Am I the only person who thinks that ancestral claims to land are by definition repugnant and I should not particularly care what indigenous people in North America think of land acknowledgments?
Replies
Nope. There are lots of other people like you. Maybe some day people will arrive at your door, move into your home, claim all your stuff as theirs, and then kick you out. But don’t worry, no one will care about what your opinion on the matter is, either.
aug 26, 2025, 11:11 pm • 0 0 • view
I would hope that people don't hold it against the great-great-great-grandchikdren of the people who wronged me, which would be the good-faith analogy. If you think my stance means I think atrocities are fine, you're a moron.
aug 27, 2025, 12:54 am • 0 0 • view
No. It’s not a matter of grand children. It’s a matter of a nation paying its debts. Same for slavery reparations. If the consequences of national policy and in the case of America its very founding, means certain peoples have been damaged and disadvantaged for centuries. They are owed.
aug 27, 2025, 1:00 am • 0 0 • view
They're not owed land that other people who weren't born yet when their ancestors were wronged now live on. The claim is that only people born to certain other peoplehave a valid claim to live where they do, and the rest of us are branded as stateless thieves for our ancestors' sins.
aug 27, 2025, 1:30 am • 0 0 • view
You do you, but I don't believe people should be treated differently because of who their parents were or the color of their skin. And I certainly don't believe in collective guilt based on ethnicity.
aug 27, 2025, 1:31 am • 0 0 • view
You are a white man, aren’t you? From the people who arrive in America and then eventually become American citizens to the people who are born at this hour on this day, all of them are expected to contribute to paying off America’s 37 trillion dollar debt. So why not for slaves and indigenous?
aug 27, 2025, 1:39 am • 0 0 • view
My race and gender are none of your business and not germane to the conversation, but it's telling that you think they are. Government should help provide for all who need it, and, yes, all who can afford it should pay taxes to help it run and pay interest on the federal debt.
aug 27, 2025, 2:15 am • 0 0 • view
Dear unidentified white male, It seems you are part of neither group I mentioned, but you feel empowered to declare what those two groups should receive and if what they think is correct or not. And that’s pretty much what white men did to them that created these problems in the first place.
aug 27, 2025, 2:38 am • 0 0 • view
I never arrogated to myself any authority to declare what anyone "should receive," let alone whether anything anyone thinks is "correct," so no, nothing I did bears the slightest resemblance to the actions of colonizers or enslavers even under your weird trivialization of what those entailed.
aug 27, 2025, 11:09 am • 0 0 • view
Telling someone who comes out against hereditary land tenure that they are basically the same as an enslaver is a solid sign that you've completely lost the plot, even without your guesswork about whether my race disentitles me to moral views.
aug 27, 2025, 11:11 am • 1 0 • view
Ideally we would reduce the principal on that debt, too, but that's a matter of fiscal policy, not a moral obligation, nor does it have anything to do with "slaves and indigenous."
aug 27, 2025, 2:15 am • 0 0 • view
In fact, it's even worse, since it wasn't many Americans' and Canadians' own ancestors who wronged the Native Americans, just people with generally similar skin color.
aug 27, 2025, 1:33 am • 0 0 • view
But yeah, by all means let's work to overcome the disadvantages people face because of how their ancestors were treated and their ethnicities. Land acknowledgments don't even pretend to accomplish that.
aug 27, 2025, 1:34 am • 0 0 • view