Yes, I understood this; the corollary is: what are we supposed to do about it?
Your quote spells it out: “the practical difficulty of establishing ownership in such cases as justifying some sort of statute of limitations with regard to wrongs in the distant past.” Since there’s no practical way to restart the world from a place of pure equity (whatever that might mean), we do the best we can with what we have moving forward.
It’s amazing how quickly these political discussion turn personal 
