ABSTRACT
The Aboriginal peoples, or "First Nations" as they are called in Canada, developed a form of mutual recognition and negotiation of French and British property in North America which is commensurable with the common-law tradition. There are two opposed views in the literature on Aboriginal property in North America. Some argue that the property systems of Canada and the United States are unjust, because they rest on the theft of Aboriginal property and the usurpation of Aboriginal governments. Others argue that the Canadian and US systems are just, in virtue of the legal positivist principle of effective occupation. The chapter seeks to show how Western theories tend to misrepresent the initial conditions of appropriation in America by critically analyzing assumptions of some exemplary and influential theories. The modes of argument of Western theories of property should be used in North America only within the Aboriginal and common-law framework.
