Billie Eilish joined Bad Bunny in speaking out against ICE during her acceptance speech at the Grammy Awards, slamming the organization after winning song of the year for “Wildflower.”
The singer was bleeped as she said “fuck ICE,” giving strong commentary during the speech. “Thank you so much. I can’t believe this. Everyone else in this category is so amazing. I love you so much,” she said, standing next to her brother Finneas. “I feel so honored every time I get to be in this room. As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land. And, yeah, it’s just really hard to know what to say and what to do right now, and I feel really hopeful in this room, and I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter, and the people matter, and fuck ICE. That’s all I’m going to say. Sorry. Thank you so much.”
True, but still some land is significantly more stolen than others.
Like what
Name a culture which hasn’t stolen land or had slaves
What? This is getting confusing.
Yes probably all cultures had slaves or stole land at some point in time. (This is true, depending on whether you see cultures as fixed in time: are current day Egyptians of the same culture as ancient Egyptians? When does culture “restart”? Who decides this?)
Let me ask you: is there no difference between let’s say a Native American claiming his land was stolen (hundreds of years ago and his people massacred, and he’s now a second rank citizen on his own land), and for instance a white European claiming his land was stolen (by the Romans? During WW2? I would not know what he means honestly, especially because he is now part of a nation state, a first class citizen).
Yes all land was stolen. But this is not an absolute. You wouldn’t agree the Native American had his land quite a bit more relatively stolen?
My point is you can’t invalidate the claim of native peoples just by going “meh, so what? All land was technically stolen at some point”. Some people can make a more legitimate claim their land was stolen than others.
and how do you rank the ‘stolen-ness’ of land?
is squatting stealing land?
Can’t really rank it, it’s a subjective statement. My gut tells me there’s a difference between for instance a Native American stating his land is stolen and a, just an example, white European stating his land is stolen.
My gut thinks there IS a way to rank these statements, even though it’s technically true all land was stolen at some point and the whole nation state fairy tale is completely arbitrary.
That’s just my gut though, it doesn’t agree with genocide
I can rank it, but it would depend on the context and the evidence involved.
I used to work professional in land policy. Land ownership is ultimately about the legal system and who posses the ‘deed’ to the land. Governments are the ones who control this ultimately. They can create, take, and steal land via the law. And different government define land and the rights to land, differently. In China you can’t own land, you only lease it. In America, you own the land and everything underneath it to the earth’s core. Other countries have different laws and definitions.
Proof of theft requires proof of previous ownership, as a starting point. To prove that land was stolen you’d have to prove original ownership, and the series of events that lead to it’s loss of ownership and their illegality or illegitimacy. the further back you go the messier it gets. land records from the past 50 years are quite clear. land records from 200+ years ago, not so much. It’s basically impossible to prove any of it if say, the town or municipality in dispute, had it’s records destroyed in a fire or somesuch, perhaps even maliciously.
Plenty of Europeans have land-conflicts that go back centuries and involve murder. There are also conflicts amongst indigenous people’s over land right and land use and tribal recognition. It’s vastly more complex than ‘hey white people give us our land back because your ancestors stole it from our ancestors’. My ancestors arrived in America in the 1910/20s, personally, and never left the area of the original 16th century colonies, many of which were established with peaceful agreements of the natives and were not stolen at all.
Oh and there are also all sorts of laws about default ownership. My sister owns a home where their neighbor build a fence about 2 feet into their property line. If my sister doesn’t force the neighbor to move the fence 2 feet back, then in 10 years legally, their neighbor now owns the land. Is that theft? Legally, it isn’t. She can ask the neighbor to move it, and he hasn’t. She has to now threaten to sue them and have the courts legally force the neighbor to move the fence. If he can legally drag it on for 8 more years, he gets the land. The law involved in is a state law. It doesn’t apply in my state. My state requires neighbors to co-own fences along property lines, which hers doesn’t. Hence why their neighbor built this fence without properly surveying and realizing it wasn’t on his property.
The general term of this is ‘adverse possession’ and also applies to squatters and other things. In my state if you squat on someone else’s land for 20 years, you own it. The owner also evict you other than via the legal system. If some bum moves into my cabin, I can’t change the locks on it to keep him out either. I have to go get a court order to evict him.