Europeans often had a different version of land ownership than the people they colonized, but Europeans were not the only ones to develop the idea that people could have rights to use land, or use the fruits of land, or destroy some of the wealth of the land -- all property rights that can be stolen in the sense we talk about stealing lands from indigenous people.

There were also huge differences in land ownership philosophies among the many distinct societies outside of Europe, and plenty of these had land ownership laws that were not radically different from European laws.