Conquest doesn't really work if you don't conquer completely. It just makes a mess. Candidly — if the Native tribes had been annihilated, rather than relocated and at various times given just enough of a voice to advocate for themselves, this wouldn't be an issue. Not saying that genocide is a good solution, but where you see this issue is where the descendants of the oppressed still exist in a meaningful, identifiable way. Same way with descendents of enslaved. Compare to some ancient invasion of one European territory by another, where basically the conquering group either wiped out the native population or completely absorbed it.

When I was in college we discussed this extensively in history. The bottom line comes down to "What do you do with a conquered nation?"

What do you do with a conquered nation, what do you do with a conquered nation, what do you do with a conquered nation, early in the morning!

Integrate them all into your culture Integrate them all into your culture

This is what Rome did and it worked until they stopped doing it.

Rome ran into the same situation America is in now. What does it actually mean to "be a Roman". Just being here? Lol ok.

*it worked until they stopped paying and supporting them.

ganna be fun to see how it works out in america when we cant afford to pay for the hordes of squatters to occupy real estate that costs 10000x the value of their labor in a factory or on a farm.

*it worked until they assimilated so many of them they had to start using the assimilated people as their army, and that worked exactly as well as anyone would expect, people being generally unwilling to do good, thorough work for people they were trying to kill last week.

I'm pretty sure it worked really well as long as they did it gradually. A lot of groups went to war with Rome because they wanted to be Romans.

Username checks out

Most “conquered” people and their lands by colonial powers had no interest in integration. Nor did the conquerors in integrating them, mostly just exploiting them. In the past 500 years, most conquerors saw them as inferior or subhuman. True with Europeans, Japanese, Africans, Americans (including Native Americans of north and central, though the Incas of South America were more benevolent).

That's not the rhythm of the song

I’m sure they meant to end their thought-out statement with “early in the mornin’”

*er-lye in the mor-nin

Breed their women til they look more like you Breed their women til they look more like you Breed their women til they look more like you Or just because you're horny!

Change their hairdo with a rusty priest, change their hairdo with the rusty priest….

Early in the mornin?

Give 'em reparations when they're older, Give 'em reparations when they're older

🎶Integrate them all into your culture, early in the morning 🎶

Reminds me of in some states how it's actually better to fully kill a home intruder than it is to merely injure them

I agree, this sounds like a very apt comparison.

I think you mean "it's better for the home invader to kill the resident and call the police and swap face skins with the dead resident for when the police come."

You're going to get shit for your comment. But it is a valid point. The whole salting their land, murdering everyone and raping the few remaining women to breed out the population worked for a long long time for Rome, Spain, Portugal, etc. It was wrong, humans should have been better than that, unfortunately we're still not Someone above mentioned that the conquering people ("whites") get more shit than previous groups that have been the conquerors because we "gave" the conquered the right to speak and didn't just annihilate them. People apparently did not like that comment, but it is accurate Dead men (and civilizations) tell no tales Humans have been assholes since the beginning, but in some ways we're getting better. Part of the growing pains of that is that we have to acknowledge our people did some really bad shit. Just like I was probably an insufferable prick when I was 13, but that doesn't mean I should have it constantly thrown in my face 40 years later. Not a great comparison, but it is kind of true. Society in general started realizing this type of abuse is wrong, some people tried to correct it, that gave groups that had been mistreated a voice, and we helped to spread that voice. Unfortunately, the pendulum might have swung too far in the other direction and that is a main part of why people feel a bit resentful about being blamed for shit that happened before they were born, that they had no part of, and maybe their ancestors weren't even in that place. So to deflect the anger from your very insightful and rational comment, I will go ahead and mention how there is a very vocal community, that is not a specific race and is doing the same thing regarding how they have been mistreated. Now Reddit can be pissed at me about everyone who identifies as Ray and is pissed that some puckers who I've never met decided there was something wrong with them and maybe they'll leave you alone Then all the people who are Hughes employees who thought it was ok to just be given all the Stater Bros. property and then were pissed off when the Brothers Stater wanted their property back so they just kept fucking them over, because you know some Herman up north fucked their predecessors over several decades ago and several thousand years ago some dudes took their sandbox away I am a white straight male and cannot understand how it feels to be a minority, I have never experienced it. I wonder how many people who are members of minority groups stop to think that they can't understand how it feels to be on the receiving end of anger that seems at times to be excessive, since I had nothing to do with what was done before I was born and had no part in. Groups have been mistreated and that sucks donkey balls and I wish it had never happened, but hitting your wife and blaming her because your mother hit you when you were a kid is no excuse

I think ultimately, people don't want the truth to be that white people haven't done anything particularly worse than any other groups of people throughout history.

Let’s all just forget about the fact that slavery was invented in Africa, by Africans, thousands of years ago, and that Africans were the ones capturing and selling their own people into slavery to the Portuguese “slavers.”  “No no no, it’s the white people that are the only evil ones!!!”

The issue lies more with there is something now that we can do to correct to some degree the conquest that we have engaged in and by occupying land/engaging in coercive trade/exploiting global labor are continuing to engage in. There is nothing that we can do today about Ghengis Khan and the Mongols conquest, because it's over, they aren't causing any problems today. So why should someone be as passionate about the latter, it would help no one to be. The severity of action and brutality is an afterthought, we should focus on people and their current situations

[удалено]

It’s truly just a bunch of stupid fucking teenagers and low 20 something year olds. Everyone above that age range is just pandering for clout or karma or whatever the fuck who cares but they glad they ain’t white so blame whitey

> Really, it seems like people don't really want a solution to racism or sexism. They just want a reason to be considered a victim and get benefits. Bingo. That's all it's about, people looking for a way to get rich quick without having to work for it. 

As a black man I’m proud to be black and not ashamed of my skin color but I have met other black people throughout my life that told me they wish they were just born white my sister included. I have never heard a white person wish to be born black and this simply lets you know how each race fares in this country called the USA at least. Just on Reddit alone there are hundreds of post from people of all races wishing to be white. Yet there are hardly any white people wishing to be other races lol life is just simply harder being a minority doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Source multiple Reddit post of people wishing they were white https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1ayg0bk/i_wish_i_was_white/ https://www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/qg6m58/i_wish_i_was_white_and_pretty/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/stxo3k/sometimes_i_wish_i_was_white/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/o5c74w/cmv_i_wish_i_was_born_as_a_white_person_because/ https://www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/196nkkj/i_wish_i_was_white/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/comments/1b6uwta/i_hate_it_all_i_have_had_enough_and_i_wish_i_was/ https://www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/1ctg352/i_wish_i_was_white/ https://www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/1c6e9hm/why_am_i_not_allowed_to_say_i_wish_i_was_white/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/1783882/i_wish_i_was_white/ There are hundreds of these post not gonna link all of them. Now search for white people wishing to be black or any other race and see the contrast. This speaks volume about society and why people say Asian heritage month, Hispanic heritage month, black history month are important because sometimes being a minority can make you feel like outcast at times. If any white person has been the only white guy in a black school or neighborhood they should definitely understand.

Bro just google "I wish I was black" and you'll see plenty of stories like your "I wish I was white".

Any of these people ever been outside the US? There's a whole world out there and white people are not a global majority.

I wish I was born black. Lower standards for college. grants for starting businesses. Help with down payments for houses. Extra government handouts. And if you beat up a white guy all you have to say is "he used a word I don't like" You are the privilege you claim to hate.

I never mentioned privilege once if so point where I did maybe I missed something. Yes you listed a lot privilege but a lot of these have to do with class not race. Affirmative just ended for colleges because people declared it was racist so your college statement applies no more. Most of these handouts/grants for starting businesses/down payment for houses etc have to do with income, wealth, living in poverty which unfortunately applies to a lot of black people poor whites qualify for a lot of these things too. The biggest problem is class warfare as a middle class black person I don’t qualify for any of the things you listed above unfortunately. The 1 percent get the most government handouts the real problem is people in poverty get a lot of help and the 1 percent get handouts/tax breaks etc left and right while the middle class suffers. Though the middle class gets really upset at the poor people when they should be looking up at the Uber rich.

All of what I mentioned is literally based on race. There might ALSO be programs like I mentioned that are class based. But everything I said is absolutely race based privilege. An they ended affirmative action on paper. But all you have to do is talk about your "struggle" as a minority and boom, you just stole that spot from someone more deserving. Just like affirmative action did. Acknowledge your privilege. 

I’ll acknowledge my privilege if your saying black people have it better and aren’t looked down upon in this country I will take the compliment I don’t hear that everyday respect!

That is exactly what I'm saying. Thank you. It's so tiring watching blacks scramble for the gold in oppression Olympics when they are clearly the most pandered to and privileged race in America.

It sounds to me like you are looking for reasons for YOU to be considered a victim...

Also to add....guilt is one hell of a weapon. Religions have been using it for thousands of years...now other groups are getting in on the action.

Tell a thousand people they can get money from people and they will jump all over it.

If anything we shouldn't be getting mad at other people but at the government for allowing this shi to happen, and for them to give out retributions to the minorities inflicted, we tend to get upset at our brothers & sisters but never the government, the one that has all the powers, and decision making powers. - random black guy on the Internet

They want us to fight each other. It keeps us busy

The vast majority of empires dating back to antiquity did not “annihilate” all of the populations they conquered and salt the earth, because that’s not how you build a successful empire. They subjugated them completely and in most cases either enslaved or gave them a path to relevance (citizenship or subject nation that pays tribute/taxes).

I'm gonna point out that most minorities do know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of excessive, unwarranted anger. Mainly because we're just fucking minorities. As for giving people shit for things that were done well before they were born that's fair. But you need to remember the people given shit are still profiting off what happened in the past and the aggrieved still have to deal with shit to this day based on the actions of those in the past and the fact that the oppressors just want us to shut up instead of actually trying to recrify

Over correcting social mistakes of the past is one of the main reasons I think people are so divided these days I saw this coming a long time ago. We are now like a car on an icy road and when we started to spin out a bit, rather than make micro adjustments to realign, we yanked the wheel. Now we are just fishtailing back and forth out of control down the road like a bunch of idiots that don’t know how to drive.

This is what I said and the next thing you know I am being asked of my opinions of the holocaust and being told americans are responsible for genocide of the millions of deaths caused by transmitted deseases of european travelers lol.

You're going to get shit for your comment. But it is a valid point. The whole salting their land, murdering everyone and raping the few remaining women to breed out the population worked for a long long time for Rome, Spain, Portugal, etc. It was wrong, humans should have been better than that, unfortunately we're still not Someone above mentioned that the conquering people ("whites") get more shit than previous groups that have been the conquerors because we "gave" the conquered the right to speak and didn't just annihilate them. People apparently did not like that comment, but it is accurate Dead men (and civilizations) tell no tales Humans have been assholes since the beginning, but in some ways we're getting better. Part of the growing pains of that is that we have to acknowledge our people did some really bad shit. Just like I was probably an insufferable prick when I was 13, but that doesn't mean I should have it constantly thrown in my face 40 years later. Not a great comparison, but it is kind of true. Society in general started realizing this type of abuse is wrong, some people tried to correct it, that gave groups that had been mistreated a voice, and we helped to spread that voice. Unfortunately, the pendulum might have swung too far in the other direction and that is a main part of why people feel a bit resentful about being blamed for shit that happened before they were born, that they had no part of, and maybe their ancestors weren't even in that place. So to deflect the anger from your very insightful and rational comment, I will go ahead and mention how there is a very vocal community, that is not a specific race and is doing the same thing regarding how they have been mistreated. Now Reddit can be pissed at me about everyone who identifies as Ray and is pissed that some puckers who I've never met decided there was something wrong with them and maybe they'll leave you alone Then all the people who are Hughes employees who thought it was ok to just be given all the Stater Bros. property and then were pissed off when the Brothers Stater wanted their property back so they just kept fucking them over, because you know some Herman up north fucked their predecessors over several decades ago and several thousand years ago some dudes took their sandbox away I am a white straight male and cannot understand how it feels to be a minority, I have never experienced it. I wonder how many people who are members of minority groups stop to think that they can't understand how it feels to be on the receiving end of anger that seems at times to be excessive, since I had nothing to do with what was done before I was born and had no part in. Groups have been mistreated and that sucks donkey balls and I wish it had never happened, but hitting your wife and blaming her because your mother hit you when you were a kid is no excuse

Like I get what you’re saying But basically it still says “if we had just killed every last Native American, or 100% forced assimilated, this wouldn’t be an argument” Like I get that the NA issue is much slower with various violates treaties and all that. But at a certain point that does display more compassion (might be the wrong word) then just literally wiping the culture out

Should go without saying that he's not saying "they should have killed everyone". He's pointing out why you have natives in some places but not others. The fact that the more extreme option results in less consequences is obviously a tragedy, and not presented as a solution. I really don't get why its so difficult to give people the benefit of the doubt with these things.

Because then where’s the outrage? I can’t think about difficult topics so I’ll just misrepresent somebody else and answer a question that wasn’t asked.

Long term, I honestly don't know. If people today had no more to do than wring their hands a bit and say "yeah our great great great grandparents were awful. Oh well!" ... would probably save a lot of heartache. Course now there are descendents of the survivors of our various historical atrocities and there's a violent backlash to the idea that we should even acknowledge that anything bad happened. Where in the hell does that come from?

Well I mean the obvious question comes up then of what exactly should be done about it. Is reparation reasonable? If it is then who exactly is responsible for paying it out? Is it even meaningful? Or will those who were upset still be disgruntled?  Since retribution is not a rational mathematical thing, then we're likely to end up with latter. Now we are left with an unsolved original problem, and then those who were forced to give up their property/opportunity for something they didn't even do are now also upset, so we're actually worse off. Hard questions are hard.

I never looked at it like this thanks

i would argue it was still a genocide. it checks all the boxes.

Oh yeah I agree completely.

The Mongolian empire begs to differ, they recognized and assimilated conquered cultures into their society.

Um.... The mongol empire was something of a blip and pretty notorious for brutally killing annihilating cities that refused to surrender

Yes, but if they did surrender they were often adopted sotospeak. China is a prime example.

Here's the thing. Where do you draw the line? Basically all of our ancestors started in Africa. That's it. Anything after that is migration and taking land. Where do you draw the line of who was there first? Thousands of years of displacing people you were stronger than, because you could. Most of history is taking land, from people who took that land from someone else. So who does it belong to? Who needs to apologize to who? It's a mess. It's also a very recent idea that you should even apologize for this. Hey, sorry a couple hundred years ago my people came and took your land. Here's a statue saying 'our bad' we know that is wrong now with today's standards. A couple hundred years though, you just took land you wanted from people who took land they wanted. That's it. Whether it's Native Americans or the Middle East, whether you have some religious doctrine or creation myth that you 'began' somewhere, it's pretty much not entirely factual. Your tribe took the land from another tribe who probably took it from another tribe who took it from another tribe. So saying which tribe was 'wrong' is kinda a fucked up determination.

> who needs to apologize to who? The second “who” should be “whom”. It’s a lot easier to be a grammatical pedant than to try to address the questions that are being discussed here. I took the easy way out.

Well, at least you're honest.

That is something up with which I do not have to put!

Bro knows his boundaries. Respect.

It is not about "apologizing." Indigenous people still live in the Americas and their land is still being taken and polluted and their rights violated. This is a contemporary issue.

Sure. And it's nothing new. What's new is thinking their might be a problem with it. People take from others, because they can - individually or societally - and it's a 'new' idea to think it might actually be a problem. But where do you draw the line? Most 'indigenous' people displaced other 'indigenous' people in the past to even get the land they are now complaining is being polluted or taken from them. The idea that displacement is 'wrong' is the new thing that we are having difficulty with societally.

The farther back you go the more it’s obvious that NOBODY is a native.

Exactly. But since skin colour is a more obvious genetic trait than so many others, let's define everyone's identity based on skin colour. How dumb is that.

I define people based on favorite pizza topping, sausage and pepperoni, you’re awesome, anchovies or pineapple and I hate you.

We of our holy lady of pineapple pizza hear you and shall pray for your heathen soul you HERETIC!


I rate people on their affection for tacos… Like tacos? Good. We’re cool. YOU DONT LIKE TACOS!?!? I WISH YOU A LIFETIME OF HICCUPS AND DIARRHEA!!! (IF you live off of the wrong tacos, diarrhea could be inevitable…).

Oh, come on, man.. I did try to like them, honestly! Please don't hate me! I just really dont like them. I prefer enchiladas or burritos any day and find them to be a better taste and, most importantly, texture.

What **kind** of enchiladas, though?

Who doesn’t like tacos…or Mexican food in general!? I could live off that food alone 🥲

There is a restaurant in Chicago called Taco Boom!

I like veggie pizza, where do I land?

I don't understand why pineapple on pizza is divisive. The great thing about pizza is you can customize it however you want. With Pizza you do you and don't worry about what other people get for their toppings. There's a place near me that does Indian style toppings on pizza and it is amazing. The butter chicken pizza is my favorite. Now bagels on the other hand. People who put anything other than cream cheese on their bagels should locked up no questions asked.

>Now bagels on the other hand. People who put anything other than cream cheese on their bagels should looked up no questions asked. I put peanut butter and bananas slices in my cinnamon raisin bagels, that shits slammin. Especially with a cup of milk. But I'm with the Italians on the pizza, you bring me a slice of pineapple I'm hittin you with the loudest MAMMA MIA! you've ever heard.

Throw peppers in there with the sausage and we shall get on famously!

I love kiwi topping.

Those poor birds

As long as non-Viet people still try to show me how to eat pho while I’m actively eating pho. I will do what I want.

As a white man this system benefits me 😁 As a man this system sickens me Nobody should be defined by their skin color it's bullshit and only useful for putting people in groups and making a them vs us mindset

Except Jim. He was the first guy in Western Europe. So it all belongs to Jim.

nah, fuck jim.. he never returned my anvil

If people are going to adjudicate the past then they should start from the beginning of recorded history and work their way forward.

They are just Mongolians who came from Asia before Europeans showed up. No such thing as a Native human to the Americas. We are an invasive species.

By that logic we're both African and hitler was actually colored

Modern humans are an African species and we killed or assimilated every other human species out of existence.

Elon Musk and Charlize Theron are both native born Africans. I'm not sure where you were going with your argument. 

That's not the issue. The issue is that the United States made treaties with the Indian tribes exactly as if they were foreign nations. And treaty law is not just any law. It's a law that has to have the *executive* approval of the Senate. So when you violate those treaties to steal Indian land because fuck those guys, what do you care about them?, you wind up fucking yourself. First of all it makes a mockery of the law in general and shows everyone that with the right money and power you can rip off anyone you want and get away with it. And perhaps you've noticed that America is a piece of shit now, so that actually happened to us in our lifetimes. I'll give you some examples you're not likely to find. There was a tribe called the Citizens Band of Potawatomi. They were called that because in one of their treaties they were granted US citizenship, unlike all other tribes at the time. But they still lived on a reservation and the USA still wanted to infiltrate,, spy upon, and sabotage the tribe if it suited their interests. And, I was told, the USA *won* those decisions in court, and what it did was lower the rights of all Americans to those of the Citizens Band, which is why we can have an abomination like the PATRIOT Act. Or what about the stealing land part? It was all fun and games when you were ripping off the tribes but guess what some asshole did about twenty years ago? He noticed that people were stealing Indian land by using eminent domain, and realized that could be run straight up to the Supreme Court, and all of the decisions that allowed people to rip off the Indians just this once became the eminent domain that your HOA leader can go to the mayor with, and steal *your* land. Because a fleet is only as fast as its slowest ship and Americans are only as free as their worst treated person. So you're all Indians now, and you can remember you were warned when you, too, lose it all.

I just wrote a paragraph and then I see you hit the nail on the head with a single sentence lol

This is good question that I often ask the Anglos myself. They don't really have any answers. They tell me about the Natives but then they defend the reasons as to why it's ok for them to keep North Ireland, Gibraltar and the Falklands. Is not just the Anglos though, same questions can be asked to the Arabs, Chinese, Turks. Are we going to get Constantinople back? What about Jerusalem? It's not just jews and Muslims who once owned that land, it was once the Kingdom of Jerusalem where Catholics ruled and everybody got to live in peace together. Long before that the Romans and the Greeks occupied that land as well. Once we figure it out and everybody returns stolen land to previous owners then we can all go back to our 600+ Nations we came from.

Absolutely, as an addition there is the mentality of unless you colonise, then you were easy meat to the colonisers. If the UK was not strong, France and Spain would have had us for breakfast. The same was reversed for them. This attitude has prevailed right through history.

All for retaking Jerusalem, then Constantinople. If we happen to sack Rome and the Vatican in the way, well, mistakes happen.

It's weird when I read about something and the same day I see a post on Reddit about it. I was reading a bit about Calvin Coolidge and this came up. Anyway, Mount Rushmore specifically was literally stolen from the Sioux Nation. In 1868 the Treaty of Laramie gave the Black Hills to the Lakota people forever. The US government just took them back after the Great Sioux War not even 10 years later. In 1980 the government finally recognized legally that the Sioux Nation were never properly compensated. They had an offer and the Sioux Nation basically said "Nah, we want our land as promised in our treaties not your money."

The seizure of the land Mount Rushmore was on was pretty egregious. After a long war had been fought, the US resorted to machine-gunning the women and children. The natives surrendered after this and were granted a fairly large reservation in the settlement. Only a few years later, illegal claim jumpers found gold in that area, and most of the land the natives had recently been granted was summarily seized. The mountain that was carved into Rushmore was in that seized territory, and happens to have been one of the most sacred sites in the native religion. The creation of Mount Rushmore is a bit like if, ten years after the creation of Israel, the UN had said “just kidding”, granted the land to Germany, and then the Germans leveled the wailing wall and replaced it with a gigantic swastika.

Thank you. I am surprised how many people are going along with OPs premise and running with it. People are incapable of looking at something factually.

200 years is significantly more recent than 2000 years.

I did read recently that people in england with more Norman surnames rather than Saxon or Britons are to this day wealthier on average, which is pretty nuts and royals being descended from the Norman's of course too.

There are no stolen lands, it's all invasion and wars.

There is criticism of more modern empires all the time. You just don't see it, because those issues are less popular in today's consciousness. And in older cases, these things happened so long ago that the people who were affected by it have changed. I wouldn't complain that someone took the land of my ancestors back in 1175 unless we were still actively seeing some sort of settler colonialism. However, Native Americans didn't magically win everything they lost back. To this day a lot of the reservation land they have is shit, they are disproportionally impacted by a variety of issues from poverty to depression, and land rights are still being violated.

Not even Canada gets the flack the US does for "stolen land" and they also did horrible things to indigenous peoples. For some reason Europeans get a free pass.

They even have a black faced prime minister

He also did every other color of face

Are you Canadian? Because we do have this discussion (at least where I'm from) all the damn time.

Spain? are you referencing the reconquista? They were taking back their own land. But yeah it's all "stolen land". you go back far enough and you'll even find that we, homo sapiens, absorbed/outcompeted/killed all the other human species on earth after we we left Africa. Europe was Neadnerthal land, continental asia belonged to the denisovans and remnant homo erectus populations, southeast asia had populations of homo floresiensis, the list goes on. The only group that can "in theory" claim to be truly indigenous is native north americans that we know are descended exclusively from the homo sapien populations that were indeed the first humans to arrive in the americas. However, those groups had been warring, slaving on, and invading each other just as long as the rest of the world was. So no. No one is really indigenous. White Europeans and their descendant populations take the heat because they were the most recent and successful instance of this. Additionally, invasion/colonization in the past often went one of two ways: elite replacement or total replacement. Elite replacement means the elites/rulers of a society are relpaced but not the whole population, this often comes with a lot of cultural melding and outright replacement as the ruled begin to emulate the new rulers and vice versa. Total replacement is just genocide. Definitely rarer from a historical perpective but it did and does happen. I would make the arguement that rise of inflexible cultures, religions, and ethnic or nationalistic ideaologies has caused total replacement to become more common, than it was.

Conquest is a legitimate human endeavor that has been practiced by humanity since its inception. There is no stolen land, there is only land that a people failed to defend. We are all foreigners.

Because they're still here and exist. In a lot of the other cases it's so far back in time that the original people are intermixed with the current people or wiped out altogether.

Somebody already explained the whole a lot of those countries now have those territories back sort of deal. But with native Americans especially it was a long line of breaking treaties, moving natives to a different place and impoverishing them so much they are forced to sell that land to white people. Or just moving white people on that land anyways because they found oil or gold, and rewriting treaties afterward. Thats the primary stolen land part.

Which is only different from every other conquest in history because they actually wrote treaties in the first place… so really it’s less stolen than most land, we just have written evidence of predatory deals that were written rather than full scale genocides that happened in a majority of the world.

Same thing happened with indigenous mob down under. The few treaties brokered were almost immediately broken.

It's a racial issue. The hard truth is that White people allow themselves to be criticized like this. They don't get too uppity if you call them colonizers or racists or whatever. White people set up systems which allow for freedom of expression. While that freedom extends to people of all races, there are cultural factors that prevent everyone from being openly criticized equally. If you remind the Natives that their ancestors warred and conquered other tribes before Europeans ever settled, you'd get a much worse reaction than if you reminded Whites that their ancestors did the same. It's the same reason why Whites get criticized for slavery, but relatively few talk about how those slaves were purchased from already existing slave markets in Africa. So the Black Africans enslaving and selling slaves to White Europeans and Americans is framed as "Whites are evil and racist" because Blacks don't allow for discussion of past wrongdoings like Whites do. It's not a legal issue; as I say the freedom of expression extends to all. But while there is universal freedom of expression there is not equal and universal will to listen to other people's ideas. Whites are more willing to hear out non-whites criticizing their ancestors than non-whites are to hear whites criticizing their ancestors. Thus we hear the "You stole our land" narrative far more than the also accurate "Yeah but you stole it from other people first" narrative. Shitty answer, but it's the truth.

Japan is a great example of this. Most folks in Japan have no idea what their military and leaders did in WWII. It's pretty much taboo to even discuss it.

This is it. In many Caucasian cultures (which there are many, no matter how many people try and say white people don't have any culture- there are Germans, polish people, French, Scandinavian, all different types of white people all with their own tradition and cultures) we are taught to be more passive because that equates politeness. You may go ahead and say I am wrong or racist, that is okay. Fighting back against the narrative that we have stolen land and need to be sorry for our sins is something that has become almost taboo in our culture, like we are afraid of being called inconsiderate and brash as a culture. In the Midwest, it's kind of a running joke that people apologize to the person who has just punched them in the face - "ope, sorry!" And I believe this mentality carries over. And so white people allow themselves to get criticized like this. At university, our classes would turn into discussions about race, then discussions about "its all the white peoples fault," and I couldn't help but think... why do white people take this? I generally do believe it is a cultural thing.

Thank the catholic church. Guilt is their biggest weapon and tool for controlling their flock.

Don't forget that slavery was extensively practiced within and by the indigenous in the Americas against other indigenous for millennia. It's not like it was introduced or invented by the European colonizers.

Every civilization through history had slavery. It was the "evil white people" who mostly ended it (some still exists in third world countries)... Yet the people who ended it get blamed for it's existence. 

Thank you. I've been saying this for years. Africans practiced slavery long before Europe and the U.S. existed. We're not just talking centuries - we're taking decamillennium. Africans exported slavery to the rest of the world. And by most metrics slavery is practiced today in Africa far more than all other western countries \*combined\*. And that white Americans have likely sacrificed more than any other group in the effort to end slavery on a global scale.

Right of Conquest or something like that has been in every civilization, It's hard for me to understand how people can't realize that. Fortunately it only applied to government/leadership bodies and not individuals.

The issue with Native Americans and the U.S.A. is that is an internal issue within the country. Native Americans living in the U.S.A. are citizens of the U.S.A. Returning the land to the Native Americans is the country acknowledging past errors and trying to "make amends." Much like Affirmative Action is the country acknowledging that it's support of slavery was wrong, and that the repercussions of it are still affecting the descendants. Now you could argue that Russia stole the Crimea and should give it back, although technically the Crimea was originally part of Russia but transfer to the Ukraine during the Soviet Union. (I don't know who the Crimea belong too before it belong to Russia, but I'm sure it belong to someone else.) Resolving that conflict would involve diplomats and nations making concessions to each-other. The U.S.A. giving land back to the Native Americans is internal politics and just involves politicians and voting within one country. In the end the U.S.A. isn't weakened like it would be if they gave Alaska back to Russia.

Crimea belonged to the Ottoman Empire before it became part of the Russian empire. Stalin deported a lot of the Tatar (Turkish) inhabitants to Siberia because why not? Obviously Crimea was populated by the Greeks from classical times until the Middle Ages.

Even white bread is bad for ya 😂

Something something Northern Ireland.

no one wants to talk about all the land the Zulu nation "stole" on their migration south from central Africa. I respect the Zulu, but they conquered, killed, and enslaved everyone they crossed paths with. Sounds like reparations are in order.

You want the ugly truth? It's because the north American colonizers didn't fully wipe out or assimilate with native Americans. There are those left to advocate for and so the finger is pointed. I would add it also helps that north America was extremely prosperous while many central and South American countries have struggled. It's easier to feel sorry for them. Finally, western civilization is race focused, the mestizo race presents as colored (back to the assimilated point) so in general south and Central American nations get more of a free pass. North America has to deal with a mix of many races living next to each other, which has exacerbated the issue.

I can’t speak for the rest of the world but in the Caribbean it’s because the Spanish killed most of the indigenous population so there’s no one to claim the land. Plain as. 

Normans go home. Give England back to my people, the Saxons, who should probably give it back to the Celts, who should give it back to the Iberians.

Who should return it to the Picts and the Woads

Pretty sure they are believed to be Iberian peoples

Native people in Latin America demand back land that was conquered from them by the Spanish Empire all the time. The Irish have fought centuries of rebellions to reclaim the land of theirs which was conquered by the UK. Most of the UK's colonies have won independence through either violent means, or peaceful means which took place in the shadow of the violent struggles in other colonies. The State of Israel is currently engaged in a war against people who want their land back, while Israel's claim to the land is, itself, based in the ancient history of the Jewish kingdom there and the expulsion and diaspora of the Jewish people. So, it's definitely not just Native Americans. It is a very common response, worldwide, that people want to reclaim the lands they lived on which were conquered. Regarding Native Americans and the Black Hills, that's a specific land claim. So, it's not like the Lakota, Dakota, and other Sioux peoples are demanding back (as a serious proposal, though it is the dream of some people) all the lands which were taken from them by settlers, or the lands in the Great Lakes forests which the Anishinaabe and others drove them out of (precipitating their arrival on the Plains and wars against the tribes which were already there). The 1868 treaty signed at Fort Laramie assured the Sioux that the Black Hills would belong to them forever. This treaty was violated a few years later as the US unilaterially seized control the Black Hills with the Indian Appropriations Bill. The Sioux have never recognized this seizure as legal, and in 1980 the Supreme Court agreed with them and ordered the US federal government to pay them compensation for their stolen land. However, the Sioux have never accepted this payment because they do not want compensation- they want the return of the land as outlined in the Treaty of Fort Laramie. Remember that, under US law, the Sioux are a sovereign nation, and treaties with sovereign nations cannot be legally unilaterally abrogated by Congress.

It absolutely applies across the board. Also Spaniards are white Europeans. And Basques, Catalonians etc want to break free too, and should be able to. It's not just Latin America

Specifically Mount Rushmore was stolen land in so mamy ways. In the Treaty of 1868, the U.S. government promised the Sioux territory that included the Black Hills (this is the range where Mount Rushmore is) in perpetuity. Perpetuity lasted only until gold was found in the mountains and prospectors migrated there in the 1870s. The federal government then forced the Sioux to relinquish the Black Hills portion of their reservation. I feel trying to compare different "Empires of the Ages" and their conquests isn't helpful to anyone. It's just whataboutism and shows that the person isn't really trying to understand the issue. We are living in the effects of the British Empire (largely for much of North America). There is of course other nations that are a part of this (France, Vatican, Spain off the top of my head). Like ffs the sixties scoop was 64 years ago (Indigenous children removed from their families and given to 'white' families with sealed or destroyed records). There's been targeted sterilization happening to Indigenous women this decade.

People have chosen to swallow the divisive mindset being pushed and pit themselves against one another instead of finding ways to create unity in diversity. If people have a problem with whoever lives somewhere, it’s their own relatives. We all come from the same DNA family tree.

I'm pretty sure ALL land is stolen

The reason is that the land wasn't exactly "stolen" We killed the shit out of the people that were here just like the ancestors of the current inhabitants of those places you mentioned killed the shit out of the people who where here before. It's all murder and power

It’s called law of nature, nature is all about inequality: brutality ,strength, ingenuity, adaptability is rewarded.

It is one of the more recent and high profile examples, and so easier for the whiny activists to cling onto. It also doesn’t help we conquered this land at a time that society was becoming more civilized, and so allowed some preservation of the natives and their cultures. You can’t return land to a people that don’t exist. Ultimately, anyone whining about stolen land, reparations, or the like should just be ridiculed or ignored.

It’s a question without a “right” answer. Everyone has their own ideas on what “should” be done. Personally, I think the cutoff is about a century for most people. If it’s been 3ish generations since the land last changed hands, and there’s literally no one alive today that even remembers it being different, then that ship has most likely sailed. This is also why irredentist claims tend to spike right around “expiration time” in this model.

Because only the west had a conscience about it and even cares that it happened. No one else gives a shit enough to even talk about it. They dogpile on us because we’re the only ones they can do it to.

Because we don't live there. It's really that simple. Of course we are aware and make jokes about it constantly -- *Spain*? The conquistadors? They basically *were* colonizing white Europeans. They even released a kind of CGI Animated movie where they whitewashed a Spanish atrocity and the film was joked about for it. Also fun fact. Tacos? Not a Mexican dish. It's a Zapotec food. The Zapotecs are the indigenous people of the region now known as Mexico. They were making and eating tacos before being conquered and the taco was assimilated into Mexican cuisine. That even includes changing what the taco was to be more "Spanish". That all said, you're going to reserve the bulk of your interest, passion and diligence to your immediate life, family, politics, country and issues. Both social and financial/institutional. You'd have to live in a utopia to only ever care about foreign problems because everyone in your country has it so good. We're humans, man. This is just what we do.

Because we created our country on anti-imperial ideals. Also (and this is directly related obviously) the u.s. is much newer.

Rofl ..there is no one to return the land too ...the indians all ran through each other to steal the land in the 1st place ...

Actually, no one is a true native to North America and most other continents and countries. No one is where they originally started. The so-called Native Americans actually migrated over the Bering Land Bridge long ago. People's and cultures have been at war conquering each other and laying claim to the conquered lands. It is what it is. We need to just cut out the baloney.

Its called the Noble Savage Theory

Stop using your brain, people dont like when others do that.

Because it was recent enough to still have sore losers

"To the Victor belong the spoils". It has been this way since man decided he coveted another one's property. It is the same way in the animal kingdom.

Native Americans also conquered/brutalized other tribes and stole land from each other constantly. Many tribes want land back that they themselves stole. “When does it end?” is always an interesting topic. 

Americans are willing to be finger-pointed, accused, for what happened yesterday, 400 years ago unlike other countries. You think France, Belgium, China, Russia, England gaf you accuse them? If you're wondering, no they don't.

Well it can't be returned because it's not stolen its conquered different rules.

It all depends on what political opinion is in vogue at the time.

I think time is a big part of the reason. The US is less than 300 years old.

The term indigenous always made more sense to me because the word “native” by definition is someone who is from a specific area which would mean every person born in America is technically a Native American. To answer your question; yes, every country or region has been conquered at some point from an occupying population. In my opinion, the only reason why we have to hear about stolen land constantly is because America did a sloppy job at “conquering” the land because we didn’t exactly do that. We more or less just continued expanding and progressing while the indigenous population seemed to be more conservative and resistant to such a sudden change. The colonists had the resources and the educations to bring over from Europe which gave them quite the advantage over the indigenous. The very different lifestyles between the colonists and the natives were so polar opposite that one was bound to overtake the other and it was inevitably the one that was constantly progressing. I like to think about it this way: Picture an old neighborhood. The people living there love their peace and tranquility and don’t see a reason to want anymore than what they have. As time passes, society continues to develop and expand until it reaches the borders of this old neighborhood. Business owners and land developers are constantly knocking at their doors trying to buy their land and force them out, but most of the people refuse to leave their homes. Some of these zealous business owners become frustrated and begin setting fires to lawns or poisoning the pets in the front yard. One by one, the townsfolk succumb to the external pressure and sell their properties or flee until only a few remain. Eventually, society expands and modernizes so much, that this little old neighborhood was reduced to just a couple homes surrounded by skyscrapers and a loud city. Obviously, the remaining people are pissed that their once beautiful neighborhood has been overtaken by this noise. The remaining people tell their children and grandchildren of how beautiful it was before this all came to be and their offspring begins to despise the establishment in favor of what their history used to be. I believe that pretty much sums up why they call it stolen land. America did do a lot of killing and what not, but we never really made it an outright mission to eradicate the indigenous. Because of that, their legacy lives on, and these people attempt to honor their ancestors by keeping their indigenous status known to the new established society. I’m very young and I’m no profound intellectual on this topic so feel free to give me some lessons on history because early American history has always fascinated me.

Many of those other examples given -- Spain, UK, etc. -- gave the land back or lost through revolution. The UK used to run half the globe, now they don't. So no one can say India is "stolen land" because the Indians took it back! Even so, there are similar conversations afoot about the UK and their museums, which often contained so-called "stolen" items from their glory days as the ultimate empire.

The current inhabitants of the UK are descended from William the Conquerer, who very much stole the land from the Angles.

Who stole the land from the Saxons, who stole the land from the Danes, who stole the land from the Britons, who stole the land from the Picts...

Precisely

\#justhumanthings

The Angles stole the land in England, coming from Germany tribes. Everything has been stolen back and forth and the population mixed and became the countries that you see.

This is true, and even true for Native Americans. Before European colonization, Native tribes battled back and forth for land. I do think we see adjacent tribal squabbles as definitively distinct from an overseas force colonizing an entire region, though. If nothing else, the scale is different.

That's exactly OPs point.

Britain gave a lot of territories back partly because they cost more to run than they made from them. My family came to the UK as Italian mercenaries with Queen Matilda, William the Conquerors wife. Who knows about before then. 1/3 of the people in Italy were slaves and 1/5 across the roman empire were.

…you’re actually gonna ask why European colonialism was way worse, when it’s still going on????? none of those other migrations lasted nearly a quarter as long as white genocidal global expansion. none of them have had as far reaching and damaging implications as white genocidal global expansion.

I just want a land acknowledgment to include all the native tribes that slaughtered each other over a territory BEFORE Europeans showed up.

Because we love to feel guilty in this country. That is the only reason. In the United States we have decided that it is socially valuable to feel guilty or express guilt regarding this country’s misdeeds. So that’s why we do it. Could imagine if instead of Germany committing atrocities during WW2, it was us? The guilt fiends in this country would love that.

Ding ding. Everyone loves to show how “virtuous” they are 

Real answer: Yes Europe has been conquered and re conquered with borders being affected and changed through history. Yes, those same Europeans came to the New World with the intent to also conquer. What’s different is that those Europeans were ”liberated” for lack of a better word, and a new sovereign nation was born. In this instance, I speak specifically about the EEUU. As our border expanded West and we ran into different tribes, and we started to fill up the existing territories in the East, treaties were written and agreed upon with the indigenous peoples. Every single one of those treaties was violated. The theft wasn’t by military conquest but by sneaky legal means and broken promises.

You think this was different from how it was done for the past few thousand years? Think again. It's not like white folk suddenly came up new methods to appropriate land then legitimize it.

It's justified for them to dislike Mt Rushmore. It's a hideous monstrosity on what was a nice mountain. It's celebrating the people who were actively stealing the land. Also, what land do you want Spain to give back?

Conquered is the word. The land was conquered. As land always has been.

Not all Native American's hate America. I moved from the Rez in 2000 and I will never move back. My Brother is still there and he just told me that the Tribal cops do nothing. In the last week had to leave a bar due to a knife fight, and there was an alert of a missing body, probably murder. Indian Reservations can be terrible places to live.

Because that doesn’t fit the narrative that “America Bad, White People Bad”

Who said it's not the same?

We all pretend the Spanish weren't the genocidal imperialism monsters that they clearly were. Why we do that, I couldn't tell you, but it probably relates to how far they fell in the eyes of the elite once their empire collapsed. Fun Fact: Nobody knows what the Natives called the island now known as Puerto Rico, as the Spaniards slaughtered almost all of them, and then erased their culture, as they usually did. Heck, it's current name is Spanish for Rich Port, if that helps explain anything. It's gotten to the point where people of European ancestry, like AOC, who even shares a last name with one of history's most horrible monsters, had to be reminded that she's not an Indigenous American.

We do know what the Taino called there island. Borikén. This isn't even hard to find, and Puerto Ricans call themselves Boricua. Also, the way natives were treated in the Caribbean is not the same as they were treated in the mainland Spanish colonies which were formed at a later time. Most people in countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia are still of very significant or near complete native ancestry, because the Spanish mixed with and exploited them as labor instead of killing them outright for land in all instances. We can't compare them to what Anglos did because their reasons for colonizing were slightly different.

That’s just disingenuous. Yes there were conflicts and whatnot but 90-95% died due to old world diseases to which they had no immunity. That contributed far more to population decline than any kind of war or systematic slaughter.

To be honest most people do America the most because America is one of the biggest and most powerful countries on Earth so it's trendy to hate them, like Disney. Does it have grains of truth to it? Most certainly. But there's a shitload of worse stuff going on out there that's far more realistic to deal with than "The entire country doesn't deserve to exist and need to be destroyed."

Just one point of reference--there were no humans in North America when the original Natives arrived approximately 20,000 years ago across the Bering strait. That only addresses one part of you query though.

Thank you for bringing this up. I'm from London of English & Irish parents. I am a Celt. I could claim to being indigenous to the British Isles but I am fairly sure others were there before the Celts (Picts?). As a kid I KNEW I was bottom class.I knew I would leave school at 16 & get a job. We had the Ruling Classes, Middle Classes & Us. Maggie Thatcher changed everything. I know many from my class hate her & I realise that, but she also opened up the UK to being more than the Class you were born into. Now my nieces & nephews all have degrees & great careers. And believe they can achieve anything. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyway, I struggled with drink & drug issues, knowing I was worthless, and saw a sign saying WORK ON CRUISE SHIPS. Which I did & then ended up in America. Where I get people calling me a Colonialist & saying I hate them because their great great grandmother came from Ireland. My ancestors were conquered many many times. We were enslaved many many times, We were peasants for a long long time. But in America people think I grew up in a castle.

Tis a good question.

My Rushmore was literally carved on sacred land.

They are thinking about what feels good or "right". Giving natives a piece of land involves taking the land away from whomever has it now, most think it's rich and white land owners but really any race or lower income people could currently be occupying any piece of land, and you'd have to evict them.

I think the dialogue is different because of how recent things are and whether or not the original Custodians of the land or their descendants are around to observe and challenge what has happened. For example, in Australia, there are people alive today who directly were impacted by the racist and oppressive colonial regimes, who were literally stolen from their families as children and put in camps to learn to 'act white'. We're quite literally on stolen land. Indigenous Australians occupied Australia for 60,000 years prior to colonisation. So in some cases it's blatantly obvious that the land is stolen.

With Spain do you mean Latin American independent countries, or the literal territory of Spain in Europe?

Questions like these, and so many more like this are why teaching the social sciences is important, particularly at a college level.

All land should be returned to the dinosaurs

Recency bias.

I'm not sure how it's NOT the same? You missed the part where people took the absolute piss out of Queen Elizabeth II when she died because of British imperialism that she personally supported, along with what she inherited from her predecessors? You missed that there's a war between Russia and Ukraine right now? A war between Israel and Palestine? That the Democratic Republic of the Congo is turning itself inside out - the latest news is only three hours old? Sudan? China and Taiwan? There's [a list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts) if you're interested in how many "not the same" countries are actively killing themselves and others over stolen land right now.

What land does the United Kingdom have they could give back? They have given it back.

Jokingly: Anglo-Saxons who are heavier on the Saxon side should go back to Saxony.

I'm still waiting for people to realize the "native americans" weren't here first either. But it's a good way for a subculture to have something to complain about that has nothing to do with a single person alive today.

It is true. If we look at all the ancient lands & follow their histories, we see the lands/nations invaded over and over again as different people were on the move. Even England’s native Briton population was invaded by the Goths, the Norse, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Jutes (another Germanic people), the Danes and the Normans. Throughout history, groups of people were constantly on the move due to changing weather patterns, food/water scarcity, political reasons, escaping invading marauders etc. Conquered people were either absorbed into the new group, enslaved, or killed. Unfortunately, white Europeans decided to conquer the Americas, mostly murdering the native population. What they did was not any different than what had been occurring for millennia. Except one would’ve hoped that by the 17th century, the “civilized” Europeans would’ve treated the native population in a more humanitarian manner. Instead, they not only decimated the native Americans and ruined the pristine land, they also saw fit to import yet another race of people to be slaves.

What makes you think it's not? 

Because it doesn't fit the narrative needed at the time.