Understanding the scale of global land theft

My latest article for CounterPunch

I hope this message finds you well. Here’s an excerpt from my latest long-read for CounterPunch:

The contemporary conversation around global land ownership and use patterns reflects the old idea that indigenous infidels have neither the concepts nor the practical ability to own and manage their own homeland. They wouldn’t make productive use of it, of course. It is never asked when and how the West came to its power to determine for other countries their stage of development, such as to make claims about how to help them become more “productive” under capitalism. The peoples of the Americas were deemed incapable of owning anything; they were part of nature or an extension of it and thus were to be dominated. From the end of the fifteenth century, the Vatican had blessed future crimes in advance, propounding a Doctrine of Discovery that erased the peoples of the Americas before they were even encountered. The Church placed only one true limit on the Spanish crown’s power to steal land and resources:

With this proviso however that none of the islands and mainlands, found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered, beyond that said line towards the west and south, be in the actual possession of any Christian king or prince up to the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ just past from which the present year one thousand four hundred ninety-three begins.

If they argued amongst themselves about the demarcation of territories, the princes of Europe never doubted that the land belonged to them. Governments and legal scholars would continue to rely on this doctrine for centuries; indeed, it would be more than five centuries before the Vatican would issue a formal repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery on March 30, 2023. Only a rarified few legal precedents have held on for as long. Formal disavowals notwithstanding, the legacy of this legal doctrine is all around us today. It is critical for Americans to understand that even if the U.S. government fulfilled only the bare minimum of its obligations under its agreements with the tribes, it would owe them trillions of dollars.