Jonathan Cook wrote
JR wrote:

They are "owed" their stolen land. But since "we" stole it fair and
square and all, the most they have a prayer of ever getting--even in a

If you start thinking about what it _really_ means to "own"
land, issues like this can be seen in wildly different lights...

You're right. Which is why Indians tend to regard issues like this as
unspeakable tragedies, while modern European-Americans--products of a
highly mobile society--think it's simply another thing that happened
long ago and that the Indians should "just get over it, already."

Native Americans' problems with their new friends began in large part from
basic differences in the notion of ownership of the land. Read the
histories. They were almost always willing to share at first, to see the
other guys' side of things. They simply couldn't conceive that the
newcomers would want exclusive (and exclusionary) use of ALL the land.
Well, all but a tiny fraction of the land, a fraction that grew smaller
and smaller with every new "agreement," a fraction into which the Indians
would be herded and confined, a fraction often far from their own natal,
ancestral lands, which were imbued with cultural and religious
significance mostly unimaginable to the Europeans.

JR