Billie Eilish joins history dunces wailing about ‘stolen’ land in USA to Israel – but elsewhere?

Billie Eilish joins history dunces wailing about ‘stolen’ land in USA to Israel – but elsewhere?

Land acknowledgements have become de rigueur at commencement ceremonies, film and music award events, and other programs. Something like this: 

“We acknowledge that the land on which we gather is the stolen and occupied territory of the Indigenous First Nation People who stewarded the land through many generations before White European colonialists seized it.”

Many take these acknowledgements quite seriously. Indeed, professors and employees have been disciplined for mocking them, because employers find mockery “offensive” and “disruptive” – unlike their reactions to “mostly peaceful” Antifa, BLM and pro-Palestinian harassment and riots.

When accepting her Grammy, singer-songwriter Billie Eilish used her onstage opportunity to criticize Trump's immigration policies, saying “no one is illegal on stolen land.” Unless, of course, someone tried to enter her gated community and assert ownership over or enjoy a sandwich in her million-dollar mansion.

The actual “rightful” land ownership question is greatly complicated by history and reality – in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas in the past; and with Ukraine, Tibet and Taiwan today.

These lands and nations were not stolen the way a burglar grabs jewelry. They were typically purchased … or taken through war and conquest … across the globe, throughout human history, continuing today.

We might therefore ask: At what points do early and subsequent conquests, and thus land titles, begin and end? Who has today’s legitimate title? Who decides? Should all claims be treated the same – or should some have more “legitimacy” than others? Consider these abbreviated histories. 

Europe has been a battleground for millennia – over fiefdoms, states, countries and empires. Pax Romana once governed the continent and Britain, before the Visigoths, Celts and other........

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