There is no consistent legal standard, under either Indigenous or settler law, by which you could claim that the Americas were not stolen. Catholic law was broken (as Bartholome de las Casas' angry letters to the church back home make clear: Columbus' crimes were unconscionable ...to him, Columbus was killing converts and "pagans" alike, the Spanish crown simply didn't care). Spanish law was broken (Cortes had no mandate to invade Mexico, he just did it anyways). English law was broken (English law stipulated that Indigenous land could only be...

Too many Canadians have a positive view of John A MacDonald & I can only assume that a lot of those people had huge gaps in their education when it came to Canadian history. Some of them, doubtless, are just racist, but the official history needs to catch up with reality. To John A, the only Canadians who counted were wealthy, white, Anglophone, British, and Protestant. He did everything in his power to force a country into existence that met those qualifications. Where Canada ended up otherwise, it was because of people working against him.

A brief family history: I'm mostly Irish and German-via-Russia. None of my ancestors, afaik, owned slaves, conquered lands, or harassed Indigenous people. That doesn't exempt me, a white dude, from white privilege. Lemme get specific. I know less about the Irish side, because they've been in Canada longer. I know they came over during the Potato Famine, landed in Montreal, and eventually ended up in BC and Alberta. They left a place where they were discriminated against based on ethnicity & religion...