Discussion of Cornell University as a Land-Grab University – Professor Eric Cheyfitz – Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Project

by Professor Eric Cheyfitz

Lecture given during AIIS 1100 on September 14, 2020.

My purpose in this lecture on the founding of Cornell University is to focus the historical reality of the university’s foundation in a national context. As Tristan Ahtone and Robert Lee made widely known in their article “Land-grab universities” published in March 2020, the founding of Cornell under the Morrill Act of 1862 was enabled through millions of dollars of funding from the sale of Indian land stolen through coerced treaties and outright confiscation of which Cornell was the chief beneficiary. The national context for this dispossession was Native genocide. It is crucial to make this context visible, which has been erased both by the United States in its official histories and by Cornell in the history of its founding, for social justice is impossible without an honest accounting of the past and its continuing impact on the present.

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.