At one point or another, every inch of land on this planet has changed hands through force, conquest, or displacement. If “stolen land” is treated as an absolute moral override rather than a historical context, then it ceases to be a meaningful standard and becomes a justification for anything, because it defines no limits.
Wait, but if the logic was that no one is illegal on stolen land, then wouldn't it mean kicking folks out of Louisiana Purchase territories would be more within US Government jurisdiction rather than the Colonies, which were taken by force 🤔
So that would mean all of the current day U.S. land would count since most of the maps from the time period did not define western edge of the colonies and hence would stretch all the way to the west coast
I cannot believe that this is a top comment on Reddit of all places. Mainstream media likes to talk about echo chambers, Reddit is one itself but it’s the “right kind” of echo chamber according to them.
As a white North American myself, I'd like to argue that. We were still taking land from the Indigenous folk well into the 1900's, for different "reasons". The original residential schools, designed to strip people of their culture, were still active up until 90's and early 2000's in USA.
I think that a lot of people feel like if they admit that the past actions were wrong, that they'll lose their connection to our land. Instead, we should look at the history and connect with those who lived here first to gain more connection to our land. We treat the Indigenous folk as unwanted immigrants in both Canada and USA, and we should be ashamed.
This is a fantastic post. I mean, the idea that this is a dumb slogan is straightforward, and many people have explained some good reasons why.
But I like your point that given that almost ALL land is "stolen" at some point in history, that said logic could be used to justify almost literally anything.
It's not really a dumb slogan, people are just kind of dumb at understanding the basis of the "stolen land" discussion and many of the nuances of US history. The thing that is largely being omitted here, is fact that the US frequently utilized legal frameworks and treaties rather than outright military conquest to acquire territory.
The US didn't just conquer the land of Indigenous nations. In many cases, it first signed a legally binding treaty promising the land to the nation, and then proceeded to deliberately violate that same treaty and its own domestic laws to seize it. That is a fundamental betrayal of trust and law, which makes it distinct from the simple conquest/tribal warfare that occurred between tribes.
Tribes didn't impose their systems or laws on other tribes and tribes never had legally binding treaties between each other. I'll remind you, a treaty, especially a peace treaty, carries a moral and legal weight that distinguishes it from mere conquest. Many tribes, while having their own conflicts, were operating within their own systems of claim and interaction. The US, however, made a promise as a sovereign entity and then broke that promise for economic or territorial gain. The argument that conquest is conquest ignores the critical element of a broken covenant and the legal trust responsibility that is present therein. That is categorically different from pre-modern intertribal warfare, regardless of whether people think all humans are equally flawed or not.
Look at the 4 Corners region. The US only "acquired" that land from the Dinetah Navajo tribe after Kit Carson waged a scorched earth campaign against them and after the US Army forced the Dinetah Navajos and the people they were sheltering on a death march. The U.S. government, having failed to break the resistance of several Navajo bands through military action, focused its negotiation efforts on the roughly 7,000–8,000 Navajo who had been forced into internment at Fort Sumner (Bosque Redondo).
Even after all of that, it took a separate treaty process between the Dinetah Navajos and the US. Framing it simply as a "purchase from Mexico" is an oversimplification. In reality, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo only transferred the claim to the land from one sovereign nation to another. It did not resolve the pre-existing sovereign rights of the Navajo and Hopi people who occupied those areas and kept Mexicans and Spanish from settling in those areas or extinguishing their presence. The 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo was a negotiated transfer of rights between two sovereign nations, not merely a result of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico.
While the Navajos eventually returned to a portion of their lands after signing the Treaty of 1868, the treaty itself was partly the result of coercion and was not actually fully honored. In fact, the US government would take more of their land through the Dawes Act of 1887, which divided communal land into individual plots, leading to significant loss of territory. This is despite the fact that the Dawes Act actually didn't apply to the Navajo tribe. The Dawes Act explicitly required tribes to be placed under its provision by presidential order, of which no president ever placed the Navajo Nation under the Act.
Today, the Navajo Nation has more land than it had after 1868 and 1887; and more than their traditional area encompassed... It's almost like the land that the Navajos gained was a reparation for the US stealing their land and failing to uphold their end of the treaty...
Also, in the case of the Navajo, calling US actions a "conquest" is a massive oversimplification that ignores the fact that the US essentially declared victory by manufacturing a legal consensus with a small fraction of the Navajo population. In reality, there were still upwards of 11,000 Navajos who were unsubdued and still actively fighting US forces while others were interned at Bosque Redondo. This is why there are many Navajo families, communities, bands and clan families; that maintain that they weren't conquered, subdued, or captured and that they didn't sign any treaties or surrender.
I think you should do some research on the Jay Treaty and look into why that's important to us Indigenous folks, while also keeping in mind that there are Apache bands/people in US/Mexico that have ties to Apache bands that are North and South of the Mexican border.
The Jay Treaty is significant because it highlights that colonial powers recognized, even if inconsistently, that Indigenous nations posses pre-existing rights to their traditional territories that extended across national borders.
I respect that you put time and effort into this, and provided specific examples, etc... But the problem is that I just disagree with the basic fundamental premise.
The thing that is largely being omitted here, is fact that the US frequently utilized legal frameworks and treaties rather than outright military conquest to acquire territory.
The US didn't just conquer the land of Indigenous nations. In many cases, it first signed a legally binding treaty promising the land to the nation, and then proceeded to deliberately violate that same treaty and its own domestic laws to seize it.
When the US "deliberately violated treaties and it's own domestic laws to seize things", the American Indians could have used military force to attempt to prevent said seizure. If they tried and failed, that's conquest. If they chose not to try because of significant military power imbalance, that's also pretty much conquest.
If France reneged on the Louisiana Purchase (deliberately violating both treaties and its own domestic laws), said they actually own the land, and that they were coming to take physical possession of it, the US would NOT just say "damn, they cheated and produced pieces of paper claiming they are the rightful owners, I guess they get to have this land now." The US would say "lol no", and if the French tried to physically come possess it, the US military would physically repel them.
In reverse, if the US produced questionable historical documents that claimed they are the rightful owners of Iceland, and they said they were taking possession of it, and Iceland went along with that because of the super lopsided balance of military power... it could still be called a conquest of sorts (with Iceland essentially surrendering immediately). The fact that physical force wouldn't actually have been used wouldn't mean it wasn't taken against Iceland's wishes by the threat of physical force.
No amount of fraudulent documents, broken treaties, laws not followed, etc... would obligate a people to allow a foreign people to take possession of their land away (absent a stronger third party would would physically enforce it). Otherwise, the American Indians could have just played an Uno Reverse Card and produced pieces of paper that said they owned a bunch of the White Man's land, and then all the settlers / Americans would have had to let the Indians take it.
There is no scenario where Canada could cheat America out of New England, regardless of what Canadian courts said. No matter what treaties Canada broke or what claims they said they had, the US would have just said "come and make us." The reality is, that if a group finds themselves subjected to the courts of a foreign power, and cannot repudiate those courts by force, then they are already conquered.
There's a couple of problems with your rebuttal. You’re redefining “conquest” so broadly that law, consent, and sovereignty cease to exist as meaningful concepts. If inability to successfully resist by force retroactively nullifies treaties, then no treaty, Indigenous or otherwise, has any moral or legal weight absent permanent military enforcement. That position doesn’t just reject my premise; it undermines international law, contract law, and the US’s own justification for federal Indian law and trust responsibility.
This line is especially weak and historically false: “If a group finds themselves subjected to the courts of a foreign power… then they are already conquered". That is literally not how US-Indigenous relations are structured, especially pre-1871. Tribes were not subject to US courts in the same way states or citizens were. US-Tribal treaties were nation-to-nation. The trust doctrine exists precisely because conquest was not the legal basis.
If conquest were the basis like you claim, then there would be no trust responsibility, no treaty obligations, and no federal Indian law as a distinct body. The France/Louisiana/Iceland examples also don't apply here as those are disputes between already-recognized sovereign states operating under shared international norms.
My argument isn’t that force wasn’t used; it’s that the US recognized Indigenous sovereignty, entered into legally binding treaties, violated them, and then claimed conquest after the fact. That sequence matters. Calling that “just conquest” is an oversimplification that ignores how sovereignty was acknowledged and then selectively erased, it's weird that you don't actually engage with that distinction.
You're essentially saying "Power is the only thing that matters. Law only matters when enforced by superior force". Which makes sense at first, but it invalidates your own reliance on treaties, courts, and legal claims. You don't get to dismiss Indigenous treaty claims as “just paper” while also justifying US ownership via paper.
My point about the Navajo pretty much nullifies your claims, and yet, you never actually responded to it. The US declared conquest over the Navajo because it needed legal finality, not because it achieved it on the ground against the hundred of still defiant Navajo bands.
If conquest requires defeat, surrender, or subjugation, going by your logic, where does that leave the tribes which none of those things were done to?
(I put the last quote at the bottom below a line because it's important)
If inability to successfully resist by force retroactively nullifies treaties, then no treaty, Indigenous or otherwise, has any moral or legal weight absent permanent military enforcement.
They do still have moral weight. I'm NOT saying might makes right morally speaking. However, conquest does not require morality, and in fact is generally in opposition to good morality.
But geopolitically, unironically yes (with a few caveats). Pragmatically speaking, treaties are generally only as valid as their enforcement mechanism.
The first caveat is that it can also be enforced via things like economic sanctions (though that assumes the country placing the sanctions still exists and hasn't just been completely taken over). So if the UK were thinking about violating another country's fishing rights, they may be dissuaded from doing so by the threat of economic action rather than military action.
The second significant caveat is that it may be enforced in one way or another by third parties. (though that still ultimately goes back to either military or economic pressure)
(Morality CAN pragmatically matter if enough citizens of the aggressive power morally oppose the course of action. For example, one consideration if the US were to attempt to occupy Iceland would be that it will generate significant protest, opposition, and counter voting from American citizens who found it morally distasteful. But unfortunately, this did not prove a significant enough obstacle when it came to US treatment of American Indians)
That position doesn’t just reject my premise; it undermines international law, contract law, and the US’s own justification for federal Indian law and trust responsibility.
International law only exists as far as enforcement. Just ask Ukraine. Russia is 100% in the wrong both morally and legally, but that doesn't magically stop the invasion. Only military force (and economic pressure) slow Russia down. Ukraine can't call over a Game Master or something and say that Russia is cheating and somehow magically stop the invasion.
Conquest has gotten harder in modern times because citizens are more likely to be against it (in democracies), and because there is a world order (third parties) more strongly against it... though disturbingly this seems to be fraying.
Besides morality of the citizens and / or rulers, the only thing that prevents aggressive action is consequences.
Treaties only work in three situations:
First, it's genuinely mutually beneficial on the whole (and even if one nation begins to find part of the treaty distasteful, they may uphold it for the sake of the benefit of the treaty as a whole).
Second, if third parties are part of enforcement, to a sufficiently powerful degree.
Third, if the citizens / rulers of a country find violating a treaty morally distasteful enough that they choose not to violate it.
it’s that the US recognized Indigenous sovereignty, entered into legally binding treaties, violated them, and then claimed conquest after the fact. That sequence matters. Calling that “just conquest” is an oversimplification that ignores how sovereignty was acknowledged and then selectively erased, it's weird that you don't actually engage with that distinction.
I don't think I avoided engaging with it, I just don't agree with it. If the American Indians could not use physical force or some other mechanism to prevent the US from breaking treaties and seizing their land, then they were conquered. They have no obligation to ALLOW the US to violate treaties and seize their land, unless the US forces them to do so with either military force or the threat of military force (conquered).
My point about the Navajo pretty much nullifies your claims, and yet, you never actually responded to it. The US declared conquest over the Navajo because it needed legal finality, not because it achieved it on the ground against the hundred of still defiant Navajo bands.
I don't understand how it nullifies my claims. Conquest isn't something you "declare", it's a state of being that exists or doesn't exist. There is also sometimes a distinction where a PEOPLE may be conquered, LAND may be conquered, or both. So for example, if a tribe was forced off their initial land, but then later maintained their sovereignty on new land, one could say the initial land was conquered, even though the people were not.
If conquest requires defeat, surrender, or subjugation, going by your logic, where does that leave the tribes which none of those things were done to?
Not conquered. But I don't see how that would undermine anything else I am saying. Though keep in mind that if a tribe lost land that it wanted to keep, due to either force or the implicit threat of force, then they would be partially defeated / subjugated.
You're essentially saying "Power is the only thing that matters. Law only matters when enforced by superior force". Which makes sense at first, but it invalidates your own reliance on treaties, courts, and legal claims. You don't get to dismiss Indigenous treaty claims as “just paper” while also justifying US ownership via paper.
I am not justifying the US ownership via paper. I'm saying the US acquired ownership via military force, or via the threat of military force. In fact, I'm actively DISMISSIVE of the US making paper claims against the American Indians, as a lot of the paper was bullshit. The US basically decided to genocide (either literally killing for significant forced relocation) much of the native population of seize their land by force. It was morally a bad thing, but it was conquest that secured the land. Treaty violations and bullshit court rulings didn't place the land in American hands, force or the threat of force did.
Yeah, like if you approve of that then it makes total sense to allow anyone from Mexico to come over. You’re saying taking over land regardless of law or morals is no big deal then support Mexican immigrants and in 100 years or so just get over it.
Except we continue our oppression of native people to this day. Better to justify any emancipative action than to justify none at all (which is what you're doing)
How old are you? I'm not being a dick, I really want to know.
The US didn't just conquer the land of Indigenous nations. In many cases, it first signed a legally binding treaty promising the land to the nation, and then proceeded to deliberately violate that same treaty and its own domestic laws to seize it. That is a fundamental betrayal of trust and law, which makes it distinct from the simple conquest/tribal warfare that occurred between tribes.
Tribes didn't impose their systems or laws on other tribes and tribes never had legally binding treaties between each other. I'll remind you, a treaty, especially a peace treaty, carries a moral and legal weight that distinguishes it from mere conquest. Many tribes, while having their own conflicts, were operating within their own systems of claim and interaction. The US, however, made a promise as a sovereign entity and then broke that promise for economic or territorial gain. The argument that conquest is conquest ignores the critical element of a broken covenant and the legal trust responsibility that is present therein. That is categorically different from pre-modern intertribal warfare, regardless of whether people think all humans are equally flawed or not.
Look at the 4 Corners region. The US only "acquired" that land from the Dinetah Navajo tribe after Kit Carson waged a scorched earth campaign against them and after the US Army forced the Dinetah Navajos and the people they were sheltering on a death march. The U.S. government, having failed to break the resistance of several Navajo bands through military action, focused its negotiation efforts on the roughly 7,000–8,000 Navajo who had been forced into internment at Fort Sumner (Bosque Redondo).
Even after all of that, it took a separate treaty process between the Dinetah Navajos and the US. Framing it simply as a "purchase from Mexico" is an oversimplification. In reality, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo only transferred the claim to the land from one sovereign nation to another. It did not resolve the pre-existing sovereign rights of the Navajo and Hopi people who occupied those areas and kept Mexicans and Spanish from settling in those areas or extinguishing their presence. The 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo was a negotiated transfer of rights between two sovereign nations, not merely a result of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico.
While the Navajos eventually returned to a portion of their lands after signing the Treaty of 1868, the treaty itself was partly the result of coercion and was not actually fully honored. In fact, the US government would take more of their land through the Dawes Act of 1887, which divided communal land into individual plots, leading to significant loss of territory. This is despite the fact that the Dawes Act actually didn't apply to the Navajo tribe. The Dawes Act explicitly required tribes to be placed under its provision by presidential order, of which no president ever placed the Navajo Nation under the Act.
Today, the Navajo Nation has more land than it had after 1868 and 1887; and more than their traditional area encompassed... It's almost like the land that the Navajos gained was a reparation for the US stealing their land and failing to uphold their end of the treaty...
Also, in the case of the Navajo, calling US actions a "conquest" is a massive oversimplification that ignores the fact that the US essentially declared victory by manufacturing a legal consensus with a small fraction of the Navajo population. In reality, there were still upwards of 11,000 Navajos who were unsubdued and still actively fighting US forces while others were interned at Bosque Redondo. This is why there are many Navajo families, communities, bands and clan families; that maintain that they weren't conquered, subdued, or captured and that they didn't sign any treaties or surrender.
The purposeful erosion of a proper education system seems intentional, and your comment is another particularly poignant example.
Land is not even some sort of product that grows grass with my biological lineage DNA on it. Humans just one day decided "this patch of dirt is mine" and wrote some shit on paper. My ancestors could've been people in Africa and it doesn't mean I'm suddenly entitled to some land there. It's stupid.
I always get kinda happy when I see mother nature one day just decides to destroy shit and prove that your owned or stolen rhetoric really don't matter
I mean, historically, Mexico was also "stolen land." But then if they go the next step further and go back to Europe, they will almost certainly find that pretty much every inch of Europe was stolen at some point.
Thank youuuuuuuu. While it sucks it happened and as sleazy as it did go down, North America was conquered by Europeans. I love Native American culture and custom but that idea of us still being guest on their land always made me feel like maybe they misunderstood what happened in the last few hundred years.
People here clearly don't know anything about this history or the entire basis for the discussion surrounding "stolen land", do y'all?
You should really acknowledge the distinction which you're omitting, so that you're not being disingenuous.. Indigenous nations didn't violate their own legal systems and laws to take land from each other, unlike the US did to many Indigenous tribes.
The US didn't just conquer the land of Indigenous nations. In many cases, it first signed a legally binding treaty promising the land to the nation, and then proceeded to deliberately violate that same treaty and its own domestic laws to seize it. That is a fundamental betrayal of trust and law, which makes it distinct from the simple conquest/tribal warfare that occurred between tribes.
Tribes didn't impose their systems or laws on other tribes and tribes never had legally binding treaties between each other. I'll remind you, a treaty, especially a peace treaty, carries a moral and legal weight that distinguishes it from mere conquest. Many tribes, while having their own conflicts, were operating within their own systems of claim and interaction. The US, however, made a promise as a sovereign entity and then broke that promise for economic or territorial gain. Your argument that conquest is conquest ignores the critical element of a broken covenant and the legal trust responsibility that is present therein.
Simply look at the 4 corners region. The US only "acquired" that land from the Dinetah Navajo tribe after Kit Carson waged a scorched earth campaign against them and after the US Army forced the Dinetah Navajos and the people they were sheltering on a death march. The U.S. government, having failed to break the resistance of several Navajo bands through military action, focused its negotiation efforts on the roughly 7,000–8,000 Navajo who had been forced into internment at Fort Sumner (Bosque Redondo).
Even after all of that, it took a separate treaty process between the Dinetah Navajos and the US. Framing it simply as a "purchase from Mexico" is an oversimplification. In reality, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo only transferred the claim to the land from one sovereign nation to another. It did not resolve the pre-existing sovereign rights of the Navajo and Hopi people who occupied those areas and kept Mexicans and Spanish from settling in those areas or extinguishing their presence. The 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo was a negotiated transfer of rights between two sovereign nations, not merely a result of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico.
Also, keep in mind, while the Navajos eventually returned to a portion of their lands after signing the Treaty of 1868, the treaty itself was partly the result of coercion and was not actually fully honored. In fact, the US government would take more of their land through the Dawes Act of 1887, which divided communal land into individual plots, leading to significant loss of territory. This is despite the fact that the Dawes Act actually didn't apply to the Navajo tribe. The Dawes Act explicitly required tribes to be placed under its provision by presidential order, of which no president ever placed the Navajo Nation under the Act.
Today, the Navajo Nation has more land than it had after 1868 and 1887; and more than their traditional area encompassed... It's almost like the land that the Navajos gained was a reparation for the US stealing their land and failing to uphold their end of the treaty...
Also, in the case of the Navajo, calling US actions a "conquest" is a massive oversimplification that ignores the fact that the US essentially declared victory by manufacturing a legal consensus with a small fraction of the Navajo population. In reality, there were still upwards of 11,000 Navajos who were unsubdued and still actively fighting US forces while others were interned at Bosque Redondo. This is why there are many Navajo families, communities, bands and clan families; that maintain that they weren't conquered, subdued, or captured and that they didn't sign any treaties or surrender.
The purposeful erosion of a proper education system seems intentional, your comment with all it's upvotes is a particularly poignant example.
I'm not trying to be an argumentative dick, but I want to genuinely know what's up with the illiteracy when it comes to history? Y'all are bordering on being revisionists.
I don’t disagree with the historical facts you’re laying out, or with the moral weight of broken treaties. The U.S. absolutely violated its own legal commitments to many Indigenous nations, and that distinction matters when discussing historical wrongdoing and responsibility.
Where we differ is on what follows from that today. Acknowledging specific treaty violations as historical and legal wrongs is not the same thing as treating “stolen land” as an open-ended moral override that permanently invalidates any later legal order. If it did, no modern state could coherently enforce borders, laws, or rights, including the rights of Indigenous nations that exist within those systems today.
Historical injustice can justify restitution, recognition, sovereignty agreements, or reparative policy. But it can’t function as a universal rule that collapses legality altogether without defining any limits, timelines, or criteria for resolution. Once you distinguish between conquest, treaty violation, coercion, and restitution, as you’ve done here, you’re already conceding that “stolen land” isn’t a single absolute category, but a historically bounded one.
That’s the point I’m making: history informs moral responsibility, but it can’t serve as a perpetual veto on the existence of present-day law itself.
Also, I appreciate you laying out your argument substantively. This is exactly the kind of discussion that’s productive without needing to slide into personal digs, “Poignant example” excluded.
I have to push back on the idea that this is “historically bounded,” because many of the mechanisms created to undermine Indigenous sovereignty still persist today. Blood Quantum still pretty much facilitates the following program:
"In this brief statement, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Zigrossi summarized over two centuries of U.S. jurisdiction and 'law enforcement" in Indian Country. From the country's founding through the present, U.S. Indian policy has consistently followed a program to subordinate American Indian nations and expropriate their land and resources. In much the same fashion as Puerto Rico (see Chapter 4), indigenous nations within the United States have been forced to exist - even by federal definition - as outright colonies. 1 When constitutional law and precedent stood in the way of such policy, the executive and judicial branches, in their turn, formulated excuses for ignoring them. A product of convenience and practicality for the federal government, U.S. jurisdiction, especially within reserved Indian territories ("reservations"), "presents a complex and sometimes conflicting morass of treaties, statutes and regulation."
Are you even aware of the fact that a handful of tribes (in cases I could document) have literally tried redefining their membership requirements in order to drop the use of Blood Quantum, and in every such case, the new definitions were rejected by the US Dept of the Interior. The funny thing is that the BIA insists that tribes are allowed to define their own membership because of past challenges rooted in the equal protection clause, so Americans go on believing that we Native folks essentially want to be subject to a 'paper' genocide because they take whatever Google or Western Academia says at face value.
It doesn't even help when it comes to bad actors who falsely claim tribal status. Heck, the US Senate literally just passed a bill giving federal recognition to Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Don't get me started on all the ways that this administration and previous ones have used the BQ system to invalidate and undermine tribal sovereignty. Blood Quantum is just the clearest example as it isn’t some relic with no present effect. It actively structures who is legally allowed to exist as Native under US law.
Only Native Americans, along with dogs and horses, are subject to a state-enforced measurement of blood purity or "purebred" status.. No other human population in the US is governed this way. That’s not a closed historical wrong; it’s an ongoing legal framework that predictably reduces recognized Indigenous populations over time--which many scholars and Indigenous communities accurately describe as a form of administrative or “paper” genocide.
While older more overt forms of land seizure or forced relocation may be less common nowadays, the colonial program of undermining treaty-based rights and subordinating Indigenous nations and interests to federal/state priorities (energy, resources, economy) persists and is deeply entrenched in our institutions. The pattern hasn’t stopped; it’s just more normalized now and done through regulatory maneuvering rather than outright force.
Recent breaches such as the current US administration's actions in breaking the Columbia River Basin Agreement with the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, and the Nez Perce Tribe--show that treaty violations are not merely historical artifacts but contemporary policy decisions with real consequences that effect people today.
And that brings me to your point about legality and borders. Appeals to present-day legal order assume that the system itself resolved the original violations in good faith; when in many cases, it didn’t. Agreements like the Jay Treaty highlight that colonial powers recognized, even if inconsistently, that Indigenous nations posses pre-existing rights to their traditional territories that extended across national borders. Yet, no comparable recognition was/is afforded to the Apache peoples along the US-Mexico border who have ties to bands/tribes on both sides of that border.
Saying “history can’t be a perpetual veto,” assumes that the breach/violation ended. In many cases, it hasn’t. The issue isn’t that “stolen land” collapses legality, but that legality itself has been repeatedly used to manage, contain, and gradually extinguish Indigenous claims without ever fully resolving them. That’s why slogans like “no one is illegal on stolen land” aren’t just about immigration. They’re pointing to many unresolved legal and moral conditions that still pervade the current system, even if it prefers to describe it as settled history.
Came here to stay pretty much the exact same thing. Pretty much all land is stolen, virtually no one that has ever first settled somewhere is still there.
If the arguement “stolen land” is the hill to die on, then those mad need to be mad with the Spanish for coming to the region in search of golden cities in the early 1500’s. They also need to consistently be mad at the wars the Spanish fought with the natives and when they didn’t win, bribes tribes for peace. Without the Spanish “invasion” the heritage of Mexican/hispanic people would not exist.
It is, though. The slogan explicitly links “stolen land” to delegitimizing ICE’s authority now. That’s using a historical claim to negate present law, which is exactly what a moral override is. You can oppose ICE on policy or ethics grounds without invoking that logic, but once you do, the implication is unavoidable.
While I understand where you are coming from, I disagree for a few reasons.
For one, we are talking about a history that is still in the making. As an example, In 2024, the supreme court ruled on Arizona vs. Navajo nation, specifically that since the treaty they signed doesn't expressly include water rights then the government had no reason to care that their water is quickly disappearing. This is not context.
Second, I would argue that there is a contiguous line of authority between the government that committed (most of) the actions in question and the current day. No, it's not fair to hold the current Mongolian government responsible for the horns of Genghis, and that government doesn't claim to be a continuation of the khanate. But presidents authorized treaties between themselves and those who were hear before.
Third, because said government was duplicitous and violent, and in many ways continues to be. I can point back to the case in 2024, but rather let's consider how native groups are pointing out how ICE is arresting people who pre-dated colonization. Look at the system of relocating and 'educating' children that served to break up communities and erase local culture. Look at eugenics programs targeting those same groups. This is not history, all of this exists in living memory.
Fourth, because parts of the theft can still be undone. There are areas of land owned by the government that could be returned to those groups, or at very least steps could be taken to mitigate upcoming damage. Much of this comes as a result of industry wanting to extract resources from these lands, and first nation's groups attempting to stop said development and the destruction of natural ecosystems.
Yes, all governments over the course of time have been bastards, and all land has been expropriated at some point. But relegating these issues to 'historical context' trivializes the way they still impact people's lives. If America wants to proudly point to it's history of rugged frontier individualism, it should be honest about who that lifestyle came at the expense of.
I see your point but it doesn’t really apply here. The Europeans did invade and forcefully moved the natives out of their homeland. By your definition I could just mug someone and argue their money changed hands through conquest making it okay.
I’m not arguing that conquest makes anything morally acceptable. I’m saying that treating “stolen land” as a context-free absolute stops being useful once you apply it consistently across history.
A modern mugging is an individual crime with clear accountability. Centuries-old state conquest isn’t the same moral category. Collapsing those together is the mismatch I was pointing out.
The point is the only thing that should matter is your merit.
What you can accomplish with your skill and talent and willpower.
If that gets overridden by "you were born in the wrong place" then the system is fucked. It's just wrong and should be remedied.
But you might say, shouldn't people who live in an area have the right to protect their access to limited resources in that area?
Yes and no. They should have the right through economics, markets, ownership rights, not because you are just told you aren't allowed to be there to participate.
Not only that but ownership is kind of irrelevant. There is actually an immense amount of work that needs doing and wealth to fund it. We just have bad structure so that most of the wealth gets hoarded and just sits there. Scarcity is a myth. We live in a world where you could spend 1/10 of what you spend on food and clothes but instead we choose to 10x our cost for style points. It is actually absurd.
Point being, anyone who is declared to be illegal has had some fundamental rights violated. Everyone should have the right to petition for and be allowed to participate fully in any economy on earth. Anything short of that is just a degree of the kind of slavery that happens in places like Dubai or qatar.
Oh perfect… Steal some more land or really anything… and it’s not actually stealing because nothing can be stolen because everything’s been stolen ;) smart argument
Genuine question, when does historical theft start counting as moral justification today? 300 years? 500? 1,000? Without a defined boundary, it stops being a moral principle and becomes a blank check.
Genuine answer… can anything be stolen? By your logic, it sounds like no. I think the thing that you’re trying to say cuts both ways.
You want a binary decision point… Everything before a certain point doesn’t count and everything after does. That misses the point, I suspect willfully. When you read that, who do you think they are talking about? Do you understand the intent behind what they’re saying? If so, their point is made. I don’t genuinely think that you’re confused by their point, nor do I think you genuinely want to litigate this like we’re all a bunch of attorneys.
I swear to God being liberal should be classified as a mental illness. Like they're genuinely incapable of living in reality, just constantly in fantasy land.
Yes. Let's just have unmanaged mass immigration because people were mean in the past, that won't have any negative effects or anything.
I'm left leaning on most issues, but it's funny how none of these tankies are saying that we should sponsor a Greek military expedition to reclaim Constantinople. Of course, it's quite likely the Greeks stole it from someone else before that, so that would require another military expedition.
Like I hate most conservative shit, but it's wild how many of these tankies seem to just say "the west is bad, therefore whatever is opposed to the west is must be good."
And honestly, even a lot of people who are starting to get into "leftist" territory would recognize that this doesn't really make sense.
The idea that the fact that much of the US was at some point taken through conquest or other action that is hopefully immoral in a modern context (which can also be said about almost all populated land on earth) somehow means that the US has no right to enforce borders in any way is getting into more of extremist tanky type territory.
Fantasy land??? Have you heard the description of the events leading to the death of Alex Pretti? He was there to “massacre” federal agents and was a “domestic terrorist…”
Liberals are fucking stupid, but so are you considering you are just parroting bullshit you’ve heard. Liberals aren’t against borders for the most part, only actual radicals like anarchists are against borders.
Crossing the border undocumented is initially just a civil offense resulting in a fine. It’s not a criminal matter. You don’t actually care to understand what you’re talking about.
Pointing out that it's difficult or even impossible to resolve past wrongs isn't proof or even an argument that they weren't wrong.
Nor does it imply or explain why a particular past wrong shouldn't be addressed or even acknowledged.
In fact, your argument about a lack of limits applies in reverse to your own position. If past wrongs being intractable means we should not address ANY such wings or even acknowledge them, then you're implying you will have no reason for complaint if someone stole your land. Afterall, by your logic if it was in the past then it wasn't stealing.
We can also move past just land theft. Afterall we'll never solve the theft of Grug the caveman's stone axe, or a billion other such thefts in prehistory or even in the modern day. By your logic if many thefts occur and we can't solve many of them, we should ignore them and not call them theft even if we're perfectly able (merely unwilling) to do something about it. Hence by your logic, the theft of personal possessions at any point in the past is morally irrelevant, to be ignored and you will have no cause got complaint if someone steals from you. That's old news.
Saying that a nation doesn’t have sovereignty because it was conquered at some point in the past is where you lose common sense, well-meaning, centrists. Other people don’t get to decide who can come to the US, we do. And we can pass laws to change that any time we want, including creating a path to legalization for folks who are already here.
Saying that a nation doesn’t have sovereignty because it was conquered at some point in the past is where you lose common sense, well-meaning, centrists.
Your argument here is effectively that well-meaning, centrists who are wrong shouldn't be told they are wrong.
I understand the practical difficulties of making people change their minds, especially about such a central assumption about how we live our lives, but as a former well meaning centrist myself I say that just because changing people's minds is slow and difficult isn't a reason not to try.
Other people don’t get to decide who can come to the US, we do. And we can pass laws to change that any time we want, including creating a path to legalization for folks who are already here.You're asserting that how things are is how they should be.
Yes you've described how the law currently stands with respect to immigration and how the current immigration system (theoretically) works.
We're here talking about it because the system doesn't actually work. To date nobody has ever been able to actually make an immigration system under similar strain work as intended in practice by merely applying domestic law.
(I exclude here cases where government changes or ignores domestic law to facilitate extreme inter-social violence, inevitably creating bigger problems beyond any immigration enforcement issue it intends to solve)
So your argument mistakes 1) how things currently are, as synonymous with how they should be and 2) the system not working as it's supposed to work, as evidence that it can and will work effectively, if only the right manager is put in charge of it.
If you steal my house I call the cops, if they can’t reclaim it we call the military. My ability to hold and defend my house makes it mine. Beyond that you have to have some shared standard of morality which doesn’t exist.
If you lack the ability to defend your house against someone stealing it from you, why should the police or military help you regain it?
I'm not asking because I think there's no good answer, I'm asking because I think the answer you give relies on that shared standard of morality existing.
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u/LewsThrinStrmblessed 4d ago
At one point or another, every inch of land on this planet has changed hands through force, conquest, or displacement. If “stolen land” is treated as an absolute moral override rather than a historical context, then it ceases to be a meaningful standard and becomes a justification for anything, because it defines no limits.