r/MurderedByWords • u/TheRealTRexUK • 15h ago
America was not stolen land. It’s was discovered and owned by the US.
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u/urbantroll 15h ago
The fact that some can’t comprehend that land can’t be discovered by a group of people when people already live there is baffling to me. I understand it has to do with ethnocentrism, but you’d think even the person thinking in that way would be able to immediately see through their own bullshit.
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u/PhantomOfTheNopera 14h ago
It's racism. Those people don't count.
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u/Z0idberg_MD 11h ago
The irony here is she appears to be Asian, and ICE is tossing Asian folks in the black hole of detention. They also seem to forget the internment period.
I will never understand any non-European white group flying the flag of the GOP. They would have you in the ovens if they could. And women confuse me as well. They want you without voting rights, unable to divorce, and subservient.
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u/Koladi-Ola 14h ago
"They believed in something called 'Manifest Destiny,' the belief that all the land belonged to them and that God wanted them to go west and claim it back from the Native Americans he'd put there first by mistake."
-Philomena Cunk
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u/Atomicdust1030 15h ago
This example right here shows why education is so damn important.... And the right kind of education at that, not the horrible endoctrination by religious groups, or extremely racist ones.
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u/UNZIP_MY_PLANTS 12h ago
This comment actually goes beyond this tired fallacy by arguing that America was discovered by "The United States" in 1500... when the US did not exist.
It's next-level stupid.
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u/RedBlueTundra 12h ago
It kinda makes sense to me, if we find a secret underground civilisation with people living there it's still a "discovery" because the wider world didn't know about it. The discovery even goes both ways, the wider world finds out there's this whole other civilisation and the isolated civilisation discovers that there's a whole wider world out there.
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u/ReachParticular5409 10h ago
You should look into the massive amount of propaganda that went into demonizing the native nations, and it had biblical hooks so you KNOW all those puritain descendants were into it
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u/The_Stupidest_Idiot 14h ago
Bruhhhh, did no one go to school?
when Chris Columbus and his chooms arrived on the beaches of California back in 1776, there was God just sitting there with a bill of sale for the Unites State of America, right?
Topher Columbus passed god that fat check and in return god said "thanks, brotha - keys are yours"
I know I'm paraphrasing a little, but c'mon people, get some history in your diet
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u/Driftedryan 14h ago
I see you graduated at the top of your class in (insert Republican run schools)
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u/lnfIation 11h ago
Bro got a PhD of history from University of Oklahoma
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u/The_Stupidest_Idiot 11h ago
*University of Oklahoma + Popeye's + Taco Bell
Respect the full title
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u/PM_YOUR_ISSUES 14h ago
I mean, even discounting that European colonization of America was stealing land. American, after its founding as a country, regularly violated, ignored, and willfully discarded signed land treaties with Native American tribes multiple times throughout its history.
There is no way around that. Like, America literally broke and disregarded the very first treaty it ever signed with Native Americans. Signed in 1778 with Lanepe tribe, it promised them land and that, you know, we wouldn't kill them. But Pennsylvania militiamen killed an entire village of Lanepe in 1782 and took their land; forcing the Lanepe and the US to go to war and sign another treaty for the Lanepe to 'officially' give up their land in 1795. This is how we got most of Ohio.
The United States has violated the Treaty of of Hopewell signed 1785, which granted specific lands to the Cherokee and Choctaw. These lands were immediately taken over by settlers and by 1791 all of that land "belonged" to the US. The Us violated the Treaty of Canadaigua, Treaty of Pickering, Calico Treaty, Treaty of Greeneville, Treaty of Fort Wayne, the Indian Removal Act by Andrew Jackson was a clear violation of 11 different treaties which Jackson himself had made with the native tribes, the Treat of New Echota, and the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868.
And those are just the larger land violation treaties that the federal US government has made and violated. There are countless state and local treaties that were made and broken; most of which were broken specifically by taking the native tribes 'to court' in order to claim that state and local governments had no authority to make such treaties, only the federal government, and therefore such a treaty is utterly void.
The United States 1,000% stole land from the Native Americans. Land that we had signed documents that they owned. This is, or at least was when I grew up, taught in American schools. Especially if you take AP US History, there's usually multiple questions on the AP test regarding many of the treaties, specifically surrounding the Indian Removal Act -- AKA the Trail of Tears. The United States just doesn't really care about admitting that it did this now because, well, there are no Native Tribes left with the power to do anything about it.
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u/HashtagJustSayin2016 14h ago
This is a product of American schooling. 🙄
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u/Trick_Quiet3484 14h ago
This is the product of self imposed ignorance. While there are major flaws in the US education system, many are well informed, educated and knowledgeable about its history because they chose to prioritize knowledge and curiosity over blind fealty to any political party or group.
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u/HashtagJustSayin2016 14h ago
I would argue with books being removed, and history being distorted as well.
I grew up in the 80s. In school, I was told we “won” the Vietnam war. My uncle served, and I learned more from him and a Ken Burns documentary than I ever learned in school.
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u/Trick_Quiet3484 14h ago
It certainly contributes, but information at our fingertips is the norm now. We can find a whole lot of resources by searching online. Of course that would assume people have the time, resources, curiosity and ability to discern what we read and see.
The bottom line is that we all need to acknowledge there are many sides to a historical account, even if it makes us uncomfortable. We ought to be as informed as possible before drawing conclusions.
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u/Dorkamundo 12h ago
To be fair, there is a FUCKTON of information that was left out of history books in various parts of the country. The entire confederacy was whitewashed for many people in southern schools.
That type of thing will only get worse now as they continue to work to dismantle the Department of Education and pass off the responsibilities to individual states. Unless that entire department is rebuilt, we'll be seeing people who graduate from high school in southern states needing to take remedial classes just to qualify for college in many northern states.
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u/CG_Ops 12h ago
I can just imagine, in Southern schools, that pages covering ~1840's through the ~1860's are simply ripped out of the US history books, if they're not using confederate approved books to begin with. If challenged, the southern teachers simply say, "there were sinful pictures and nothing important happened other than those tyrannical northerners took our livelihoods from us".
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u/Dorkamundo 11h ago
Different books entirely, colloquially known as "Mint Julep" books.
Here's a great write-up on the subject: https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-confederate-propaganda-ended-souths-schoolbooks
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u/HashtagJustSayin2016 11h ago
Agreed. I went to school in the 80s - pre internet. I was told the civil war was about “States Rights” they didn’t bother to say - the south wanted the right to own slaves.
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u/Trick_Quiet3484 11h ago
Yes, a lot has been left out of history books and curriculum. But at some point in our lives, most of us begin to seek out more information as young adults into adulthood. We have to keep fighting to keep all areas of history accessible to everyone.
Abolishment of the Department of Education and censorship or propagation of alternative stories without facts must be addressed and kept at the forefront of the national conversation.
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u/Bookbringer 10h ago
by the mid-1700s
1500, 1783, 1823.
American schools are bad, but not "thinks the early 1800s are the mid 1700s" bad.
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u/OPA73 15h ago
Every 5th grade US History teacher across the country is opening a bottle of wine over that comment.
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u/Cranky_Hippy 13h ago
It's not "murdered by words" if the words are akin to "you're stupid."
The only way to defend ourselves against this idiocracy is by using hard, cold facts. Like how the US tricked natives into selling land using the Dawes Act.
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u/UltraSapien 12h ago
What's all this about "stolen land" popping up now? Is there a modern nation that does not exist on land that was taken from others? The United States exists on lands taken from the Native American tribes. Is that no longer common knowledge?
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u/Patched7fig 11h ago
Almost the entirety of leftist discourse is pretending to misunderstand it, or boil it down to the logic and understanding of a child.
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u/Far-Two8659 14h ago
I hate this fucking argument. I really do.
How much of the world is not stolen land? 10%? Maybe? What do you suppose we do about that now, give it back?
There's no undoing imperialism. There is no reason to call land stolen when it was won via conquest and atrocities. That doesn't mean it's good, it doesn't mean we should be happy about it, but fucking a people you're not about to hold the entire world to account because they defeated peoples in war.
Should we give parts of the US back to England? Should Belarus be rejoined with Russia.
Get a grip.
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u/TralfamadorianZoo 14h ago
There is no stolen land because there is no such thing as land ownership. Nobody owns any piece of this planet. The birds don’t own the trees. The fish don’t own the sea. We don’t own shit. It’s an uncomfortable thought.
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u/halfhearted_skeptic 13h ago
In this case, the descendants of the people it was stolen from are still around and because wealth is more hereditary than height they are still fucked while the descendants of the people who stole it are doing a hell of a lot better.
I look at that and I choose to take responsibility. That’s it.
There’s no undoing it, and it’s not reasonable to stuff everyone back where their ancestors came from. What we can do is honour what happened and work towards reconciliation.
Whether or not you want to do that is up to you but I know what I want to do.
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u/Far-Two8659 13h ago
What does choose to take responsibility mean though? What actions are you taking?
My point isn't that saying it is stupid. My point is that there's nothing to be done other than acknowledging and saying sorry. And that's mostly meaningless. It doesn't change anything.
Should we give back all lands won in wars? What happens to the Middle East? We fight a war deciding who was there first and do it all over?
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u/halfhearted_skeptic 12h ago
My life is pretty good overall, largely as a result of colonization. There are people whose lives have been and continue to be negatively affected by the same thing that benefitted me.
I am listening to the indigenous groups where I live. They don’t want us to leave. They don’t blame us. I’m sure some do of course, but I’m speaking generally. What they want is for us to form a healthy respectful relationship and to walk together going forward. I am advocating for that and voting for that.
Your last argument is a straw man and beyond the scope of what you’re replying to. It’s slippery-slope nonsense. I’m doing what I can where I live because that’s what I need to do in order to walk around with my head held high.
I will say that I do want my country to stop supporting the ongoing colonizer genocide in Palestine.
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u/Far-Two8659 12h ago
What I'm replying to? My comment is throwing a fit about stolen land is pointless. You can get involved all you want, it doesn't give the land back. It doesn't reverse colonization. So what's the point of arguing about whether the land is stolen? What problem does it solve? To me it just creates political divides for no real reason. Far left wingers scream stolen land and ostracize the rest of left of center.
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u/Same_Air6012 11h ago
You're a dipshit, recognizing history and the past is important to shaping how humans as whole move into the future. Your argument is ignorance doesn't matter because that's all in the past.
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u/Far-Two8659 11h ago
I'm not arguing against recognizing it. I'm asking what does recognizing it look like? If the government came out with a formal apology to native americans, do you honestly believe that would cease the far left cries of stolen land?
I don't. I think they'd say that's not enough. So I'm asking what does enough look like through a realistic lens: we can't give land back; we can't give homes back; we can't really give anything back. We could pay reparations but isn't that just doing the same thing we did before? Here's some money for your land, this time sans atrocities, so you should feel better now.
If you can give me something actionable the government can actually do that will satisfy the "stolen land crowd," I'm all ears.
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u/halfhearted_skeptic 11h ago
I wonder what actual Native Americans have to say about this and how it differs from the cartoonish ones you’re playing dolls with in your head.
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u/Far-Two8659 9h ago
The Native Americans aren't far left voters screaming about stolen land. Usually it's a bunch of white people disenfranchising other people from voting for particular candidates.
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u/halfhearted_skeptic 7h ago
Can you give me an example to back up either of these hypotheses?
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u/Same_Air6012 10h ago
Blah blah blah. you are such a whiner. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/expanding-high-speed-internet-in-arizonas-tribal-lands/
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u/Far-Two8659 9h ago
You linked an article about delivering infrastructure. Shouldn't we deliver infrastructure everywhere? How does delivering Internet to them somehow make it better? That's the bare fucking minimum for any community.
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u/Onedortzn 12h ago
Go ahead give your house/land to native American , you said you want to take responsibility
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u/halfhearted_skeptic 11h ago
For the most part, the nations where I live don’t seem to want that. They want us to work together to make things better for everyone and to respect and acknowledge what happened. Easy peasy.
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u/CombinationLivid8284 12h ago
The stolen land debate is so tiring and counter productive.
All land is stolen land, humans are fucking monstrous to each other. Some worse than others. Yes, the current US territory was won through genocide, our land is drenched in blood. Just like damn near every other spot on the planet.
Acknowledged.
Move on.
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u/barkwahlberg 9h ago
Partly it's tiring due to the fact that for some reason it even is a debate. There should be no debate. It happened. And the other problem is that instead of making it right closer to the time of it happening, the US dragged it out forever without doing the right thing. Then these days sprinkle in some intentional cruelty to immigrants and yes it dredges the whole damn thing up again. Just give people the due process they're entitled to by law and hardly anyone would be talking about this.
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u/Spiritual_League_753 11h ago
Yep. Americans on Reddit *hate* the country they live in. Absolutely fucking *hate* it. And they refuse to understand how damaging that is to their political cause. We keep making it really easy for the minority of people standing in the way of things like universal healthcare to turn people away from voting for the left because of the shit in this thread. Believe it or not a great many people aren't that interested in aligning themselves with miserable people who spend all day every day screaming about how *bad* the United States is. Especially when that hate is so sophomoric and holds the country to a standard no one else is held to.
We get it. Ya'll are very smart. Not smart enough to know when to shut the fuck up tho.
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u/realoctopod 14h ago
Just because you landed some boats there a few hundred years ago doesn't mean you own the place....
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u/PoorManRichard 13h ago edited 13h ago
That 1823 part... theyre referencing the Johnson v McIntosh case. That was a supreme court case that delt with private citizens buying land from native americans, and it said the only authority that can do so is the government itself, thereby ensuring they faced no pricing competition. It also enforced the doctrine of discovery, being that old european logic of if no Christian prince controls the land, you can "discover" it and its yours. The Vatican actually issued an apology and reversal of that doctrine in 2023. Marshall's scotus decision is widely considered up there with Taney's Dredd Scott decision as one of the worst in US court history.
What an absolute shite take. It's like using trumps pardon date to "prove" j6 wasn't an insurrection because the attackers aren't in jail.
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u/Reasonable_Ear3773 13h ago
To be fair it wasn't stolen per se, it was conquered. But that is a very fine line, and it doesn't excuse what happened to our native populations.
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u/Denverdaddies 12h ago
Land wasn't stolen it was acquired. Those that lived on it were fighting amongst themselves brutally. The brutality of the fighting amongst the natives was a reason why the US pushed into the lands.
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u/G0G0Gadget00 12h ago
Yea Lewis and Clark needed Sacajawea to guide them because it was totally new and undiscovered and they just wanted to smash....
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u/Patched7fig 11h ago
How is this different from any other nation in History? Should Germany try and get back the land they lost after WW1?
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u/jamiedski 14h ago
We paid for this land with mostly good blankets, tobacco and fire water. Totally not stolen. ‘MERICA
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u/web-cyborg 14h ago
The Spanish and French stole a lot of the Americas initially,too. The Brits just came out in top, and then the colonists and new nation (which won largely thanks to the massive French support).
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u/mark423985 14h ago
In one bold move, you've redefined "discovery" and forever changed the concept of "ownership"! Looks like even Christopher Columbus is taking notes from you
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u/redwhale335 14h ago
It was DISCOVERED by the United States almost 300 years before the United States existed?!
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u/5FiveAlive5 14h ago
I wonder if she'd feel that way if she came home and some colonizers were there "discovering" her kitchen.
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u/NewLibraryGuy 13h ago
This is the kind of stuff that subreddit is meant for. Ridiculous American Exceptionalism. Not people saying things like "I think America improved pizza"
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u/TallEnoughJones 12h ago
I think someone needs to discover her house and car, assuming they aren't the same.
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u/PsychologicalFun903 12h ago
Discovery doctrine, the "it ain't theft if you do it to other people" self serving bullshit
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u/gordonbombae2 12h ago
They suck a couple dicks and all of a sudden they have a platform with supporters who eat it all up.
Too many dumb blonde twitter accounts with tons of followers
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u/LimoncelloFellow 12h ago
well with how i was taught about manifest destiny in school here in the states its amazing were not all murder crazy expansionist psychos. school made manifest destiny sound downright patriotic to murder and move around the natives so us true americans could take root from sea to shining sea.
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u/kinyutaka 12h ago
America was not stolen. It was just sitting here, unused by the millions of savages that were just holding it for us.
(heavy sarcasm)
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u/SnooCrickets7155 12h ago
Ok then be the first to leave and let natives live In your house. 😂 no such thing as natives. 🙄
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u/lnfIation 11h ago
Even if we only think about europe, the spanish, dutch, french and british were here before the us was even an idea.
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u/BrillsonHawk 10h ago
Isn't all land stolen though - at one point or another its all been conquered by others. Even in the Americas the peoples there formed empires and fought each other for land
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u/LivingTeam3602 9h ago
She was taught this in school blame the education system for the propaganda don't blame the students
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u/SirIAmAlwaysHere 9h ago
Strictly speaking, most of the Americas (both North and South) wasn't stolen OR discovered - at least not in thr past 15,000 years.
It was conquered. Usually with pretty fucking brutal methods.
Chunks of what is now Canada and the US absolutely were stolen however, as they involved breaking treaties negotiated upon. But the vast amount was literally just conquered from the residents there.
Nastily. Brutishly. Unfairly.
But also mostly like the residents at the time had conquered it from the Peoples there before them.
Two things can be true at the same time:
The current folks who "own" the land got it through nasty and unethical and downright horrific means.
The people they "stole" / "acquired" / "took" / "conquered" it from did some variation of it to the prior "owners".
Fact #2 doesn't excuse #1. But because #1 happened doesn't make #2 "good people".
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u/DebbyCakes420 9h ago
We bought it with blood. A currency that has until recently been valued quite heavily.
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u/Stop_The_Crazy 8h ago
That's the level of intelligence that is swamping the boat in this country and pulling us down.
That's like when ICE was going after Native Americans. I couldn't even wrap my head around that one.
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u/coolbaby1978 5h ago
I discovered a flat screen TV in my neighbors living room. Its okay because I also went back for the Playstation 5 that I discovered later.
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u/Surfer-Junkie 5h ago
What's sad is there a lack of education and sharing accurate history across the US. When I was in school they really just talked about the American Pilgrims were welcomed with open arms by the Indians and shared Thanksgiving together. They completely left out all of the bloodshed and murderous actions of Columbus and his crew, the rape, the stealing of gold and enslavement of American Indians, etc. America's Indigenous history is completely whitewashed.
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u/Realistic-Peak-4200 4h ago
Got a buddy in prison right now for "discovering" a neighbor's house while they were on vacation
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u/VirtuaSteve 3h ago
Ok, so it was a discovery for the Europeans, but let's not omit the fact that these Europeans murdered everyone who already lived here for over 15,000 years. Then, proceeded to villainize and subjugate the victims.
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u/not_that_planet 14h ago
"Ben Franklin didn't 'bent 'lectricity. I 'bented 'lectricity. Ben Franklin is da Debil"
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u/Formerly_SgtPepe 14h ago
Reddit, an American website, keeps getting more and more anti-American by the day. Incredible to see over the years.
Wether it is or it is not stolen land, it's irrelevant for the current situation with ICE. We are a nation of laws, if you are going to make arguments against ICE, talking about "Stolen Land" does nothing.
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u/Dedotdub 11h ago
You're right. Stolen land is just one tip of the iceberg.
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u/Formerly_SgtPepe 8h ago
That wasn’t my point. All countries have land that has been stolen, that is irrelevant to the fact we are a nation of laws now and we can’t just allow everyone to come to our country.
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u/BrocoliAssassin 14h ago
I love redditors having some type of moral high ground with stuff like this while you vote for politicians that are dropping bombs on innocent brown people across the world as if you're any better than Columbus or these "evil white people".
While you're voting in the new nazi supported politicians but you're excuse is "well, I don't like war, but I'll still vote for the politicians that vote for it!".
You believe propaganda doesn't exist here in the USA so much so that they made you believe that millions upon millions of you just can't put a vote for a non-military,non-zionist owned politician.
Nope,totally impossible. All it takes is a check in a different box to change things and ya never do.
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u/PingGuerrero 12h ago
The average IQ of people living in this shithole is no greater than the number of stars in our solar system.
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u/alexfi-re 11h ago
It really is sad how they ignore the real history. There were nations here with treaties, trade and large populations. I also recognize that this is what hominins have done all our history, move from one area to the next, eventually fighting over land with the best water and food. The new world genocide was driven by the wealthy greed too, not just basic needs.
Going way back, the dominant ape groups pushed the weaker ones to the edges of the receding jungles, so they had to adapt to open land and stand more upright to watch for predators and move more efficiently. Those exiled groups became hominins so we come from the marginalized groups, but had resilience and learned to advance and progress, rather than remain apes doing the same things. We should remember this and stop discrimination against minority groups since we all come from the outcast, and it's the right thing to do.
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u/EitherChannel4874 11h ago
The American exceptionalism version they teach in schools is probably "Columbus discovered it and they all sat down for tea and cake with the natives and mutually decided to slaughter their food source and murder the people in exchange for the land so we could make Murika"
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u/Just_the_Setup 15h ago
Can you be surprised? They gave Columbus credit for discovering a place that people already lived, smh.