"You live on stolen land"

[Devout Centrist]

Wrong. Europe was stolen from the Neanderthals.

[Beet]

It's cliched, but I think a lot of it is due to people's lack of understanding and appreciation for history; people view history as "the past," failing to really think about the fact that every single person throughout history lived in "their equivalent of 2020" ... in other words, no "ancient" people ever thought of themselves as anything other than the most advanced, tolerant and *post-historical* people yet to walk the Earth.  Our basic evolutionary instincts led rise to things like tribes and even nation states in an effort to provide at least those "closest to us" with a better life, often with the absolute necessity that someone loses out.  I think there is a balance that can be struck where we might acknowledge that we shouldn't "steal land just because we can" anymore, but once you start putting pressure on entire countries or ethnic groups to apologize for a past they had no part of, it's a really dumb and quite slippery slope.  The US could conquer Central America tomorrow, but we don't; and we shouldn't.  However, just because our varied European ancestors took land from technologically inferior previous inhabitants doesn't mean we have to go back to the drawing board taking pride in literally anything about our current country.  Do we live on "stolen land"?  Of course ... honestly, the most that should be done about that is maybe some government-sponsored programs to try to better the lives of Native Americans in our country ... everything else is just a big fat "eye roll."

I think the "stolen land" canard is very revealing about the mentality of the activist left. I know most lefties aren't like this, but there is a very condescending attitude among the white left towards people of color in general. You never see them complaining about Germany taking land from France, or Sudan taking land from Egypt, but when the conflict is between a white country and a nonwhite country they suddenly take issue with it. It's like they see wars between European countries as wars "between equals," whereas a war between whites and nonwhites is somehow "not a fair fight."

It's a very patronizing worldview. And again, I know the majority of left-wingers and even activists don't think like this. But this sort of attitude is pretty common in places like college campuses. I think it stems from the same faux-liberalism that makes people say "No, you shouldn't criticize Islam, you'll just radicalize more Muslims"-- as if Muslims are so fragile that we must protect their delicate egos, otherwise they'll start blowing themselves up.

Well yes because race (which de facto includes groups like Muslims) is reified as 'the' category of difference in the US whereas a French American vs. German American, or Egyptian vs. Sudanese is not. These categories' significance is all socially constructed. And sure, the left plays a role in doing this, but so does the right.

[Devout Centrist]

I think the "stolen land" canard is very revealing about the mentality of the activist left. I know most lefties aren't like this, but there is a very condescending attitude among the white left towards people of color in general. You never see them complaining about Germany taking land from France, or Sudan taking land from Egypt, but when the conflict is between a white country and a nonwhite country they suddenly take issue with it. It's like they see wars between European countries as wars "between equals," whereas a war between whites and nonwhites is somehow "not a fair fight."

These activists call it 'stolen land' because a. the Federal Government violated virtually every treaty it signed with Native American Tribes  and b. their descendants live in absolute poverty today. I don't think that you can fairly compare colonialism to most modern international conflicts.

[John Dule]

I think the "stolen land" canard is very revealing about the mentality of the activist left. I know most lefties aren't like this, but there is a very condescending attitude among the white left towards people of color in general. You never see them complaining about Germany taking land from France, or Sudan taking land from Egypt, but when the conflict is between a white country and a nonwhite country they suddenly take issue with it. It's like they see wars between European countries as wars "between equals," whereas a war between whites and nonwhites is somehow "not a fair fight."

These activists call it 'stolen land' because a. the Federal Government violated virtually every treaty it signed with Native American Tribes  and b. their descendants live in absolute poverty today. I don't think that you can fairly compare colonialism to most modern international conflicts.

I don't really see how gypping people out of their land by violating a treaty is any less legitimate than just killing them and taking it from them. Neither is ideal but that doesn't make one any more "stolen" than the other. I guess you could say that in the latter scenario at least the conquering force is being up-front about their intentions, but that's a pretty small consolation prize.

[Devout Centrist]

I think the "stolen land" canard is very revealing about the mentality of the activist left. I know most lefties aren't like this, but there is a very condescending attitude among the white left towards people of color in general. You never see them complaining about Germany taking land from France, or Sudan taking land from Egypt, but when the conflict is between a white country and a nonwhite country they suddenly take issue with it. It's like they see wars between European countries as wars "between equals," whereas a war between whites and nonwhites is somehow "not a fair fight."

These activists call it 'stolen land' because a. the Federal Government violated virtually every treaty it signed with Native American Tribes  and b. their descendants live in absolute poverty today. I don't think that you can fairly compare colonialism to most modern international conflicts.

I don't really see how gypping people out of their land by violating a treaty is any less legitimate than just killing them and taking it from them. Neither is ideal but that doesn't make one any more "stolen" than the other. I guess you could say that in the latter scenario at least the conquering force is being up-front about their intentions, but that's a pretty small consolation prize.

It's not just that they lost 'their land', it's that they were forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland, moved to dirt poor land on reservations, and had many of their cultural traditions banned or heavily sanctioned.
 
Whether stolen is the right word to use is not my call to make, but that's why these activists say it's stolen land.

[John Dule]

I think the "stolen land" canard is very revealing about the mentality of the activist left. I know most lefties aren't like this, but there is a very condescending attitude among the white left towards people of color in general. You never see them complaining about Germany taking land from France, or Sudan taking land from Egypt, but when the conflict is between a white country and a nonwhite country they suddenly take issue with it. It's like they see wars between European countries as wars "between equals," whereas a war between whites and nonwhites is somehow "not a fair fight."

These activists call it 'stolen land' because a. the Federal Government violated virtually every treaty it signed with Native American Tribes  and b. their descendants live in absolute poverty today. I don't think that you can fairly compare colonialism to most modern international conflicts.

I don't really see how gypping people out of their land by violating a treaty is any less legitimate than just killing them and taking it from them. Neither is ideal but that doesn't make one any more "stolen" than the other. I guess you could say that in the latter scenario at least the conquering force is being up-front about their intentions, but that's a pretty small consolation prize.

It's not just that they lost 'their land', it's that they were forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland, moved to dirt poor land on reservations, and had many of their cultural traditions banned or heavily sanctioned.
 
Whether stolen is the right word to use is not my call to make, but that's why these activists say it's stolen land.

You are missing my point. I am not trying to downplay what happened to the Natives; I'm just pointing out that America is hardly unique in the quality of being "built on stolen land." The experiences you just described can be applied to half a hundred ethnic groups around the world just in the last fifty years. So if you're going to argue that the US is built on stolen land but the rest of the world isn't, you need a better case for it than that.

[Devout Centrist]

You are missing my point. I am not trying to downplay what happened to the Natives; I'm just pointing out that America is hardly unique in the quality of being "built on stolen land." The experiences you just described can be applied to half a hundred ethnic groups around the world just in the last fifty years. So if you're going to argue that the US is built on stolen land but the rest of the world isn't, you need a better case for it than that.

This is true, but I don't think they would disagree with you here

[John Dule]

You are missing my point. I am not trying to downplay what happened to the Natives; I'm just pointing out that America is hardly unique in the quality of being "built on stolen land." The experiences you just described can be applied to half a hundred ethnic groups around the world just in the last fifty years. So if you're going to argue that the US is built on stolen land but the rest of the world isn't, you need a better case for it than that.

This is true, but I don't think they would disagree with you here

That is an interesting claim given that I never hear anyone complain about Old World countries being "built on stolen land." I would be curious to hear what those types of activists would say to that.

[Devout Centrist]

You are missing my point. I am not trying to downplay what happened to the Natives; I'm just pointing out that America is hardly unique in the quality of being "built on stolen land." The experiences you just described can be applied to half a hundred ethnic groups around the world just in the last fifty years. So if you're going to argue that the US is built on stolen land but the rest of the world isn't, you need a better case for it than that.

This is true, but I don't think they would disagree with you here

That is an interesting claim given that I never hear anyone complain about Old World countries being "built on stolen land." I would be curious to hear what those types of activists would say to that.

I mean, I don't wanna go there, but they do have a particular take on Israel that is, uh, similar...

[AtorBoltox]

The current dire situation of native Americans and other indigenous groups around the world is a direct result of European colonization. It takes a special kind of callousness for people like RINO Tom to say modern America doesn't owe native peoples anything.

[they don't love you like i love you]

24 is wrong. No land can be "stolen" from Russia because Russia is an illegitimate state and it has the right to no land or anything.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Yeah, it's annoying and dumb.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

This is a complex issue because resitution does need to be made for historic wrongs, but "Turtle Island is stolen indigenous land and Whites should go back to Europe" is LARPy Tankie Bullsh[inks].

I agree it should be a goal, but only if the government (say, the United States) simply wants to try to do some good to help groups it has hurt in the past (say, Native Americans) ... there shouldn't be a "hard and fast rule."  Does anyone really think that modern-day Italians owe anything to Germans because of Rome enslaving barbarians from Germania?  Surely nobody thinks Swedes and Danes should feel guilt for the actions of the Vikings.  I suppose you could maintain that as long as there was one, continuous government, the situation is different ... but how long do we "make up for the wrongs," and by what metric do we measure our success?  Should Native American communities be helped out until the median income is equal to that of Whites?  Or Asians?  It just gets messy.

Again, I do agree that some type of action should be taken, but it should honestly be viewed as a goodwill gesture, not something that is clearly owed...

If anything, Germany should pay Italy for the barbarian sacking of Rome (and as a thank you for introducing it to civilization).

[All Along The Watchtower]

America was stolen from the dinosaurs by the imperialist asteroids.

[7,052,770]

Iceland was "stolen" violently from the Irish monks who [presumably] the first humans to make it there.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

It's cliched, but I think a lot of it is due to people's lack of understanding and appreciation for history; people view history as "the past," failing to really think about the fact that every single person throughout history lived in "their equivalent of 2020" ... in other words, no "ancient" people ever thought of themselves as anything other than the most advanced, tolerant and *post-historical* people yet to walk the Earth.  Our basic evolutionary instincts led rise to things like tribes and even nation states in an effort to provide at least those "closest to us" with a better life, often with the absolute necessity that someone loses out.  I think there is a balance that can be struck where we might acknowledge that we shouldn't "steal land just because we can" anymore, but once you start putting pressure on entire countries or ethnic groups to apologize for a past they had no part of, it's a really dumb and quite slippery slope.  The US could conquer Central America tomorrow, but we don't; and we shouldn't.  However, just because our varied European ancestors took land from technologically inferior previous inhabitants doesn't mean we have to go back to the drawing board taking pride in literally anything about our current country.  Do we live on "stolen land"?  Of course ... honestly, the most that should be done about that is maybe some government-sponsored programs to try to better the lives of Native Americans in our country ... everything else is just a big fat "eye roll."

Many people in the past wouldn't have thought of themselves as the most advanced and tolerant, as these concepts wouldn't have meant much to their cultural self-understanding.  But your broader point is right; there's a tendency to think history didn't really happen anywhere until Europeans or their descendants showed up.  You can find maps of the indigenous peoples of North America that don't have any date attached, and don't represent any single period in time, but show who was in New England in the 1500s and who was out West in the 1800s on the same map.  There were significant migrations of peoples across hundreds, even thousands of miles pre and post Columbus (ex. the ancestors of the Navajo were in northwest Canada one thousand years ago). And ethnogenesis - the creation of a new ethnic identity through splitting and/or combining - was very common. These fact lead to a lot of controversy over who should qualify for federal tribal recognition, as well as the repatriation of ancient human remains and artifacts under NAGPRA. These stem from arguments over whether historical legal documents and archaeological finds, respectively, have any connection to a specific modern American Indian people.   Devout Centrist is right that treaty obligations are important, and we ought to honor them as much as we can.  But history makes this complicated.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Should we ask 5 yo Japanese girls to apologize for Pearl Harbour?

As far as Australia goes, the indigenous population have enough native lands to live in freedom in a traditional manner. And it's not working. A high number of aboriginal girls in northern WA and NT are committing suicide because their uncles are raping them from an early age.

Media reports on this issue? Zero. It's not on the left-wing agenda.

BLM protestors never mentioned that 90% of aboriginals murdered die as a result of domestic violence. It's just pure horsesh**t what you read in the media.

Funny how the left wing media never tells the truth.

The left wing apologists giving Indigenous inhabitants handouts is what cripples their social advancement. So WA has started a system of cashless welfare because of the high rates of chemical dependency to methamphetamine.

Mixing an advanced civilisation into a land of hunter gatherers is not trivial for both parties.

As for the map, a lot of West Africa is actuslly French and English.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Impressive work. This doesn't come close to applying any sort of consistent standard, of course (I could quibble the hell out of your European map) but still a remarkable effort. And your point is correct, of course, though I suspect we take very different conclusions from it.

Feel free to quibble. I'll probably find a more high-resolution map and do a third version of this, because by the time I got to the Balkans I was so squished in I didn't have the patience for it. Also, some of the boundaries are nebulously defined at best.

21 is pretty dumb, because I) modern-day Italians are not direct descendants of Romans, or at least not any more than they are of Goths, Lombards, Byzantines, Arabs, and others who mixed during the Early Middle Ages while they ripped apart Italy in a zillion of fiefs and II) Italy still for many centuries was a jagged patchwork of Holy Roman Empire dependencies, then city-states, then regional states, the Papal State, dependencies of foreign national kingdoms and what not, and while ordinary people did not necessarily care about this*, most intellectuals were deeply committed to the ideal of a united Italy whereas especially after the XVI century most rulers were representatives of foreign powers (France, Spain, then Austria) which controlled each a piece of Italy and treated it mostly like an opportunity to amass land and power.
*Italian dialects ("vulgar") emerged during roughly the High Middle Ages, so you can trace modern "Italian" ethnicity to then, but what really sparked the flames of national identity in a widespread manner was the French Revolution and Napoleon briefly unifying all of Italy (which was a mess for various reasons and still foreign rule, though).

And this is still an oversimplification!

So, most of Italy was stolen and stolen again and stolen again during the centuries, but unless you are a neo-Bourbonic revisionist reactionary (or an Austrian imperialist reactionary - I'm not sure those exist), the only part that fits the expression "stolen land" is really Südtirol. Or more tenuously, maybe Sardinia, which developed independently from the rest in various ways.

I hope this is helpful!

P.S. Then there is the issue of the incredible amount of groups who lived in pre-Roman Italy, but that was already covered by Antonio.

P.S. P.S. Of course there are similar quibbles to be made with pretty much every European nation, but since Italy has a history of land changing hands a zillion of times during Late Middle Ages and Early Modern era that places like Spain, France and especially the United Kingdom do not have, I think our case is particularly egregious.

[Chips]

Sadly they have a point. Our history definitely was not off to the greatest of starts.

[Wazza [INACTIVE]]

"Son of Paleface... Sitting Bull... Your ing poster boy. Part Cherokee, part Cree... He wasn't even a f***ing Indian. Second-generation Sicilian from Louisiana named Espera DeCorti.

The guys a total f***ing phony. A total fugazy."

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Just saw this map for the first time, and I am impressed by the amount of work you've put into it. Historical geopolitics is such a convoluted mess that basically everything has been stolen several times over. Indeed, there were times and places where "stealing" land was considered a mark of legitimacy for a landclaim. It's almost like human history is a long and bloody saga not properly captured by simplistic narratives of victors and victims....

[Kamala's side hoe]

The Western half of South Africa was never really stolen by the Bantu, it was still Khoisan when the Boers turned up, after which the Khoisan were eventually merged into the Coloured population (who are, for the most part, descended from the Khoisan rather than Bantu - a particularly woke thing to do in South Africa these days is to refer to coloured people as Khoisan) who are still the plurality across most of the Western and Northern capes. It’s only since the end of apartheid that they’ve started to have substantial populations of Bantu speakers.

wut

I was under the impression that the Coloured are Afrikaans-speaking Protestant Christians. If so, they're as culturally Khoisan as your average Mexican is Aztec.


A couple more pedantic nitpicks-
58 most of former North Vietnam was never part of Champa, but it was under Chinese rule for a thousand years or so
61 should be "stolen from the Khmer Empire by Tai invaders"
62 could also be "stolen from Thailand by the French"

[Continential]

The Western half of South Africa was never really stolen by the Bantu, it was still Khoisan when the Boers turned up, after which the Khoisan were eventually merged into the Coloured population (who are, for the most part, descended from the Khoisan rather than Bantu - a particularly woke thing to do in South Africa these days is to refer to coloured people as Khoisan) who are still the plurality across most of the Western and Northern capes. It’s only since the end of apartheid that they’ve started to have substantial populations of Bantu speakers.

wut

I was under the impression that the Coloured are Afrikaans-speaking Protestant Christians. If so, they're as culturally Khoisan as your average Mexican is Aztec.


A couple more pedantic nitpicks-
58 most of former North Vietnam was never part of Champa, but it was under Chinese rule for a thousand years or so
61 should be "stolen from the Khmer Empire by Tai invaders"
62 could also be "stolen from Thailand by the French"

Coloured meant that you were mutiethnic, you could be indian-black, boer-black, general white-black.

[parochial boy]

The Western half of South Africa was never really stolen by the Bantu, it was still Khoisan when the Boers turned up, after which the Khoisan were eventually merged into the Coloured population (who are, for the most part, descended from the Khoisan rather than Bantu - a particularly woke thing to do in South Africa these days is to refer to coloured people as Khoisan) who are still the plurality across most of the Western and Northern capes. It’s only since the end of apartheid that they’ve started to have substantial populations of Bantu speakers.

wut

I was under the impression that the Coloured are Afrikaans-speaking Protestant Christians. If so, they're as culturally Khoisan as your average Mexican is Aztec.


A couple more pedantic nitpicks-
58 most of former North Vietnam was never part of Champa, but it was under Chinese rule for a thousand years or so
61 should be "stolen from the Khmer Empire by Tai invaders"
62 could also be "stolen from Thailand by the French"

Coloured meant that you were mutiethnic, you could be indian-black, boer-black, general white-black.

Sort of... not really... In practice it wound up ass "not pale enough to be white, but not dark enough to be classified as black" which could be cruelly random at times. The vast majority of Coloured people are mostly descended from mixed Cape Dutch - Khoisan relations, with a big chunk of Malay/South East Asian indentured labourers in the case of the Muslim Cape Malay community. (although it's really quite a bit more complex, the people living in the Northern Cape who were classified as "coloured" during apartheid often have actually very little Boer ancestry; the "coloureds" of Natal were a mix of Griqua people - migrants from the Western Cape, but also mixed relations between White British settlers and the Zulu. But the Natal coloured population is comparatively very small)

They tend to object to being referred to as multiethnic as they see it as erasing their own culture and identity that they have built up over the last 400 odd years (actually several different cultural identities, as hinted at above). Which is entirely true, they have their own cuisine, dialect, cultural references and all the rest

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

You are missing my point. I am not trying to downplay what happened to the Natives; I'm just pointing out that America is hardly unique in the quality of being "built on stolen land." The experiences you just described can be applied to half a hundred ethnic groups around the world just in the last fifty years. So if you're going to argue that the US is built on stolen land but the rest of the world isn't, you need a better case for it than that.

This is true, but I don't think they would disagree with you here

I know this post is pretty old but it gets at something important.

I'm not going to speculate on Dule's specific motives here but a lot of the pushback you see against the "stolen land" claims and several others argues against them as if they were relative statements about world history. I don't think this is what is meant - more often they're meant to be viewed as absolute statements. It is true that US history is riddled with abusive and coercive treaties (often ignored) and land acquisition fueled through conquest and other types of brutality, often with incredibly nefarious and racist motivations.

The fact that it has happened throughout world history doesn't really change the fact it happened in the US. If anything, the comparison being made when the "stolen land" argument is invoked isn't the rest of the world, it's to the idea of American exceptionalism itself. American history like the history of most nations (especially but not limited to most large European powers) is full of conquest, perfidy, unimaginable brutality, and subjugation. The difference is that Americans teach themselves as an article of faith that their history is uniquely rid of these problems. This is why the "stolen land" arguments have gained traction in the last several decades. It's a form of self-accountability.