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Originally Posted by UTTransplant
I grew up in Oklahoma. The mandatory semester long HS class on Oklahoma history was generally “White people make treaty. White people break treaty. White people make another (less desireable) treaty. White people violate treaty” again and again and again. If the land is native, let natives follow their own law (meaning tribal and federal). Non-natives aren’t really affected.
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That may be true, but the "white people" beat them fair and square in the Indian Wars. As the saying goes: "To the victor goes the spoils".
On a serious note: Geopolitical changes due to wars have happened throughout history. Indian tribes fought over territory long before Europeans ever graced the North American shores. Mongols rampaged throughout Asia and Eastern Europe, and their descendants are now among the inhabitants of those lands. The Roman Empire stretched across Europe, does that make only Italians true Europeans? The Goths spread across Western Europe by warring, not by asking politely. Should Siberians reclaim Alaska by pointing out they were the first inhabitants, crossing a land bridge across the Bering Straits and only lost their claim when the Russian Government sold Alaska to the US? In Africa, the borders change daily. Pretty hard to pick a date in history and say the indigenous inhabitants at the moment are the true natives, that any outsider who occupies land from that date forward is an alien invader and any laws those outsiders bring are not valid.