We if you mean European settlers actually conquered the...

We if you mean European settlers actually conquered the indigenous peoples and quite easily to boot. So once you are conquered then you lose whatever sovereignty you had as they have dispossessed of their land. Most indigenous people didn’t actually own the land but thought as themselves being part of it from my understanding. The idea of ownership they seem to have thought up in the last 30 years or so after talking with sympathetic lawyers I imagine.