Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

12-2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Philosophy

Reader 1

Andrew Schroeder

Abstract

Abstract

This thesis examines Locke’s theory of property and its historical use to justify the expropriation of Indigenous land in North America. While Locke’s account appears to ground ownership only in labor that physically cultivates and improves land, I argue that this interpretation rests on an under-specified concept of labor, and that a more precise reconstruction that still maintains a Lockean approach can support Indigenous land rights rather than subvert them. I develop this reconstruction by supplying the specificity absent from Locke’s underdeveloped application of his property theory to land—clarifying which forms of labor that extend beyond cultivation still adequately ground ownership, and how the spoilage condition ought to apply to land, and what implications follow from this revision. I then engage with S. Stewart Braun’s perspective as seen in his article Rescuing Indigenous Land Ownership, which broadens Locke's theory by emphasizing flourishing and the personal significance of land. While Braun’s approach insightfully identifies important values in Locke’s framework, I argue that it drifts from a Lockean approach by dissolving the central role of labor and therefore fails to determine whether Indigenous peoples, in fact, improved the land in Lockean terms. Building on this critique and on my own refinements, I propose a final reconstructed theory of land ownership that remains tangiblely Lockean and successfully accounts for Indigenous land improvement and rightful ownership. Finally, I apply this reconstructed theory to two examples of Indigenous land use—prescribed burning and patterned hunting restraint—to show that these land use practices constitute Lockean labor-based improvements, and therefore should be recognized as legitimate private property.

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This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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