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When we say "you're standing on stolen land" we mean that literally. Revisiting Angie Debo's classic, And Still the Waters Run, in which she describes the "vast criminal conspiracy" to wrest control of Indian land in Oklahoma.
Debo pays particular attention to the theft of Native children's land by their alleged "guardians." After Oklahoma statehood, one such guardian had 51 children under his protection who he charged exorbitant fees for their education & support while they lived in utter poverty.
Land speculators often resorted to kidnapping to secure Native land. One young Creek, with valuable land, disappeared for five months until it was discovered speculators had sent him to London in order to facilitate the theft of his land. Debo recounts innumerable such examples.
Guardians and speculators employed "frauds, forgery" and "murder" to seize Native land. @DavidGrann depicts many such crimes among the Osage in his excellent book, Killers of the Flower Moon. But as Debo points out, much of this theft occurred within the law, not outside of it.
The state of Oklahoma, like the rest of the U.S., required the theft of Native lands as its foundational act. And as Debo and many others have pointed out, that crime was resisted at ever turn through creative and determined Indigenous struggle.
