Hello everyone. Before IlliniRay jumps in, I will.
‘No one is illegal on stolen land’ is associated with progressive and left-wing activist movements, though it is not a universal slogan among all progressives.
The phrase combines two ideas:
‘No one is illegal’ — a slogan used by immigrant-rights advocates who argue that a person's existence or migration status should not make them inherently criminal.
‘On stolen land’ — a reference to the belief that countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and others were established through the dispossession of Indigenous peoples.
People who use the slogan are often expressing solidarity with both immigrants and Indigenous communities. It is especially common in some activist, decolonial, socialist, anarchist, and Indigenous-rights circles.
Critics—including many conservatives and some moderates—argue that the slogan oversimplifies complex questions about sovereignty, immigration law, history, and property rights.
Historically:
Gaza is one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, with a history spanning several millennia. In ancient times, the region changed hands many times among different peoples and empires, including the ancient Egyptians, Philistines, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arab caliphates, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, and others.
According to the Hebrew Bible, Gaza was within territory associated with the ancient Israelites, though it was also a major city of the Philistines and was not continuously controlled by Israelite kingdoms.
After antiquity, the area's population and political authorities changed repeatedly over centuries.
The area now called the West Bank includes places of central importance in ancient Jewish history, such as Hebron, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem (though Jerusalem's status is a separate issue).
In antiquity, parts of the region were ruled by the ancient kingdoms of Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah.
After those kingdoms fell, the region was governed by many successive empires and states over more than two millennia, including the Romans, Byzantines, various Islamic caliphates, Crusaders, Ottomans, and the British.
Following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the West Bank came under Jordanian control. After the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel captured the territory from Jordan and has maintained varying degrees of control over it since then.
Similarly, many Jewish and Israeli nationalists argue that the West Bank (often called Judea and Samaria in that context) is part of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people and that Jews have an enduring historical claim there.
Many Palestinians argue that they and their ancestors have lived in the region for generations and possess rights based on continuous residence, self-determination, and modern international law.
Most historians would distinguish between ancient Israelite presence and modern questions of sovereignty, noting that thousands of years of demographic and political change occurred in between.
It is accurate to say that the region was part of ancient Israelite kingdoms and has deep significance in Jewish history; it is also accurate that many other peoples and states have lived in and governed the area over the intervening centuries.
Historians generally agree that both Jews and Palestinians have deep historical connections to the broader land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, but they disagree on how ancient history should affect modern political claims.
As for Itasca, Illinois, the area was inhabited or used by several Indigenous peoples over time, including groups associated with the Potawatomi, Odawa, Ojibwe, and earlier peoples in the region. Much of northern Illinois was ceded to the United States through treaties in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, often under circumstances that remain controversial.
Some people argue that Indigenous nations retain a moral claim because the land was taken through coercion, unequal treaties, or displacement. Others argue that modern property rights and centuries of subsequent settlement make reopening ownership questions impractical or unjust. Many communities address this history through land acknowledgments, preservation of cultural sites, treaty-rights protections, or compensation rather than transferring ownership of current towns and private property.
Indigenous peoples have a strong historical connection to the land around Itasca.