As of February ’24 the CU&ID Blog has been archived, please visit our new website  at  CUIDProject.com

Introduction

Cornell University & Indigenous Dispossession Committee’s Press Release: Cornell University’s Land Grab Impacts 251 Tribes

Our Goals and Methods: How the Cornell University & Indigenous Dispossession Committee Determined which Present-Day Nations and Communities have been Affected by Cornell’s Past and Present Land Manipulations

by Professor Kurt Jordan

This site was initiated as part of the response of Cornell University’s American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program (AIISP) to a March 2020 High Country News investigative report by Tristan Ahtone and Robert Lee titled “Land-Grab Universities.”  This report tied the history of those educational institutions founded through the Land Grant College Act of 1862 (also known as the Morrill Act) to the forceful dispossession of Indigenous peoples, in some cases immediately prior to those lands’ disposition to universities. Essentially, the original funding for these land-grant universities is derived from land taken through a systematic and genocidal campaign of violence, fraud, forced treaties (some never ratified), dislocation, and death.  Cornell received the most land through the provisions of the Morrill Act, almost 1 million acres in total. With the exception of some retained mineral rights, the University sold all of its Morrill Act parcels by 1938. Cornell made substantially more money from the manipulation and sales of these lands (and the natural resources thereupon) than any other land-grant institution, and revenue from these lands formed the lion’s share of the University’s operating budget for the first thirty years of its existence.

Given Cornell President Martha Pollack’s July 16, 2020 call to Cornellians to “think and act holistically to change structures and systems that inherently privilege some more than others,” AIISP faculty, staff, students, and alumni assert that the university must understand and address the legacy of its founding within structures of settler colonialism as an ethical and moral obligation. The High Country News article explicitly compared the “land-grab university” legacy to that of universities built and funded through enslaved labor, and suggested that a similar reckoning should take place (see, for example, efforts at Brown University, the College of William and Mary, and Georgetown University). As many academic institutions built upon slave labor have done, Cornell has a moral obligation to acknowledge that its origins were based on a continental-scale program of Indigenous dispossession, and educate its faculty, staff, students, and the general public about this history and why it requires action in the present. Cornellians should learn that the university was not only funded through the forcible taking of Indigenous lands but also that its buildings today stand on Indigenous homelands.

To better understand this history and the specific impacts Cornell has had on Indigenous communities, AIISP formed a faculty committee to examine the issue in June 2020. Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession (CU&ID) Committee participants have included program directors Kurt Jordan and Troy Richardson, Professors Michael Charles, Eric Cheyfitz, Frederic Gleach, Jeffrey Palmer, Jon Parmenter, and Jolene Rickard, director emerita Jane Mt. Pleasant, program associate directors Leslie Logan and Ula Piasta-Mansfield, postdoctoral fellows Maia Dedrick, Eman Ghanayem, and Meredith Palmer, graduate students Dusti Bridges and Marina Johnson-Zafiris, and undergraduate student Aleesia Dillon. Ben Maracle has provided graphic and web support. The CU&ID committee’s task has been to present information and opinion about the implications of Indigenous dispossession for Cornell, and to advocate for redress to mend that history. A timeline of the CU&ID committee’s activities to date is presented below.

While the committee was set up to examine Cornell’s Morrill Act legacy, we quickly determined that we must also treat Cornell’s past and present land entanglements within New York State.  Cornell presently has campuses in Ithaca, Geneva, and New York City and owns many other parcels of land throughout the state.  Activities by Cornell Cooperative Extension take place in every New York county.  There are also Cornell outposts in Washington, D.C., the Shoals Marine Lab on islands just off of the coastline of Maine and New Hampshire, and other properties and mineral rights holdings elsewhere within the United States.  Cornell has benefited, and Indigenous Nations barred, from all of these lands; thus, they too are part of the consideration of Cornell’s impact.

This site presents the ongoing results of our research.  Our posts include text articles and opinion pieces, videos of lectures and panels, and audio podcasts. We have collected information and resources originating outside of AIISP in a “Resources” page, which includes links to articles and information published by High Country News; Cornell-specific data; Cornell administration statements related to Indigenous affairs and the land-grab issue; and other articles discussing Indigenous dispossession and Cornell.  Our “Contributors” section provides biographical information on those people who have had a role in making this site.

One ongoing task undertaken by the committee has been to determine (to the best of our ability) those Indigenous communities who have been affected by Cornell’s past and present landholding activities. The current list approaches 250 Nations and communities, including groups that have been displaced into Canada and those groups within the U.S. who do not have federal recognition.  We are in the process of making diplomatic outreach to these communities to inform them about their historical ties to Cornell and consult with them about possible remedies.

We welcome contributions by Cornell faculty, staff, students, alumni, members of the affected communities, and information from other land-grant universities who are trying to address their Morrill Act legacies.  If you would like to contact us, please email AIISP Director Kurt Jordan at this address. Subscribe here to receive notifications of new posts.

If you are new to this site or the land-grab universities issue, here are four key posts:

• Discussion of Cornell University as a Land-Grab University – Professor Eric Cheyfitz {video}
• Flipped Scrip, Flipping the Script: The Morrill Act of 1862, Cornell University, and the Legacy of Nineteenth-Century Indigenous Dispossession – Professor Jon Parmenter {text}
• Debts, ethics, and redress: Moving Land Grab University work forward – Dr. Meredith Alberta Palmer {video}
• Assessing Cornell University’s Response to Recent Revelations Concerning the Origins of Revenues Obtained from the Morrill Act of 1862 – Professor Jon Parmenter {text}

CU&ID Committee Activity Timeline

2020

• March 30: High Country News publishes its “Land-Grab Universities” report.  In response to the article, a Cornell administration spokesperson is quoted as stating “Thank you for reaching out to us on this issue. Unfortunately, I have no information to share on this issue at this time.” The AIISP faculty found this response to be deeply unsatisfying, and we began to think about how to address the land-grab issue ourselves.
• June 30: First meeting of AIISP’s Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Committee.  The committee has continued regular meetings, once or twice per month, since then.
• August 28: Committee meets with Cornell President Martha Pollack, Provost Mike Kotlikoff, and other administration officials to discuss Indigenous affairs at Cornell and the High Country News report.
• September 14: Eric Cheyfitz presents a public lecture as part of the AIIS 1100 course.
• September 16: Kurt Jordan presents in a panel in Prof. Jon McKenzie’s ENGL 4705 class.
• September 22: The CU&ID site is launched, and notifications are sent to a broad swath of Cornell University and College leadership.
• October 8: Committee members meet with Cornell Vice Provost Avery August.
• October 12: Kurt Jordan, Jon Parmenter, and Shaawano Chad Uran present in a public panel on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
• October 14: Eric Cheyfitz, Kurt Jordan, and Jolene Rickard present to the Cornell Faculty Senate.
• October 28: Committee members meet with Associate Vice President Angela Winfield to discuss Indigenous hiring at Cornell.
• November 4: Kurt Jordan presents in AIISP’s Student Leadership Development series.
• November 5: Chuck Geisler, Kurt Jordan, and Jon Parmenter present a public lecture to the Cornell Association of Professors Emeritus (CAPE).
• November 12 and December 29: Kurt Jordan meets with traditional Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ leaders.
• November 20: Kurt Jordan, Wayva Lyons and Ula Piasta-Mansfield meet with Vice Provost for Enrollment Jonathan Burdick to discuss ways to recruit and support Indigenous students.
• November 25: Committee members meet with Cornell Vice Provost Avery August to discuss possible diplomatic outreach from Cornell to affected Indigenous Nations, and the need for a position tasked with Indigenous Affairs in either the President’s or Provost’s office.
• December 15: Kurt Jordan, Wayva Lyons, and Ula Piasta-Mansfield present in an Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) class.
• December 18: Kurt Jordan meets with members of the Mellon Migration Initiative to discuss the land-grab issue.

 

2021

• January 13: Kurt Jordan presents at the Rogers Health Policy Colloquium, Weill Cornell Medicine.
• January 19: Kurt Jordan presents to the Deans, Department Chairs, and Program Directors of Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).
• January 22: Kurt Jordan provides suggestions for a possible University Statement on Indigenous Affairs to Vice Provosts Avery August and Katherine McComas and the President’s Counsel and Chief of Staff Kelly Cunningham.
• January 28: CU&ID Committee members and other AIISP faculty meet with members of the undergraduate organization Native American and Indigenous Studies at Cornell (NAISAC) to discuss the administration’s response to Student Assembly petitions they had sponsored.
• February 4: Committee members meet with a variety of administration officials to discuss proposals for educational programs for Indigenous students put together by Vice Provosts Jonathan Burdick and Paul Krause.
• February 16: Kurt Jordan presents a public lecture as part of the AIIS 2100 course.
• February 17: Committee members meet with the Cornell Presidential Advisors on Diversity and Equity (PADE) to discuss the language used by the administration to describe its history, providing AIISP input on University Statements, and the relationship between PADE and AIISP (as a locus of expertise in Indigenous Affairs).
• February 17: CU&ID Committee submits model text for Cornell’s recognition of its entanglement with genocide and land text to the PADE.  We have not received a response and the University has not employed any of our suggested language to date.
• February 24: CU&ID Committee submits a draft letter to the administration proposing joint diplomatic outreach to Indigenous Nations and communities affected by Cornell’s landholding activities. The administration rejected our proposal to jointly reach out to affected nations.
• February 25: CU&ID Committee requests the administration’s help in determining the locations of all property and mineral rights in the United States currently held by the university.  This request was denied on March 22.
• March 4: Committee members meet with a variety of administration officials to discuss their proposed educational initiatives.
• March 10: Kurt Jordan presents in the Cornell Agritech Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Seminar series, jointly sponsored by the School of Integrated Plant Science (SIPS).
• March 15: Kurt Jordan presents to the Cornell Campus Planning Commission.
• March 24: Kurt Jordan presents to the City and Regional Planning Department.
• March 31: Vice Provost Avery August shares a draft of a proposed outreach letter from the administration to federally-recognized Indigenous Nations in the United States with Kurt Jordan, proposing that AIISP co-sign the letters.
• April 5: The CU&ID Committee rejects the request to co-sign the administration’s outreach letter, providing a detailed critical response to the text and programming ideas for Indigenous Nations contained in the letter.
• April 9: Kurt Jordan presents to the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department.
• April 16: High Country News study authors Tristan Ahtone and Robert Lee speak at a Cornell symposium organized by the College of Art, Architecture, and Planning (AAP).
• April 27: Kurt Jordan presents to the Executive Directors of Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE).
• May 6: Committee Members participate in a cross-university land-grab activism meeting involving faculty from the University of Arizona, the University of Wisconsin, Ohio State University, and units within the University of California system. Regular meetings have occurred since then.
• May 7: Kurt Jordan met with Vice Provost Avery August.
• June 3: Eric Cheyfitz met with representatives from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to discuss the possibility of forming a national association of universities involved in the Morrill land grab.
• June 14: The CU&ID Committee and the rest of the AIISP faculty submit a fifteen-point plan to strengthen Indigenous Affairs at Cornell to President Pollack, Provost Kotlikoff, and other members of the central administration.
• June 15: Kurt Jordan met with Joy Howell, Assistant Dean for Diversity and Student Life at Weill Cornell Medicine.
• August 6: AIISP begins to mail diplomatic outreach letters to those Nations affected by Cornell’s past and current landholdings.
• September 10: Meredith Alberta Palmer (Six Nations Tuscarora) gives a public lecture as a part of AIIS 6010.
• September 15: Kurt Jordan and Troy Richardson met with Steve Gavazzi, a leader in Ohio State’s Truth and Reconciliation Project.
• September 28:  AIISP received a letter from Vice Provosts Avery August and Katherine McComas addressing our June 14, 2021 fifteen-point plan for Indigenous Affairs at Cornell.  The program and CU&ID committee are in the process of preparing a response.
• October 4: Troy Richardson and Kurt Jordan met with Joanne Troutman, Director of Social Impact Programs for eCornell.
• October 11: Kurt Jordan met with Vice Provost Avery August.
• October 13: Kurt Jordan engaged in a question-and-answer session with Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology faculty and graduate students.
• October 27: The CU&ID committee met with Indigenous Californian scholars Prof. Willy Bauer and Brittani Oorona to discuss Indigenous communities and recognition in the state.
• November 17: CU&ID committee members Meredith Palmer and Kurt Jordan and project research assistant Dusti Bridges attend a meeting with University of Wisconsin faculty who are developing education modules on the university’s land-grab history.
• November 18: Kurt Jordan presents to the Department of Natural Resources and Environment’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion group.
• December 1: Kurt Jordan and Ula Piasta-Mansfield met with Jonathan Burdick, Vice Provost for Enrollment, to discuss recruiting and admissions issues related to Indigenous Students.
• December 8: Kurt Jordan met with Vice Provost Avery August to discuss the administration’s proposed University-level web page on Indigenous affairs.
• December 15: Vice Provost Katherine McComas provides the draft text and layout for the proposed University-level web page on Indigenous affairs to AIISP.

2022

• January 7: AIISP submitted comments on the administration’s proposed University-level web page on Indigenous affairs.
• January 10: Kurt Jordan met with the School of Integrated Plant Science’s new Allies for Indigenous Reconciliation Working Group.
• January 12: Kurt Jordan met with Vice Provost Katherine McComas to discuss the administration’s proposed University-level web page on Indigenous affairs.
• January 16: Kurt Jordan provides a second round of AIISP suggestions to the administration on their draft of a University-level webpage on Indigenous affairs at Cornell.
• February 4: In light of the text from a late-stage draft of the administration’s website on Indigenous affairs at Cornell, voting members of the AIISP faculty endorsed an addendum to the land acknowledgment on the AIISP website. The addendum explicitly notes that Indigenous lands conveyed to Cornell were acquired by force and fraud in the course of a national genocide, and notes the Cornell administration’s lack of substantive action toward redress in the wake of the High Country News “Land-Grab Universities” article.
• March 18: the Cornell administration releases its Commitment to Indigenous Communities and Nations in North America website, incorporating some but definitely not all of the feedback supplied by AIISP and the CU&ID Committee.  In particular, the administration website recites a sanitized version of Cornell’s historical entanglement with Indigenous dispossession, and does not make any new commitments to Indigenous students or communities.
• March 24:  Eric Cheyfitz met with members of the University of Minnesota’s Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing (TRUTH) Project.
• July 20: Jon Parmenter chaired the virtual roundtable discussion “Indigenous Dispossession Under the Morrill Act of 1862: Cornell University as a Case Study” as part of the Cornell University Migrations Initiative Summer Institute.  Panelists included Dr. Jean Dennison (Osage Nation) of the University of Washington, Dr. Kate Beane (Flandreau Santee Sioux Dakota and Muscogee Creek) of the Minnesota Museum of American Art, and Dr. Michael Witgen (Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) of Columbia University.
• August 31: The CU&ID Committee was reconstituted, welcoming new members Michael Charles, Maia Dedrick, Eman Ghanayem, Fred Gleach, and Leslie Logan. We thank departing members Eric Cheyfitz, Jeff Palmer, and Jolene Rickard for over two years of dedicated service to the committee.
• September 8: The CU&ID Committee presented a teach-in on the land-grab universities issue to Cornell student, staff, and faculty.
• September 13: Tristan Ahtone and Bobby Lee, authors of the original High Country News “Land-Grab Universities” study, present the 2022 Kops Freedom of the Press Lecture at Cornell.  They present new information that illustrates how Cornell continues to receive income from an endowment originally generated by Morrill Act funds, and make the case that Cornell has received assets totaling approximately $665 million (expressed in 2022 dollars) from the lands it was awarded through the Morrill Act.
• September 30: Jon Parmenter met with a staff member from MIT to discuss state payouts from land scrip accounts and collaborations between MIT and Cornell.
• October 7: The CU&ID Committee formally requests student representatives to the committee from the Indigenous Graduate Student Association (IGSA) and Native American and Indigenous Students at Cornell (NAISAC). Dusti Bridges (graduate) and Aleesia Dillon (undergraduate) were selected by the student organizations to join the committee.
• October 10: Kurt Jordan presented at the Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems (CROPPS) annual meeting. This is an organization of researchers from Cornell, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Arizona.
• October 13: Meredith Palmer, Jon Parmenter, and Kurt Jordan take part in a “Faculty Community Conversation: Understanding Indigenous Lands and History in the U.S. and Upstate New York” panel discussion, sponsored by the Cornell Office of Faculty Development and Diversity.
• October 21: Jon Parmenter presents on “The Untold Story of Cornell University’s Mineral Rights in Wisconsin” at Cornell’s Society for the Humanities conference on the theme of “Repair.”
• November 3: Jon Parmenter spoke at the Cornell Law School in an event organized by Cornell’s Native American Law Students Association.
• November 15: Jon Parmenter presented to staff from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion in Cornell’s SC Johnson Graduate School of Management.

2023

• February 7: Kurt Jordan met with Vice Provosts Avery August and Katherine McComas.
• February 16: Jon Parmenter spoke in Prof. Laura Tach’s Introduction to Public Policy class (PAM2301).
• April 14: Jon Parmenter, Michael Charles, Dusti Bridges, and Marina Johnson-Zafiris spoke at the Cornell Law School at the Native American Law Student Association (NALSA) Tribal Summit.
• April 27: Jon Parmenter presents “How Did Cornell Dispossess? The Impact of Timber and Land Sales on the Lives and Livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples Bordering the University’s Morrill Act Lands, 1868-1900” at the Cornell Society for the Humanities Conference on “Repair.”
• May 2: Kurt Jordan was interviewed by Rachel Hatziapangos of the Washington Post.  Jordan was quoted in the July 9 Post article “Native Americans call for Reparations from ‘Land-Grab’ Universities” (paywall).
• May 17: Katherine McComas, Vice Provost for Engagement and Land Grant Affairs denied (via email) Jon Parmenter’s written request for up-to-date financial information on the Cornell Endowment Fund (the legacy fund from Cornell University’s Western Land account, into which all revenues from the Morrill Act were placed). Information on the fund (its principal and the annual interest payout) were reported publicly in University financial reports through FY 2005.
• June 23: The committee finished the process of diplomatic outreach to impacted Indigenous Nations and communities. A total of 251 Nations and communities were contacted. We thank Karishma Bottari, Dusti Bridges, Kurt Jordan, Leslie Logan, Ben Maracle, Ula Piasta-Mansfield, Troy Richardson, and Annabel Young for their help with the diplomatic outreach effort
• July 1: We thank departing CU&ID committee members Maia Dedrick, Eman Ghanayem, Fred Gleach, and Meredith Palmer for their help with the committee’s efforts.
• July 17: Leslie Logan and Kurt Jordan were interviewed by journalists from WAMU/NPR Washington.
• July 27: Jon Parmenter delivered a public lecture, “Cornell University’s Land Agency Office in Eau Claire, Wisconsin: Outpost of an Educational Financial Empire, 1877-1904,” at the Chippewa Valley Museum in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
• October 1: Leslie Logan is named co-chair of the Cornell University & Indigenous Dispossesion Committee.
• October 2: Marina Johnson-Zafiris gave a CU&ID walking tour on the Cornell Ithaca campus for Postcolonial Science, a course taught by Cornell Professor Stacey Langwick.
• October 5: Kurt Jordan is interviewed by Patricia Smith of New York Times Upfront about the land-grab universities issue.
• October 7-8: Leslie Logan sends the CU&ID Press Release on the release of the List of Impacted Nations to 206 media contacts.
• October 9: The CU&ID Project releases the list of 251 Indigenous Nations and Communities impacted by Cornell’s past and present land manipulations.
• October 11: Leslie Logan and Michael Charles were interviewed by Jenna Kunze of Native News Online and are quoted in the October 11^th article “Cornell University Should Work with Tribes to Mend the History of Its Massive Land Grab.”
• October 27: Jon Parmenter participated in a panel discussion, “Reckoning with the Settler University” at the “Under the Campus, the Land” Symposium hosted by the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ann Arbor.
• November 16: Kurt Jordan presented in the College of Veterinary Medicine’s “Many Voices, One College” talk series.