This article examines the issue of our response to historic injustice, particularly the seizure of land by white settlers from aboriginal peoples in North America and Australasia. Arguments for compensation are based either on counterfactual reasoning (what would have happened if the injustice had not occurred) or on the need to put a stop to continuing injustice. I argue that both lines of reasoning face insuperable difficulties. I argue also that the second line of argument must come to terms with the fact that justice requires the fair sharing of a territory among its present inhabitants irrespective of how they or their ancestors came to be there.
