The vast majority of the US and Canada arguably isn’t “stolen land” if we apply the principles of Lockean homesteading

So it’s a common claim amongst progressives that the territory of the US and Canada was “stolen” from American Indians. I think this is BS.

The Americas, especially north of the Rio Grande, were rather sparsely populated prior to European settlement. Estimates by scholars range from 1 million to 7 million for the land that now constitutes the US and Canada. It’s safe to say that the vast majority of land was not occupied by American Indians, the vast majority of the land was undeveloped forests and grassland, not villages and farms. American Indians were not living on every single square inch of the land, far from it.

According to the principles of Lockean homesteading, resources can be claimed by combining them with your labor. This principle applies to land whereby land is claimed by significantly altering and developing it. Since most of the land was not developed.

Many progressives will object to this reasoning and say that land they used to hunt, fish, and gather was rightfully theirs. If they really, genuinely, believe this, then it just comes to down a difference in values and isn’t really resolvable. Morality is normative.

However, I don’t think they, or most people, genuinely believe this. Those who say think like this were probably just conditioned into being sympathetic towards American Indians and hostile towards Europeans. I think this stance would seem ridiculous to anyone if we took race out of it, let me give an example.

Let’s say John is shipwrecked and washes up on an uninhabited island. He builds a cabin and farm on a small plot of land, and he hunts, fishes, and gathers on the rest of the island. A few years later, Jake is shipwrecked and washes up on the same island. He starts building a cabin and farm somewhere else on the island, far from John’s house. John discovers this and objects to it, claiming that the whole island belongs to him because he hunts/fishes/gathers throughout the entire island. Jake says that it’s his right to build a homestead there because the land is undeveloped.

Who is right? I’m very confident that most people would side with Jake here, thereby tacitly accepting the principles of Lockean homesteading, even if they don’t know the term for it.

Discuss.