A Land Grant University: Cornell’s Legacy – Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Project

The following is taken from the Present Value podcast, founded in fall 2017 by two Cornell MBA students. This episode was originally released on February 22, 2021.

In this episode, with host María Castex, Professor Jon Parmenter discusses his research on indigenous dispossession and Cornell University’s legacy as a land grant institution. In October of 2020, Parmenter wrote a blog post titled Flipped Scrip, Flipping the Script: The Morrill Act of 1862, Cornell University, and the Legacy of Nineteenth-Century Indigenous Dispossession. This episode discusses the Morrill Act and its further implications in detail, along with the degree to which we must confront this history and engage in discourse and the broader process of redress.

The podcast episodes are researched, written, edited, and sound engineered by the MBA student producers. Each episode has one host, supported by a student production team.

The audio of this podcast has been removed and it appears no archive was made. Please refer to the transcript below for the content of the episode.

Transcript

Read the full transcript here.

Speakers

Jon Parmenter, associate professor of history at Cornell University

María Castex ’21, Cornell MBA student

Kimberly Fuqua ’21, Cornell MPA student

Cornell University Land Acknowledgement

Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ (the Cayuga Nation). The Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign Nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York State, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ dispossession, and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ people, past and present, to these lands and waters.

This land acknowledgment has been reviewed and approved by the traditional Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ leadership.

In addition to the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ land acknowledgment but separate from it, the AIISP faculty would like to emphasize: Cornell’s founding was enabled in the course of a national genocide by the sale of almost one million acres of stolen Indian land under the Morrill Act of 1862. To date the university has neither officially acknowledged its complicity in this theft nor has it offered any form of restitution to the hundreds of Native communities impacted.