Debts, ethics, and redress: Moving Land Grab University work forward – Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Project

Dr. Meredith Alberta Palmer (Six Nations Tuscarora), Cornell Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow

In early 2020, an investigative report on “Land Grab Universities” was released by High Country News, detailing how the dispossession of hundreds of Indigenous Peoples of their lands provided the seed money for the founding of the United States land grant university system, instated first in 1865. Since then, a number of responses have emerged from within universities, from research on the topic, to demands for redress. If Indigenous dispossession is not merely “taking property,” but overlaying settler sovereignty on Indigenous homelands through a long and violent process, then how does one calculate for debts owed by those who have profited and benefited from US imperialism? This talk will give a background to the Land Grab University history and contemporary responses, contextualize Cornell University within this discussion, and present some frameworks, building on Indigenous feminist analytics, for moving these responses forward.

This lecture was given at Cornell University on September 10, 2021 as a part of AIIS 6010: Speaker Series hosted by Professor Jolene Rickard (Ska:rù:rę’/Tuscarora).

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.