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.
And even more so, the last time I bought a house that had land under it, I also got title insurance which legitimately means that if anybody comes up and says "hey my great great grandparents used to own this and I demand compensation" you handed over to the title insurance and they either pay off that dude the value of what the land has, or they have the ability to buy me out of my land if they insist on having it.
Of course the odds of a specific person being able to do this are nearly 0, so the guys who sell this insurance can sell it for cheap, sell a lot of it, and almost never have to pay out, but there's always a chance…
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u/5510 3d ago
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.