I’m talking about things that are possible. There wasn’t any physically unavoidable reason the colonization of North America had to turn into the mess it did.

It was sparsely populated. It would have been possible for Europeans to negotiate in good faith, not kick people out of where they lived, and fairly compensate for any harm caused.

And in fact, while overall the result was overall pretty damn deplorable, you can dig in history and find some examples where it went well, at least for a while.

My point is that it’s not that settling is not inherently borderline an act of war. It can easily, and it often does, turn out badly, no one’s arguing against that.

But even though that’s the case, there are degrees to these things. Between literal genocide and cultural harm, for instance.

Am I arguing that anyone SHOULD settle any area? Not really. But I’m also not willing to put literally every case in the same basket.