[edblarney]

"we never traditionally had a concept of strong property rights or ownership"

Yes, I completely understand that.

I guess what I was trying to say is that Zucks entire problem might boil down to a function of the 'collision' of those two kinds of cultures, as you put it, and the oddities of 'ownership' as they are transcribed from 'Pacific Islander' terms into 'Western legal terms' ...

In Canada we have similar issues with land management, particularly wherein there is resource extraction: the Aboriginal communities have some legal right to input, but how exactly they go about that as a 'clan' is kind of a grey area.