STEPPING OUT AND STEPPING UP: TOWARD TRUTH & RECONCILIATION WITH DISPOSSESSED NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES

The launch of the Stepping Out and Stepping Up Project will deliver wholesale change to the meaning of “land-grant fierce.”

Check out a description of this initiative here.

An excerpt:

“Documentation of the immense transfer of resources away from indigenous peoples and toward the establishment of land-grant universities has illuminated the “original sin” of these institutions of higher learning. The founding of our own university is a case in point. In 1870, the State of Ohio received 614,165 acres of Indian land that, when sold, yielded a total endowment of $340,818, upon which The Ohio State University was founded—an amount that would be worth quite significantly more in today’s dollars, bolstered by normal accrual. Territories included in these sales came from at least 29 First Nations (and 39 corresponding bands) scattered across the United States. Territories from tribes residing in states as close as Michigan (Chippewa, Ottawa, Menomini, Wyandot and Potawatomi) and as far away as California (Si-yan-te, Po-to-yan-ti, Co-co-noon, Aplache, A-wall-a-che, A-pang-asse, Ya-wil-chine, Wo-la-si, Wack-sa-che and Po-ken-well) were affected by this dispossession”

Stay tuned for much, much more on the need for land-grant universities to reckon with the “land-grab” nature of their founding.