Native Americans likely got there first and laid claim to it... which was then forcibly taken by the U.S. government through a brutally racist expansionary policy.
It would have been no better had we allowed private settlers to lay claim to the land.. or somehow "purchase it" "fairly" from the natives.
But the Navajo say that one cannot own land. The land is like the air and the trees and all the gifts of the Holy People. Other tribes say similar things. Thus, if we go with your line of argument, governments cannot bestow land as gifts, since it cannot own the land to begin with.
