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Comment by faitswulff | Hacker News Reader

A lot of comments arguing about the specifics of land ownership in this thread. I think the point of the website is that it's not our land unless you're indigenous.

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Do the Alaskan natives own their land? I ask because they represent a separate and later migration. The original Alaskan natives are no longer around to dispute the matter as they were replaced by those who now are now called indigenous. This is reflected in their languages, which are unrelated to other indigenous languages in North and South America.

Well, the ones who "now are called indigenous" actually do exist and are alive, contrary to popular belief and government intervention. And the point is that they do not own their land, settlers do at the moment, and that indigenous folks have a claim preceding Western style land ownership.

But they just stole the land in a similar manner that Europeans stole the land from Natives. If someone steals your car, and then has that car stolen from them - it would be strange to set up a movement to have the car returned to the penultimate thief instead of the original owner.

Migration in prehistoric times does not equate to the well-documented genocide and theft by Europeans, and you're misapplying a principle in order to marginalize the rights of an oppressed peoples who are, as I mentioned earlier, still alive.

We do not return cars to dead people.

To Godwin this, imagine that Nazis succeeded in exterminating every Jew in the world. Would it then be acceptable for the Nazis to keep their gold/jewelry/art/etc?

If the answer is no, would the Nazis have the right to keep their gold/jewelry/art/etc if they waited a few hundred years until the world noticed that the Holocaust happened?

Bad example. Jewish people got Israel as a misbegotten reparation. Indigenous people who are again still alive and deserve reparations are getting their rights and treaties trampled instead. Their claim to the land is not a thought experiment.

Does England not belong to the English, given that the Anglo-Saxons displaced the Celtic Britons during the middle ages?

What is the definition of indigenous?

It is everyone’s land if it is not owned by a specific person or entity. That is what is referred to as the commons.

In fact, it is "our" land, by right of conquest. Just as England belongs to the English by right of conquest.

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