Reply #7: Legitimacy comes from time.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

My view, FWIW, is that legitimacy of ownership comes from time. If I kill you and take your land, my ownership is not legitimate. My son's (at the developmental stage of societies where this is common, it's usually "son" rather than "child", although not always) ownership will be a bit more legitimate, his son's still more so, and so on; in a century or two my descendants will have a complete right to that bit of land, and yours none whatsoever, even though I stole it from you.

If someone purchases or is given land legitmately, of course, they have as much or as little legitimacy as the person who they got it from did.


Incidentally, semantically "native" comes from "born there".