In a recent lecture on her new book, Redressing Historical Injustice: Self-Ownership, Property Rights and Economic Equality, Wanjiru Njoya challenged current calls among some indigenous groups for “land justice” to redress the alleged historical injustices of European colonization. Drawing from Murray N. Rothbard’s book The Ethics of Liberty, Njoya outlined a set of guideposts for determining the actual justice of such claims with reference to South Africa. As general principles, these guideposts are useful in other historical contexts as well. Here, for example, I apply these natural law principles to the specific case of the Cherokee Indians to answer the question, did Anglo colonizers steal Cherokee land?
As Rothbardians know, there are three ways to acquire private property under
2023-05-15