It seems Ben and Jerry’s may be next in the firing line after they made waves with a provocative 4th of July tweet claiming the US is on stolen Indigenous land. Could we witness a downturn similar to Bud Light?
Or is their irresistibly good ice cream strong enough to keep their ship afloat?
I think what you say is fair if not true - one difference (and I’m sure there are more) is these weren’t lands acquired by conquest/military subjugation, but rather by agreement with the landholding populations to live in peace. What actually happened was the indigenous populations were lied to in one way or another such that the European nations never held up their side of the bargains because of ambiguity in the agreements in addition to Europeans plainly lying about what was being agreed to.
I think this is evident in the ways the Canadian Reconciliation Calls to Action use language such as “call upon the Government of Canada…to jointly develop with Aboriginal peoples a Royal Proclamation of Reconciliation…[which] would build on the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Treaty of Niagara of 1764, and reaffirm the nation-to-nation relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Crown”
Essentially these lands were never legally taken which is why the indigenous groups can/should lay claim to them. That makes this scenario different than a group being displaced by military conquest (which is technically recognized as a legal, albeit cruel, mechanism for displacing people).