Good Intentions are Not Good Relations

Grounding the Terms of Debt and Redress at Land Grab Universities

by Meredith Alberta Palmer (Ska:rù:rę’/Tuscarora)

Published June 21, 2023

Abstract

As part of a violent project US imperial expansion into Indigenous lands, the 1862 Morrill Act endowed and continues to accrue lasting benefits for Land Grant/Grab Universities (LGUs). The last three years have seen a surge in nationwide attention and mobilization for redress and calculations of debts owed to Indigenous Peoples for the land dealings of the 52 original LGUs. This article intervenes in the LGU question in two parts. First, I demonstrate culpability of LGUs by illustrating how the Morrill Act was part of a set of US imperial policies that expanded jurisdiction into Indigenous territories through violent and imperial acts of dispossession which are maintained today. Second, I argue that any terms of debt and redress for this dispossession must be framed within Indigenous and Indigenous feminist analytics of land and territory. Restitution cannot occur on the same terms as dispossession and instead must be built through repairing and maintaining good relations within specific Indigenous protocols. These interventions inform my concluding analysis of university administrations’ responses to growing advocacy around LGUs, with a focus on Cornell University where I am situated as a researcher.

Read the full article here.

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.