The theft of Native Americans' land, in one animated map

[Mechaman]

There was no international law regarding the treatment of the native peoples when Europeans blundered onto the scene in the 16th century. Native concepts of land ownership simply did not compute with the European concept of it.

Since when do we use international law as the basis for whether something is moral or not?

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Again, the absence of a law on something does not imply that the act in question is moral.  And even if it did, the idea of a 'UN' or international governing body would be ridiculous for a time when few people knew what lied beyond the hills.  I fail to see why theft of land cannot be compared to automobile theft in a moral sense.  If anything, it's worse than automobile theft.  But I can tell you're likely turning this into a weak semantics debate, so why don't you stop before you make an even bigger fool out of yourself?

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Nor is it the point.  Obviously it's absurd to demonize someone for what their ancestors did hundreds of years ago, but so is your relativist attitude toward what is no different than me breaking into your house, raping your wife, seizing your property, swindling you into giving up everything you may have left, and then forcing you and your neighbors into desolate "reservations," sealing you and your grandchildren in a never-ending spiral of poverty and suffering.

My point wasn't that international law should be used as a basis for morality. But, when people introduce the term theft, which is a term with largely legal connotations, into the debate (often with the assumption that there must be some form of recompense for the descedents of those whose land was 'stolen') then law must be brought into the debate. My point is that retroactively classifying the European conquest of the Americas as 'theft' (which is a rather big generalisation, given that much of the land was won fairly and squarely by purchase or through battle) is not helpful, as the concept had no real meaning with regards to the relationship between the colonisers and the colonised. Conquest is an appropriate term, one which would have had meaning in the time period. Theft is not.

Theft of land can be compared to automobile theft when there are legitimate grounds to call it theft. If the landowner is recognised as the landowner by legal procedures, and then his land is somehow taken from him, that is theft. Where no established legal procedure other than some bizarre invocation of natural law exists to determine ownership, then the appropriation of land by another cannot be regarded as conquest.

As for your last point, of course, such things are basically bad. But, the fact is that such arguments about European 'theft' of native land are used to demonise the present day descendents of those people. The very idea of reparations and apologies implies moral responsibility on the part of those people. More to the point, this argument about the colonisations being 'theft' only stands up if one applies it to every similar action in human history, and this becomes very problematic as these type of acts are the layers upon which our present society was built. To argue that the Cherokee deserve reparations for American treatment of them, but the Welsh and Irish do not for English treatment of them, does rather smack of selectiveness. I'm not pointing the finger at you here, but more generally at those who look upon the colonisation of the Americas as some great, stand alone moral catastrophe, when really it was simply a continuation of what people have been doing to each other since the dawn of time. I'm not on anybody's side here; there were plenty of good, decent native Americans, just as there were plenty of good, decent colonists, including some of those who ended up waging war against the native populations. I'm simply arguing that a largely black portrayal of the European colonisation as something largely negative is, in my view, wrong.

Don't worry, Cassius, white people have done plenty of awful things since this happened. There's no need to act like white people are being unfairly demonized for this.

Of course they have Xahar, of course they have. Just as blacks, Asians and indeed, Native Americans have done too. In our fallen state as people, we are all equal.

Have you forgotten the past 100 years?  Or did I just step into an alternate reality where the British still own 100% of Ireland instead of just the 15% or so that was subject to bitter civil squabbling for a lot of the time and that there is not party that is dedicated to Welsh nationalism?

If anything, the Cherokees are getting very little compared to the Welsh or the Irish.  And I'm saying this as an Irish American, not some bitter Cherokee.

EDIT: I know you meant this more as a "those who argue" counter point, but I have literally never heard anyone argue that the British should've kept all of Ireland while the American government needs to cede stolen lands back to the Native Americans, which seems to be the implication of the bolded point.