US universities ponder massive debt to Native Americans

You can only "steal" something is it was owned in the first place. If it was farmland that had been worked, it could be said to be owned (according to Locke, who was no innocent in these matters). Otherwise, some lesser charge would be a more appropriate term for the assumption of the lost rights.

That's nothing. Today British Universities sit on land that was dispossessed from ancient tribes by William the Conqueror. The later relatives of William the Conqueror sat on minerals that drove the industrial revolution. To acquire the skills necessary to take that industry forward the enriched families left land to start educational facilities, which turned into modern universities. Problem is today the now incorporated university acts as a 10th century business which disregards its founding principles of education, and instead builds hotels on its land. That means the land dispossessed from local people no longer serves local people, it provides them with nothing, so it serves the business of well who exactly. Who is actually greasing the palms of the decision makers. Keele come clean.

'It's not stealing if it's not owned' is to impose your own legal system on theirs. Besides, in a very real sense, under 'our' law they owned the land communally by collectively and continuously using it exclusively. Legal systems change. So for sure the white man ignored indigenous legal systems and economies and just took what he wanted. Then there are the humanitarian and human rights arguments....... We owe the indigenous at least a share of that land and certainly a university education. In the UK 1% own 99% of the land, and we call that a system?