Having an understanding about property is shaped by our own desires, the lessons we take with us and our intention with the land and its resources. From the three stories shared in this unit, the idea of ownership and relations with the land are differing. Author John Locke  believed  that the labour and output of the land makes the property valuable. He also believes that human beings who work the land of the property owner are also part of the land and therefore property to the owner. Locke goes on to further explain that while having land is important, having an abundance of land is of lesser value until the land can be optimized and used to make life comfortable for people. Locke believes that "uninhabited" land does not need to be considered common space because it is of little value so any man can take up a parcel of land and labour it. Locke's belief of land is highly centralized on the concept of utility and convenience of people. Land is something that should be molded into yielding the greatest outputs for its owners. On the contrary, Robin Kimmerer writes in a romantic way about the land, discusses in a meaningful way about the grasses, the buzzing insects, and the relationship of all living things to the trees,  personifying the smallest of details.

Kimmerer's ideas are shaped by his own lived experience as the grandson of an indigenous man who grew up in Oklahoma on a reservation that no longer exists. Lastly, SubMedia's video, What is Property? Makes the claim that rioters and anarchists are acting out against consumerism and capitalism. The violence they can sometimes create, like defacing a Starbucks coffee location, is merely an attack against the ideas of private property and the illusions that keep our society and its levels of power in place. The position of SubMedia is to share that property and ownership is so ingrained in our society and across the world it is nearly impossible to find any traces of nature that is not owned by some enterprise. Historically natural resources, goods and services and even people have been traded and owned for the pleasures of the wealthy, those with property. 

 Personal values and assumptions have formed the views of these three stories. Locke uses Christianity and messing in the bible to inform his views, this is evident in sections 25 and 26 of the passage. He sees the wilderness and the indigenous of the land as mere tools in the creation of modern day convenience. He doesn't see the role of man as to steward the land but rather to exploit it for personal gain.

Kimmer's ancestors were displaced time and time again for the convenience of men who held beliefs like Locke's, founded on his own work. That people who did not exploit the land were wasting it and they needed to be removed to make room for men who would strip it of its natural state. SubMedia values community and shared resources and denounced the consumerism of today’s society that has led to the exploitation of the world's natural resources and the displacement of its people, especially those in the global south. 

Their relationships and views are the foundation to their viewpoints because their lived experiences are vital in creating their personal belief systems.  Locke believes that man has dominion over all creatures but not onto other men. All men have amnesty over themselves and their labour is solely theirs. Furthermore, he believes that, Men who labour on the land add to its value because it will make living more convenient when it can serve the pleasures of man. On the contrary, Kimmerer and his relatives believe that the land has no ownership and people are meant to steward it. The land is just as much a part of their indigenous heritage as the people who came before them. They have reverence for the land and understand it's cycles, they do not push the land to provide what it wouldn’t naturally. SubMedia takes the stance that the systems we live in have been formed in greed since the start of civilizations and have continued to grow to a point that the 1% continue to become richer while the millions of people who contribute to the system gain nothing and their lives are exploited. SubMedia believes that anarchy does not value the profitability of resources because that wealth is not shared and the destruction of our planet’s resources does more harm than it does to benefit the other 99%. 

Locke’s story is greatly different from that of Kimmerers because he does not have the same values when it comes to community and shared resources. Kimmerer discusses how fruit trees bloom and grow fruit in unison and that trees don't work off of an individual basis, they grow and provide for humans and animals in unison. This reminds me of a community, trees connected by their roots shouldering the weak along until they can all succeed. This messaging is vastly different from Locke who considers ownership of property as an individual achievement and that the fruits of your labour shouldn’t be shared amongst neighbours. Kimmer says it’s a grave mistake to separate the wellbeing of the clan from the individual.

SubMedia explains that the ideology of anarchists is based in dismantling the ideas of capitalism and growing the idea of mutual aid and community while connecting communities who have alienated and exploited the system itself. This idea complicates Locke’s ideologies of property because it sheds light on the fact that to own property and resources means excluding others from sharing in those bounties. Furthermore it means that resources and land must be extracted for the maximum amount of their worth so no other party can compete for the same resources. SubMedia’s views are formed on the fact that Locke’s ideologies were successfully indoctrinated into society and his views are still carried out today on a global scale. SubMedia believes that the systems of power aim to extract all the yields and outputs they can from both resources and people. They believe the systems we live in force us to participate in property owning and consumerism, from owning cell phones and paying taxes to owning land, these are all devices created to keep us contained. As long as there is a desire for people to have ownership of objects and that greed helps us outcompete our neighbours, then the system flourishes. 

It’s important to think about the biases and values that we hold before we understand stories about property. Each story can inform our own opinions or challenge the way we feel about property and its ownership.It's important to consider lived experiences, if a person grew up fortunate wanting for nothing then maybe they believe relying on others is a sign of weakness and sharing one's riches is a way to become poor. If someone grew up with less they may have relied on their community more and when they had an abundance of say, pecans, they shared those with their neighbours because they knew that just as easily as they became well endowed, they could become hungry again. Unfortunately the theories of John Locke became part of the foundation of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights (Miyamoty, 2016). His work forced families like the Kimmerers to renounce their native lands in favour of private ownership.  This new constitution presented to Kimmerer’s relatives only promised them safety and a permanent place to live if they agreed to move away from communal living and shared spaces into one with boarders and property boundaries. 

Telling stories about property from many points of view is critical in understanding how these ideologies have been adapted to serve the systems we live in. One could say it was best summarized in Paul Robbin’s, Political Ecology, That those who have the closest relationship to the land "act with sophisticated ecological understanding". While writers like Locke favoured individualism and consumerism, they never understood how land could be utilized in a sustainable fashion. Locke and other founding fathers considered the indigenous peoples to be animals and irradicated their existence. They made a grave mistake because they never took the opportunity to learn for Kimmerers people. Now all that Kimmerer and his relatives have of their past are the stories that have been passed on from generations about a time where land and ownership were fluid ideas. 

Work Cited

Miyamoto, Matthew. “POLITICAL LEGACY: JOHN LOCKE AND THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT.” 2016, https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/20340/FINAL%20Thesis-Miyamoto.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1#:~:text=His%20theories%20form%20the%20foundation,that%20we%20take%20them%20axiomatically. Accessed 07 10 2023.