Here’s what I find interesting about all the stolen land claims: the same folks who say this country was founded on stolen land are the same ones who advocate for open borders and abolishing private property.
There must be a better word, because, ‘conquered’ doesn’t sound much better than ‘stolen’.
The land was developed by those that came from foreign lands and civil societies were created, and little by little, we ended up with the greatest country ever known on the planet.
Conquered means that we fought for it, and took it from whoever was there before. Anyhow, we’re her now, and the past is the past, and we now have to move forward.
We civilized and modernized and organized. Give me a better word than conquered.
AMEN!!!
So, since we got there first, does the United States own the moon?
I acknowledge: this land was conquered but is being sold to the lowest bidder now.
We descendants of the Palatinate agree.
It’s reasonable to expect us to learn from the past.
It’s unreasonable to expect us to fix the past.
The article over-simplifies the issue. The US government signed many land right treaties with the conquered natives, then broke them. That IS theft.
This funny JibJab.com video was made during the 2004 presidential election between Bush and Kerry.
“This Land”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Q-sRdV7SY&ab_channel=JibJab
At 1:42 a Native American shows up and says, “this land was my land.” Then watch the reaction.
I believe it’s accurate to say that there is no habitable land on this earth that has not been fought over more than once, won and lost several times. That’s how the world worked and to some extent still does. Those now inhabiting various parts of the world are the most recent winners and those they allowed to migrate and stay.
There are few if any groups whose ancestors were never involved in past battles over who would occupy what specific land.
This is one reason wildly different cultures cannot coexist. The indians saw the land as something that could not be owned. Probably because most of them were hunter gathers.
Interesting, because they did have a concept of ownership. Many of them owned slaves. They’d capture other people’s women and children and convert them to be part of the tribe. They’d wait for settler’s crops to be harvested and steal the harvest. (Yes, that happened both ways.) But they had no concept for owning the land. Then, along comes Western culture with a concept of land ownership. “Nobody” owned the land here, so it was free. They took it, laid out boundary stones and registered their ownership. Because they were investing their sweat in developing the land, they were a bit peeved when indians would show up and took something they sweated to make happen.
Nothing stopped the indians from laying out boundary stones and registering their land. Understandably, though, they didn’t do that. Then, the government gave them land, and then took it back, etc. That’s politicians being politicians. Politicians were no better then than they are now with ten percent for the Big Guy. Still, you’d have to argue the Indians are better off living in the present government where they can do things nobody else can, like open casinos or sell stuff tax free. That’s one heck of a perk.
My sister worked with a fellow air force officer who was a chief in (if I recall) the Penobscot tribe. He was angry because he thought the indians would be far better off assimilating. Instead, they lived on the reservation on the government’s dole and spent their time drunk and stoned. He wanted the free stuff to stop so they’d be forced to work and assimilate. So, there’s a huge problem but it’s not what we’re being told it is.
A few years ago an anthropologist laid claim to the apparent fact that the oceans of the world were not obstacles to human migration but rather superhighways. Geological factors and the glacial/interglacial periods were also a contributing factor to migration.
At this point, pretty much all land is “stolen” if you want to call it that. Tribes and countries conquering others’ land, filling it with their own people and either annihilating the previous owners or swamping and integrating them has been the NORM throughout human history. The same is no less true of nations. Any particular piece of real estate - if its worth anything - has probably changed hands several times.
Land is only “yours” if you have the strength to conquer it and hold it by force. If you don’t have the strength to do so, you’re going to lose it. That’s what any honest reading of history shows us.
I make this point all the time. The Indians that were here when the Europeans showed up were probably not “first peoples”, they were last conquerers standing before the Europeans landed.
“When inferior cultures run up against superior cultures, they usually lose.”
This is false - it ain’t about “culture” but about weapons, tactics, leadership and luck.
the Arabs won against the Roman empire and the Persian Sassanids not because of culture - rather the Arab culture at that time was inferior.
Similarly the Mongols conquered culturally superior Song China and the Jurchen Manchus conquered culturally superior Ming China.
It helps to read a little history. There is a full abundant record of various lands being granted to Indian tribes by the US government, all around the country; They have had as much a title to great swaths of land as any of us have to our property. The record of the government then reneging on their own agreements is extensive and shameful.
You might want to whitewash this record with prattling about “conquest” and such, but if you open your eyes and look at it honestly, as the Supreme Court did with the Lakota in 1980, you might then want to pull in your horns a bit.
If you can’t hold it, you are conquered by those who are more powerful than you. That is why we have an army and navy.
while the tribes were destroying each other more powerful interests were determined to stop their intertribal warfare the hard way.
How it used to be BEFORE the White Man arrived....This is just my short list.
http://wkfl.asn.au/bk/crow_creek_history.htm
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/massacre-sacred-ridge
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5893933/The-horror-Aztec-tower-skulls-revealed.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39268873
https://bonesdontlie.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/basketmaker-ii-cave-7-massacre-or-cemetery/
Dinesh D’Souza often writes that at one time “conquest ethos” was the way of the world. It was accepted all over the world as fact of life that, “To the victor go the spoils.” Before America, all great empires were built on the wealth their conquests, most notably in the cases like Rome, and the formerly great Britain.
The Emperor Trajan invaded Dacia and raided their famed gold mines expressly so he could finance the building of an annex to the Roman forum that would carry his name (Trajan’s Forum), insuring he would be remembered for eternity. Conquest or outright thievery — you decide.
America, D’Souza writes, was the first great nation that created its wealth internally, thanks to a government structured to not just allow but to encourage entrepreneurship, and with it a value-added economy.
Throughout history, merchants and shopkeepers had been reviled. For instance, there’s an old Arab proverb that it’s better for your sister to be in a brothel than your brother to be a shopkeeper. But America’s embrace of the shopkeeper as the “middle man” in the value added economy was one key to the rise of the middle class, the gateway to upward economic and social mobility.
America showed the world a model for building wealth that didn’t involve conquest.