LAND RIGHTS AND WRONGS

Our earth. Our home.
Vanessa Baird reports on why land matters

Fighting still

Country for sale.
James Painter goes to Paraguay and finds it's for sale

It's mine.
Juliet Kellner thinks about security - and greed.

ACTION DIRECTORY

This singing land
For Aborigines land is sacred. And it sings.

No God or Angel.
Jews and Palestinians both need a homeland. Dan Leon and Sara Gowen report.

LAND - THE FACTS

Cory's cop-out
Land reform - or revolution? Walden Bello and Joe Collins look into a social volcano in the Philippines

Simply.Land needs and greed

Home on the Range Rover
Boom and gloom. Michael Ball examines what the UK property spiral is doing to people.

Help Yourself

Paradise promised
Marcus Colchester on the biggest transmigration disaster of all time.

It is not often that I enjoy being let down.

And when the Aborigine woman commissioned by the NI office in Australia agreed to write an article and then simply vanished without trace, I was not happy. But another more perverse (or just reasonable?) part of my nature was overjoyed.

After all, why should she operate according to our values? Since when did white people operate according to her people's values? If we did our whole attitude towards the subject of land would be radically different - and certainly more humane.

This issue of the magazine was initially billed (during the annual meeting where editors thrash out the themes for coming year's magazines) as being about indigenous peoples. But during a later editorial meeting, when we were planning the issue in more detail, we found ourselves returning again and again to the subject of land. We decided to change tack, unfurl our sails, and deal with the broader issue that is crucial not only to tribal but oppressed peoples the world over.

We were still keen, however, to keep a substantial indigenous content - written preferably by indigenous people themselves. This is easier said than done. Quite apart from the incident mentioned - which could have happened with anyone - there is the language problem. Although NI editors may have a handful of languages between us, none of us is too hot in any of the 20 or so Aboriginal languages or the 60 languages in the Peruvian part of the Amazon alone. So we generally require flowing English - however imperialistic this may sound.

In the course of putting together this issue - in between wondering where that Aborigine woman had got to and whether she was enjoying wherever it was she was - I have been experimenting with people. Nothing sinister. Just saying 'land' to them and seeing what happens. Not much for the first few seconds. Then they sigh: 'Well, there is lots of it'. Followed by: 'Now wasn't I reading something about Cory Aquino and land reform in the Philippines? It's a big issue there at the moment isn't it?'

The truth is that land is a big issue everywhere at the moment, though it takes different forms. People in the Third World are eternally concerned about land reform, which is always promised but rarely materializes in any meaningful form. Meanwhile, in the West the property prices boom enables people to make fortunes through owning houses while the ranks of the homeless swell daily.

It is true that there is lots of land. About 21 per cent of the world's surface is cultivable of which only 7.6 per cent is actually being farmed. There is plenty, as Gandhi said, for everybody's need. But not for everybody's greed.

Letters
Letter from Mawere
Update
Briefly
Endpiece: by Sue Haycock
Reviews: including Vance Packard classic
Country profile: Libya

COVER PHOTO: Mike Goldwater / Network
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