This new High Country News report released today on a two-year study titled "Land-Grab Universities" by Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone (in collaboration with many others) "reconstruct[s]":
Their work also yielded an interactive database site for anyone to use and access their data. According to Ahtone, "This site allows users to identify every tribe, every acre and every dollar endowed to universities with incredible accuracy. It's a remarkable and powerful tool." They also share which methodologies they used in collecting and sharing the data they uncovered in order "to understand how the database was created using primary source materials including land patent records, congressional documents, state repositories and more."
My complicity in this violence is entangled with the fact that I graduated from and obtained degrees from two land-grant/-grab institutions at the undergraduate and graduate levels, respectively. I am currently planning a project with students and faculty colleagues to excavate the history and complicities of DePauw University, where I am currently based. Although it is not a land-grab/grant university, it still makes claims to innocence as having abolitionist origins, which we believe should still be investigated.
- ≈ 10.7 million acres of stolen land . . .
- from ≈ 250 [Indigenous] tribes, bands & communities . . .
- via 160+ "violence-backed land cessions" . . .
- to build 52 colleges . . .
- in 47 U.S. states through the Morrill Land-Grant College Acts of 1862 and 1890 . . .
Their work also yielded an interactive database site for anyone to use and access their data. According to Ahtone, "This site allows users to identify every tribe, every acre and every dollar endowed to universities with incredible accuracy. It's a remarkable and powerful tool." They also share which methodologies they used in collecting and sharing the data they uncovered in order "to understand how the database was created using primary source materials including land patent records, congressional documents, state repositories and more."
My complicity in this violence is entangled with the fact that I graduated from and obtained degrees from two land-grant/-grab institutions at the undergraduate and graduate levels, respectively. I am currently planning a project with students and faculty colleagues to excavate the history and complicities of DePauw University, where I am currently based. Although it is not a land-grab/grant university, it still makes claims to innocence as having abolitionist origins, which we believe should still be investigated.
