HBO host Bill Maher criticized musician Billie Eilish and other celebrities at the Grammy Awards who argued that no one can be considered illegal on occupied Indigenous land. On Friday’s broadcast of “Real Time,” Maher compared the land acknowledgment movement to the pro-Palestinian chant “from the river to the sea.” “This is my problem always with things like this from the left that are so performative,” Maher said. “Okay, even if we agree with that stolen land, yes, lots of land is stolen by the way, not just here, but okay, so it is. What do we do about that? We give it all back and go back to living in teepees? What is the practical next step?”

BILL MAHER: Last week, I did a whole thing here at the end of the show about how celebrities are not good for the Democratic Party. I think the Democrats should cut loose their celebrities. I don’t think they’re helping. I don’t think people see them as relatable. I don’t think anyone people think knows about their problems, even though they’re always making political pronouncements. And then I watched the Grammys, and I saw Justin Bieber singing in his underwear. I saw Chappell Roan there holding her dress up with nipple clips, and I saw Lady Gaga singing with a lampshade on her head. So I guess I was way off on that, huh? So, but apparently they did not hear me at the Grammys, because… Billie Eilish, there’s a big controversy this week. She said there’s no illegals on stolen land, and she said it’s hard to know what to say, which I would say then don’t say anything, because you don’t know things. So you didn’t go to school, I don’t think, and you don’t know facts. She said keep fighting and protesting and speaking up. I totally agree with that. She said voices matter, people matter, and I would just say so does knowledge. And I mean, I would just like to know where, and this is especially important for you, because Canada’s been facing this issue with indigenous people. And it can go beyond just the virtue signaling of saying something, because they’re sort of taking it seriously now in Canada with repossessing land for indigenous peoples. What is the practical next step, if you say that, there’s no such thing as illegal people on stolen land. Okay, now of course, immediately the people, the tribe here in California, asked for her house. Which I thought was pretty great. But what is the practical next step? This is my problem always with things like this from the left that are so performative. Okay, even if we agree with that stolen land, yes, lots of land is stolen by the way, not just here, but okay, so it is. What do we do about that? We give it all back and go back to living in teepees? What is the practical next step? CHRYSTIA FREELAND, FORMER DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA: Well, look Bill, what I would first say is in Canada, the situation is quite different from the U.S., and the vast majority of the relationships between indigenous people in Canada and the Crown are based on treaties. Treaties which are legal documents, just like the land title I have to my house. And so a treaty-based relationship is important to honor, it’s important to work with, and I think Canada has made a lot of progress there. And where I would say the conversation has moved in Canada is towards indigenous prosperity. And the fact is, which is a terrible fact, indigenous people in Canada are the underclass. They go to jail more, they’re poor, they die younger, they suffer more from addiction. MAHER: And Canadians, who are the great people of the world, treated them like sh*t, just like everybody treated everybody like sh*t. And that happened in the past. FREELAND: And so what the focus… MAHER: We should acknowledge that and try to, in some ways, make reparations. FREELAND: What I would say is, what we need, like certainly what we’ve been working on in Canada and work that I did as finance minister is on indigenous prosperity. And so we created a five billion dollar fund to support indigenous businesses working, indigenous businesses building their own prosperity, their own sources of wealth. And it actually works. So Keystone, the Keystone pipeline, the US hasn’t managed to build. When I was finance minister, we built a pipeline, which is very important, diversifying Canada’s economy, giving us access to the Pacific so we’re not as dependent on the United States, because you’re not a very reliable boyfriend right now. And one of the reasons we were able to get that pipeline built, which the government built and still owns, is because we cooperated with all the indigenous people along the route. So I would say, make the conversation… I totally agree with you. Virtue signaling is yucky. People hate it. What you said about people liking you in Indiana is right, because you’re real. But so if you care about the plight of indigenous people, then work to create economic conditions so they can prosper. MAHER: I just want to refocus this back on what the real issue is. What do we actually do? Because let me read our friend David from, he’s from Canada, he said, Canadians have learned that these well-meaning pronouncements are not in fact harmless. Courts are reinterpreting these rote confessions of historical guilt as legally enforceable. 800 acres south of downtown Vancouver must be subordinated to a group of about 5,000 indigenous Canadians. They’re talking about the land underneath Canada’s parliament buildings. And the irony here is, the value of this land has all gone down a lot, because people are not sure whether it’s going to be theirs to own in the future. FORMER GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ): Yeah, I mean, look, first off, back to what you started with, which is, you know, these pronouncements from celebrities who, most of them, have not taken the time to even understand the first degree subtlety to these issues, let alone second and third degree subtlety, is why the Democratic Party has some of the problems it has, because they latch themselves to these folks and then nod their heads and agree when stupid stuff like Billie Eilish said at the Grammys, and two of my kids were home for the Grammys and forced me to watch this. Did they tie you down? No, they took, they did the greatest thing you could ever do to a father. They took away the remote control from me. Took it from me and threw it back and forth to each other so that I couldn’t get it back. So I had to watch Lady Gaga with the lampshade on and Bieber and then the Billie Eilish crap. But the fact is that, off Canada and to America for a minute on this, you know, it’s a complicated history. Okay, you know, people got screwed along the way. Yes, we agree with that. But if what we’re gonna do today is say these pronouncements and then have no real solution to behind that pronouncement, it’s all bullsh*t. MAHER: It’s such bullsh*t. It reminds me of what the Gaza protesters say, from the river to the sea. Well that means either all of Israelis die, which a lot of them would like, that would be their choice, or they move, all of Israel’s going to move, that’s not gonna happen, and Los Angeles is not gonna move, and we’re not gonna give back New Mexico. We have to deal with the future, not just the past.

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