  I have a vague feeling
I've left out the Celts somewhere in there, but the same principle
applies to them.)

This is NOT an attempt to justify the British handling of NI.  Rather,
it's an attempt to show that 'give it back to the rightful inhabitants'
is a policy which is doomed from the start, because depending any claim
based on going back N years in history can be invalidated by going back
even further.  All you end up with is more Bosnias.  Someone is going
to have to make the breakthrough of figuring out a different way of
looking at these problems.  ('Whoever holds it now gets it', which is
the absolute reversal of 'give it back', leads to equal unpleasantries.)

-- 
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
 P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!uknet!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132
Newsgroups: soc.culture.celtic