The report, shared first with the Associated Press, identifies 10 tribal nations that have “aboriginal title, congressional title and treaty title to lands within Colorado” and details the ways the land was legally and illegally taken. It determined that many of the transactions were in direct violation of treaty rights or in some cases lacked title for a legal transfer.
“Once we were removed, they just simply started divvying up the land, creating parcels and selling it to non-Natives and other interests and businesses,” said Dallin Mayberry, an artist, legal scholar and enrolled member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe who took part in the Truth, Restoration and Education Commission, which compiled the report.
So, don’t get me wrong, coloninalism bad, but does it actually make sense to describe the colonists as “stealing” mineral wealth when the aboriginal population had no iron-working/shaft mining/fossil fuel demand to speak of? The human cost (~130 million dead) ought to be sufficient right?
Didn’t they? They made a lot of silver and gold objects. I’m 99% sure they already had a huge trading system for gold, silver, copper and stones all over the Americas. They didn’t have country lines like we do now. Check out Chaco Canyon.
Hence why I specified iron-working, and shaft mining, not gold working and open-pit quarries.