A lot of people were forced to leave a lot of land all over the world. Borders shifted constantly within Europe. People were constantly expelled and relocated. Now of course they shouldn't have been, but that was a long time ago and we've generally agreed not to do that anymore.

Should former Roman land be given to the Italians? Should the Louisiana purchase be undone because it was the result of a military defeat in the Napoleonic Wars? Should the non-first-nations parts of California be returned to the Mexicans because it was ceded in the Mexican-American War under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo? What framework do you propose we use to decide which land is worthy of sovereign rule - and which isn't? Which groups are worthy of sovereignty, and which aren't, and on what basis?

I think all groups should be represented within the government and there's no reason to revisit the question of sovereignty because there's no framework that makes sense. There's no easy place to stop that isn't totally arbitrary.

Well there are actually frameworks that are generally agreed upon. https://social.desa.un.org/issues/indigenous-peoples/united-... While it's true that some lines will be arbitrary, that doesn't mean they can't be drawn based on ethical principles, international norms, and democratic practices.

I think we should probably try our best, as a society to be ethical and address damage caused by our society in the past and present. Not doing so because we think it would be too hard to parse is not admirable.

I guess my question is this. The Spaniards who lived in the non-First-Nations part of California are indigenous to the region too. Exactly as indigenous, IMO, as the First Nations who walked across the land bridge from Russia and set up camp. So why shouldn't they be sovereign and granted the same rights? And what's to say that in 100 years this agreement will not be torn up too, because of, say, it feeling 'forced' due to 'economic conditions'?

It's time to stop looking backwards, and start figuring out how to move forwards together as one.

We should all be looking after this marine zone together.

"It's time to stop looking backwards, and start figuring out how to move forwards together as one."

This is a much easier perspective to have if you are raised in a society that predominantly thinks of indigenous people as extinct and a thing of the past. It is a much harder perspective to have if you live with the understanding that these issues dont originate in the past but in the modern consequences of historical events.

I too would like a world in which we dont really need to worry about how indigenous peoples are treated. Unfortunately we live in a world where the dominant power structure is all too willing to trample over indigenous rights while certain parts of society appear in droves to defend said trampling.

This may also not be the context of whats being discussed in the article but we are touching on the broader topic of indigenous rights and sovereignty.

To be clear I don't think they're "extinct" I think they're a unique and distinct part of our society like people of any other background. Their stories deserve to be taught in school, in the context of our shared history (good and bad) - and they deserve to be represented in government - like everyone else. And they deserve to live the way they want, like everyone else. Nobody's rights should be trampled.

> This may also not be the context of whats being discussed in the article but we are touching on the broader topic of indigenous rights and sovereignty.

Maybe, but I do appreciate you sharing your perspective.

To take things a step further, all the various North American indigenous groups have been waring, slaving and migrating their way across the continent for millennia, just like every single other people group on earth for all of history, so it's almost certain that whatever indigenous "Nation" is claiming a given piece of land "Stole" it from some other indigenous "Nation" at some point in the past, yet we never hear them talking about returning "their" land to those "Rightful owners" do we?

>yet we never hear them talking about returning "their" land to those "Rightful owners" do we?

I mean, they might if they didn't have bigger problems to worry about, and they might have in the past, because native cultures were as complex and multifaceted as any other.

Unfortunately, Europeans completely obliterated those cultures and only fragments of their knowledge and histories only remain, unrecognized by American culture and untaught in American schools, so we'll never know.