Land gets stolen, it's the way of the world.

You know, the Covington Christian - Omaha Elder story has been beaten half to death and I am not going to get into the middle of it. Black Israelites, shiny young white boys whooping it up with their maga hats on and Native Americans, does it get any better than this?

Mon-Chonsia, A Kansas Chief - McKenney Hall

But there was one thing I thought should be addressed with the recent kerfuffle that I don't believe has been to this point; the young man who after a group of Native American men walk by the Lincoln Memorial, can be heard saying to them, "Just because you stole the land, don't(sic) make it yours."

A bit ironic, no? The student, who is wearing an Owensboro Catholic High School hoodie and Trump' hat, can be heard saying, "and y'all stole it from the Aboriginals… it's been stolen throughout all of history… land gets stolen… it's how it works… it's the way of the world."

What are they teaching these kids these days? In church or in school? This notion of manifest destiny? We should be clear. There were no aboriginals in this country, the native Americans first walked across Beringia some 20 thousand years ago. There was nobody else around. Amerindians and Athabascans all come from this single genetic source migration. 80% of the natives living today share their genetics with a relative of the Clovis People who lived 12, 707–12,556 calendar years before present. The natives were the first people here.

But the kid's lack of knowledge about American history is only matched by his somewhat cruel and obvious lack of empathy for the theft and subjugation of the natives' land. We made lots of treaties with the first people and we pretty much broke every one of them and often exterminated them in the process. This argument reminds me of a quote from one of the Bundy kids, Ammon or Ryan, after the Malheur standoff and I am paraphrasing, the natives had their time and they lost their claim and now it is under the dominion of white people. Or as their father Cliven once said, "The Indians had rights until they lost the war."