Some people talk about “stolen land”, usually in relation to the ‘settler-colonialist’ states like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and also Israel.
Is this a meaningful concept though? Do any groups live on land that is rightfully “theirs” who didn’t ultimately acquire it through violence and conquest at some point?
Why did more recent white settler-colonialists 'steal' the land, but no one would ever say 'settler-colonialists' like the Anglo-Saxons or Han Chinese "stole" land they currently occupy?
Irredentist claims made by nations, such as Russian claims on Crimea and Novorossiya, 'German' Sudetenland, or those which sparked the Balkan War, are generally viewed as regressive people ‘living in the past’. To those without an emotional investment, it's just one group arbitrarily deciding they are the rightful owners of land that has changed hands countless times.
But progressives who favour the ‘stolen land’ terminology see this claim as as noble (as of course do the irredentists).
It’s not the case that many of the people who had their land’s ‘stolen’ had been there since time immemorial.
Many people will look at white South Africans as being the descendants of people who ‘stole’ land from its rightful African owners, such as the Zulus.
White settlers did indeed displace African pastoralists, the Khoikhoi, and hunter-gatherers, the San (“bushmen”) but so did the Zulus. Moreover, in many places they were doing it at exactly the same time (See
Bantu expansion and the
mfecane).
White settlers had actually been in possession of the Cape Colony for longer than many of the Bantu-speaking groups had been in possession of what we would now see unequivocally as “their” land.
In places like America and New Zealand, white people conquered/subjugated peoples who had often been in possession of “their” land for less than a couple of centuries, and who had acquired it by force (even genocide) too.
And while it is true that some indigenous groups didn't have the same concept of land ownership, they certainly used violence to be able to use desirable territories and to prevent others from using them.
Is there something fundamentally more ethical and legitimate about 'indigenous' people violently acquiring their land from other 'indigenous' peoples? Or is it like the irredentist who picks an arbitrary time in history which defines who owns the land in perpetuity?
I guess some people might say that some lands are “stolen” because treaties signed were not honoured. They weren’t honoured anywhere at that time though beyond their usefulness. War was an instrument of policy the world over, and treaties were temporary until one side thought they could improve their status by breaking it. It's not ethical, but might made right everywhere, including among the people conquered/subjugated.
Just to be clear, this obviously doesn’t prevent us from acknowledging myriad historical atrocities (although it’s not like any one group had the monopoly on these).
It also doesn’t preclude the need to identify and acknowledge the legacies of these actions or create initiatives to improve the lives of the descendent of previous ‘owners’ of the land in the present and future.
It is simply about whether using a term like "stolen land" is useful or misleading.
If pretty much all land has been acquired by violent means though, what, if anything, qualifies some land as “stolen” and the rest as legitimately occupied by its rightful owners? Are irredentist claims also legitimate? Is there a difference?
Does the concept of 'stolen land' help us to understand the world better? Is it just arbitrary and ideological and thus obfuscate more than it informs? Something else?
Thoughts?
