[defrost]

> Legally, Canada does have title to the land

is that under Canadian law?

Was this land openly sold | gifted to Canada or staked and claimed despite prior occupation?

I recognise the current state of affairs, etc. but this "Legally Canada owns the land" is at root just a way of saying "might makes right, we took it, it's ours now, and we will shoot or imprison anyone who says otherwise".

[nikitaga]

> might makes right

That's how it works, sadly. Everywhere, not just here. The part you're missing is that "we" – the people living in Canada today – did not steal anyone's land. Certainly neither myself nor my ancestors. The original British settlers who stole the land are not us, they are long dead.

You can always look into the past to find injustices to use as an excuse to perpetuate horrible things in the present. Look at just about any conflict, modern or historical, the aggression today is always justified by something in the past. That doesn't mean that this is the right thing to do.

The right thing to do, is to lift up the people disadvantaged by past injustices, without resorting to race based division, e.g. target support by economic status instead of race. Sadly that's the opposite of what we're seeing in Canada nowadays.

[rkagerer]

Wasn't pretty much every country in the world established as a result of war, or one group taking it from another at some point in the past if you go back far enough?

[travisb]

Might makes right is how all land is owned. Always has been, always will be.

We've stacked lots of layers of paper and convention on top of that fact to reduce the amount of war we make, but people ignore this basic fact of the world at their peril.

[defrost]

> Always has been, always will be.

Not always, eg: in Austraia the British declared Terra Nullus across the continent ( 'land belonging to nobody' ) and were later forced by their own legal system to return ownership to places still occupied.

[travisb]

"by their own legal system". The Australian government can come to whatever conclusion it wants about how it deals with its land.

That is, it was the Australian legal system which made that decision and further that decision was not countermanded by the Government of Australia. It wasn't the legal system of, say, Jamaica forcing the Australian Government to do that. Or even the legal system of the peoples who were occupying the territory when the British arrived.

[FpUser]

>"might makes right, we took it, it's ours now, and we will shoot or imprison anyone who says otherwise"

This is how it works approximately.