The 2022 Kops Freedom of the Press Lecture – Land-Grab Universities: Recent Past, Present and Future of Indigenous Dispossession – Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Project

Watch the 2022 Kops Freedom of the Press Lecture – Land-Grab Universities: Recent Past, Present and Future of Indigenous Dispossession hosted by Cornell University’s American Studies Program and recorded by eCornell on September 13, 2022 here.

The United States used nearly 11 million acres of Indigenous territory taken from almost 250 tribes, bands, and communities through more than 160 violence-backed land cessions to launch the land-grant university system in 1862. New York’s only land-grant institution, Cornell University, was chartered in 1865.

In 2020, the groundbreaking “Land-Grab Universities” investigation identified and detailed how expropriated land formed the foundation of land-grant colleges across America. Two years after the story sent shockwaves through the U.S. education system, questions remain about the debts that universities owe to Indigenous communities as well as the limits of reparative justice when access to current information remains a major obstacle to further research and reporting on the roots of inequalities in academia.

Join us for this discussion featuring Grist Editor-at-Large Tristan Ahtone and Dr. Robert Lee, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Cambridge, to examine the troubled legacy of land-grant universities and their impact on tribal nations.

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.