The land that came to be owned by the US & international bo…

The land that came to be owned by the US & international bourgeoisie was never "of indigenous people" in some romantic egalitarian sense. It was owned by & fought over for by various tribal elites—whether agricultural or hunter gatherer.

Many Asian Americans are saying, "We belong here." But, let's not forget that "we" are on stolen land. Making a claim to belonging means being committed to indigenous people's rights. #StopAAPIHate
— Pawan Dhingra (@phdhingra1) April 1, 2021

The majority, regardless of race or society, have not & do not own land.

The notion of "stolen land" is bullshit bourgeois obfuscation: the current land owners are blaming the existing national collective—largely composed of workers—for supposed "crimes" committed centuries ago.

"Stolen land" is a rhetorical cudgel to discipline proles with & gather virtue among peers, while obscuring the present structure of society, which is what matters.

In many cases the successors of the supposed aggrieved groups don't exist. If they do deference doesn't help them.

In capitalist society the vast majority of indigenous people are either bosses or workers, like everyone else, and recognition is useless to them.

Historically, the state's attempts to offer indigenous people special dispensations has only hurt them, rendering them dependent...

In particular when the state sets aside land for indigenous people, seeking to "preserve their way of life" on it, indigenous people are relegated to a sort of apartheid. They are given "the right" to "autonomous" existence in what are often remote undeveloped areas lacking jobs.

Exile to reservations and adjoining areas far from the productive centers of the capitalist economy only cements these communities' dependence on the state and their destitution. Many native people are thus rendered lumpen proletarians of a particularly isolated variety.

What the state has done to its indigenous wards in the name of protection from modernity and recognition of autonomy has been sadistic and tragic, except for a small class of leaders & administrators.

While the conditions of workers in the US is grave, being one confers...

leverage (if latent) over capital that lumpen wards of the state can never have. The proles are given a wage and concessions, even if meager, to facilitate their continued exploitation. There is a possibility of collective progress. On an individual level, a worker has the...

possibility to advance professionally, change jobs and - as liberals love to highlight - to occasionally succeed at becoming bourgeois. The lumpen ward of the state is deprived of both the individual opportunities and the collective potential/power that come with being a worker.

Leftist and radical-liberal activists & academics will talk about the horrors of settler colonialism and the problems with reservations and other outdated liberal interventions by the state on behalf of indigenous people. They will point to material failures but blame them on...

the continuation of racist/colonial ideology. Then when it comes time to present solutions they will push for an intensification of the status quo, but using woke language updated to appeal to their class and a new economy...

The activists will talk about reparations, ecology, democracy, stolen land, recognition of indigenous wisdom, decolonization etc., while pushing for a continuation/expansion of the identitarian dispensations that keep many native people reliant on the state, remote and poor.