When US President Donald Trump called Greenland “a piece of ice” during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the comment jarred. Greenland has been inhabited for nearly five millennia and is home to more than 56,000 people, mostly of Inuit descent. The remark also echoed a long‑standing pattern in which colonial powers imposed their own ideas of land ownership on places that were already inhabited, often overlooking established local systems.
That pattern reflects a deeper divide: two different ways of understanding land. Greenland’s Inuit view land as shared collectively and managed through communal stewardship — seasonal hunting and harvesting, protection of water sources, and care for ancestral sites. By contrast, European empires treated land as property: an asset to be claimed, bought or transferred between states. Landscapes that did not match European ideas of use were labeled “unused,” “wild” or “uninhabited” and thus available for appropriation.
A 2023 study in the Australian Historical Studies journal shows that in the 18th century British officials used “uninhabited” to mean lands without a sovereign or “civilized” government, not lands without people. Communities could be living in, fishing, farming or naming places for millennia and still not count as “inhabitants.” This definition shaped how states justified control over territory. Four historical examples illustrate this:
Alaska: When deals trumped Indigenous interests
In 1867 the United States bought Alaska from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million — a deal derided at the time as “Seward’s Folly.” It later proved strategically valuable for its resources. The transfer, however, was negotiated without consulting Alaska Natives, whose ancestors had lived in the region for at least 10,000 years. Native communities organized life around seasonal salmon runs, whale, seal and walrus hunting areas, berry‑gathering grounds and culturally important places, governed by shared rules developed over generations. None of these systems were accounted for in the 1867 agreement, which treated Alaska as territory exchanged between empires.
Australia: The myth of terra nullius
British authorities long labeled Australia terra nullius — “land belonging to no one” — despite at least 60,000 years of Aboriginal presence. For Aboriginal peoples, “Country” is a holistic concept encompassing land, waters, skies, plants, animals and ancestral responsibilities. Practices such as planned low‑intensity burning, seasonal movement and protection of resources sustained the environment. Because these practices did not resemble European farming or permanent settlement, British officials concluded no recognizable government existed and declared sovereignty. The doctrine remained in Australian law until 1992, when the High Court overturned it and recognized Indigenous traditional land rights.
North America: Mobility vs. “improvement”
European settlers in the 1600s encountered Indigenous nations who moved seasonally within ancestral territories to harvest resources and gather for ceremonies. These cycles were organized systems for managing land. European frameworks, influenced by John Locke, held that land became legitimate property when “improved” through visible labor like tilling or building; land not used in these ways could be claimed. This view fed early US legal ideas about land ownership. In 1823 the US Supreme Court ruled that Native Americans could live on their land but could not sell it except to the federal government, reflecting the Doctrine of Discovery that treated Indigenous peoples as occupants rather than full owners. That logic underpinned later policies and disputes, including protests at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline, where federal approvals proceeded without tribal consent despite threats to water and sacred sites.
Southern Africa: Wandering vs. vacancy
Khoekhoe and San communities in southern Africa organized life around seasonal water and grazing cycles, guided by customary law — oral, community‑based systems governing access to waterholes, grazing areas and ancestral sites. Their rotational movement protected fragile ecosystems, and UNESCO now recognizes some of this pastoral knowledge as sustainable. Dutch and later British settlers, however, misread land without fences as “unused” and seasonal mobility as “wandering,” enabling dispossession and imposition of private property systems. The loss of these systems continues to fuel efforts to recover cultural items and ancestral land.
These examples show a recurring pattern: colonial powers applied legal and moral frameworks that ignored Indigenous systems of land stewardship. They labeled differently managed landscapes as vacant or ungoverned and thus open to acquisition, often through deals between states that excluded the people who lived there.
Correction: A picture caption mistakenly said the Battle of the Little Bighorn took place in 1903 when it occurred in 1876; the image was a 1903 painting of the 1876 event. We apologize for the error.
Edited by: Cristina Burack
