The Myth of Stolen Land and the Erasure of Indigenous Agency

At the 2026 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, Billie Eilish accepted Song of the Year and used her moment at the podium to deliver a familiar political refrain.  - Alexander Muse

California, she said, is stolen land. 

No one is illegal on stolen land. 

• The line drew applause. 
• It always does. 
• Slogans are designed for that effect. 

They compress moral judgment into a sentence 

• short enough to chant, 
• long enough to sound profound, and 
• vague enough to resist scrutiny.

...It presupposes a simple picture of California’s past, a picture in which a coherent and unified indigenous society peacefully inhabited a defined territory until an external power arrived and stole it. 

History does not cooperate with that picture...