land theft
Stealing someone's property
Land theft is the taking of land from its rightful owners through force, fraud, or legal manipulation.
The term often appears in discussions of colonialism, where indigenous peoples were dispossessed of ancestral territories: The reservation system followed centuries of land theft.
It also describes seizure through eminent domain abuse, predatory lending, or discriminatory policies: Redlining and tax schemes enabled systematic land theft from Black farmers.
- dispossessionDeprival of property rights
- colonizationForeign territorial takeover
- settler colonialismOccupation displacing native peoples
- seizureForcible taking or convulsion
- encroachmentGradual intrusion on territory
annexation · displacement · eviction · expropriation · eminent domain · settlement · occupation · indigenous · territory · title · deed · treaties · broken promises · broken · conquest · stolen · homestead · reservation
- displacementdislocation, dislodging, relocation, displacing, uprooting
- racial injusticesystemic racism, institutional racism, racial profiling, racial bias, discrimination
- land seizureseizure, confiscation, expropriation, appropriation, dispossession
- Indian RemovalIndian Removal Act, Trail of Tears, forced relocation, Indian Territory, Andrew Jackson
- cultural erasurecultural genocide, ethnocide, forced assimilation, cultural erasure, identity loss
- injusticeinjustice, inequality, discrimination, bias, prejudice
land theftland purchase
Buying terrain or lots
land sale · property transaction · land deal · land grant · homesteading
land theftterritorial sovereignty
State authority over land
land rights · land stewardship · land preservation · property rights
land, theft, lands, landed, landing, landings, landlord, landmark, landscape