Cornell’s Relationship to Indigenous Dispossession: Geneva and Beyond – Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Project

On March 10, 2021, Cornell University Associate Professor Kurt A. Jordan, who also directs the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program (AIISP) and chairs AIISP’s Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Committee, spoke to faculty, staff, and students at Cornell AgriTech (in Geneva, New York) and Cornell’s School of Integrated Plant Science (SIPS). His presentation focused on the necessity for land issues to be locally-focused, noting that Cornell AgriTech sits on the exact location as the Onöndowa’ga:’ (Seneca Iroquois) town of Kanadesaga. Kanadesaga was destroyed by the American Sullivan-Clinton Expedition in September 1779, a campaign that Haudenosaunee communities and many scholars consider to have been genocidal in intent and outcome. To address this history and Cornell’s continuing benefit from the Geneva campus, AgriTech needs to develop communications and relations with present-day Onöndowa’ga:’ communities in New York State, Ontario, and Oklahoma. Jordan also briefly discusses the current state of research, community outreach, and plans for restitution surrounding Cornell’s entanglements with Indigenous dispossession, both locally and continent-wide due to its engagement with the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862.

Video 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.