1/7 @AlysonBKrueger's piece "Living on Free Land" in the @nytimes is racist trash and factually inaccurate in almost every possible way. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/realestate/homesteading-free-land-programs.html?smid=ig-nytimes&utm_source=curalate_like2buy&utm_medium=curalate_like2buy_3euQ1BMQ__c057658a-6ddb-4708-8889-16125022255c&crl8_id=c057658a-6ddb-4708-8889-16125022255c

2/7 Here's the premise: "Free land programs have been part of America’s DNA for centuries, encouraging families to settle in more remote or challenging environments. But land grants exist not just in history, they continue to provide opportunities for Americans."

3/7 Until the 1870's, treaties were made between tribal nations and the US to negotiate land cessions and establish borders. When communities wouldn't leave, outright seizures occurred. Hundreds of treaties, agreements and seizures bulked up the U.S. public domain.

4/7 In California, for instance, 18 treaties were rejected by the Senate and kept secret for a half-century by the US. It's free land to settlers because the US never paid for it. It's stolen land to tribes and that has a cost.

5/7 "Free land" is a massive factual inaccuracy which undergirds the entire story, and its racist at its core: it erases Indigenous people and ignores that the land became free because the US expropriated it through violence.

6/7 Denying or downplaying genocide and other crimes against humanity, committed by the US, to remove Indigenous people from their homelands is an abhorrent act to be committed by a journalist.

7/7 Krueger's story is Manifest Destiny at its glossiest and a morally repugnant affirmation of settler colonialism.