WASHINGTON — Even as Abraham Lincoln was embroiled in the Civil War in 1862, he pressed Congress to approve a law that would establish a series of what were eventually known as “land grant” colleges in an effort to propel the nation forward.
Lincoln’s actions resulted in an explosion of academic research in schools that produced the nation’s first vaccines and astounding developments in agriculture, among other great academic achievements. But the establishment of these schools continues to create tensions between Native American tribes and what are now some of the largest U.S. universities because the land was seized outright or taken through forced sales that ignored the true value of the land. That’s prompted the nation’s tribes to seek reparations from what is now derided as “land grab” universities.
Minnesota’s 11 tribes are among those seeking compensation for the land that is now a great part of the University of Minnesota’s holdings. And the university is grappling with what it can do to make amends. On Wednesday, Karen Diver, the university’s senior adviser on Native American affairs, made her annual report to the school’s regents.
She said allowing tribes to benefit from the massive Permanent University Fund, which includes the money the school makes on mineral leasing, sales and mineral royalties, was one recommendation. The Permanent University Fund in 2020 totaled more than $591 million. “Taconite shares” held by the university could also play a part, Diver said.
“What do reparations look like?” Diver asked. “These aren’t payments to Native Americans or to tribes, but it is how do we look at our resources? … How do we look at revenue and how do we make sure Native Americans are beneficiaries?”
While the University of Minnesota, along with other land grant colleges, are trying to address a history of toxic relationships with the nation’s tribes, progress has often been difficult and slow.
Diver, a former Fond du Lac Tribal chairwoman and former Obama administration Native American affairs adviser, was hired by the University of Minnesota in 2021 to help the school try to redress injustices and strengthen relationships with Minnesota’s tribal nations. She acknowledged that full reconciliation would take time.
“Tribes understand that this is generational, institutional work,” she said.
The legislation Lincoln signed into law in 1862, known as the Morrill Act, donated land to states and territories “which may provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanical arts.” Each state was given 30,000 acres for each senator and member of the U.S. House in its congressional delegation. The result was that about 10.7 million acres of land was expropriated from 245 tribes after Morrill Act was implemented.
The federal government acquired Morrill Act lands through treaties, executive orders and in some cases without any sort of treaty or agreement whatsoever. Since the U.S. military was involved in the land transfers, there was frequent violence, when Indigenous peoples were expelled so the land grant schools could be established.
According to an investigation into Morrill Act’s transfer of land by High Country News, the University of Minnesota was given 94,631 acres, and the state’s tribes were paid $2,309 for the land.
The troubled history of the relationship between Minnesota’s Native Americans and the University of Minnesota was detailed in the TRUTH Report, released in April. The 600-page study by a team of Native scholars says it “details how the founding regents and the University of Minnesota have undermined Tribal sovereignty and Indigenous self-determination, using genocide, land expropriation, and exploitation of Indigenous knowledge systems to transfer and accumulate wealth.” The report also said the university “has participated in the development and teaching of revisionist narratives that conceal the systemic harms perpetuated against Indigenous peoples.”
One of the recommendations of the TRUTH Report is that the university give back or “rematriate,” Indigenous lands. The school is in the process of returning about 3,400 acres, the site of the Cloquet Forestry Center, to the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The forestry center is wholly located within tribe’s reservation.
“It is on the top of our list and we are making progress,” Diver said of the land transfer.
She also said the university might consider “co-management” with tribes of some of its other “field sites.”
“That’s something that we could be discussing in the future,” Diver said.
The TRUTH Report also recommended “reparations in perpetuity” from the Permanent University Fund, “to Indigenous peoples.”
All 11 of the state’s Native American tribes have agreed to press for reparations. However, the tribes have not settled on a specific amount, partly because of the difficulty of quantifying all the harm done.
The TRUTH Report also called for more Native American representation in the administration, faculty, staff and students at all of the university’s campuses. And it called for the university to waive the full cost of attendance for all Indigenous students, regardless of from where they come.
Starting last fall, the university offered Native American students whose family income is less than $125,000 a year free or reduced tuition. But it is limited to students who belong to one of Minnesota’s 11 federally recognized tribes and does not cover all expenses of attending the university.
This year, the state Legislature approved an $8.5 million program that is more generous. The state’s tuition assistance plan would pay all tuition and fees for Native Americans who live in Minnesota, so Diver said the university is changing its tuition assistance program so it also covers more of the costs of an education on its campuses.
The university is also in the process of returning Native American remains and funerary objects that were excavated in New Mexico nearly a century ago by the school’s anthropology students and were placed on display for decades in its anthropology department and the Weisman Art Museum. Diver told the regents that the Hopi tribe has agreed to take the lead in assuming possession of the remains and funerary artifacts from several Southwestern tribes because “they have the best capacity.”
Diver said the university is also taking other steps, including funding a Ph.D. program for Native American studies and developing a new Office of Native American Affairs website to consolidate Native American research and tribal information.
The University of Minnesota’s new interim president, former Hormel chief Jeff Ettinger, plans to meet with tribal leaders in the fall. Ettinger has also been tasked by the university’s board of directors to come up with official recommendations in response to the TRUTH Report. The recommendations are expected later this year.
Despite the devastating findings of the report, it is optimistic that a path to reconciliation with the university can be forged.
“We still see that higher education is currently a valuable path for our people and also believe it doesn’t have to be so difficult to be Indigenous in education systems,” the report said. “We can find common ground and create more success for Native Americans in higher education.”
Notice how they don’t want the land back?
Will it be enough?
Will it ever be enough?
Who gets to decide it’s “enough?” The people actually impacted? Or internet commenters who get an attack of the vapors when anything happens that might do something for non-white people.
How do you know they don’t want the land back? They arked for and received back former tribal land used for a state park? They understand they are dealing with white conservatives who will never apologize for what was done and who object to Indians getting even what was promised (such a special fishing rights) in US government in treaties. We committed genocide on a national basis in shameful ways.
Yeah. Reparations for the Indians. I’d vote for that.
I wish you would have expanded on your reply, Dennis. One thing for certain, with Ms. Diver as chief negotiator for the tribes, the final outcome will be lucrative for Natives.
I was being facetious, since being Sioux, I would, you know, benefit personally.
Pay money for new buildings or remodel of existing buildings? Or reparations?
Increase tuition to help pay for reparations?
Better turn the med school back to the First Nations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZU0GgcsTFk
I’m glad to see such reparations. It’s about time! They are of a kind that benefit everyone.
Who are we paying reparations to? The tribe that held that land as theirs when evil white people took it over or from the tribe that originally held the land before another tribe took it from them. Sioux tribes took over N And S Dakota, Montana, Colorado and Nebraska after Iroquois nation took their land an threw them out. The Sioux generally took over land by killing or running off the males and enslaving the children and women. This was common place amongst many tribes.
History is dirty game and everybody has dirt on their hands!
Or, the descendents of early Homo Sapiens who walked out of East Africa 60,000-100,000 years ago across Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, the land bridge to what is now presently Alaska and western Canada and into the US. They were the original inhabitants of this land … throughout those years there have been inhabitants of this land …. not owners as there was no concept of ownership. There was NEVER ownership as land was taken over and over again by the winners of warring tribes. I would like someone to describe which tribes specifically owned which property … where did their ‘property lines’ start and end? The idea of ownership NEVER existed until White settlers and immigrants brought that concept to this US.
What an ahistorical argument…..the U.S. government kept records of what land they took from which tribes. If there was “no concept of ownership”, then no such records would exist.
When you steal a car from someone, the person you stole the car from is the one who deserved compensation. We don’t ask “well, did the owner of the car get a really good deal on it from the previous owner, so that previous owner should be compensated too”. The U.S. government stole land from tribes, and we have documentation of it. It isn’t that hard to figure out which tribes should get which land back, because the U.S. government kept records of their theft.
All indigenous peoples in the Americas were impacted when Europeans arrived. Smallpox and other diseases preceded Europeans west. Tribes were being driven out of the east, so they moved west, causing upheaval across the continent.
Gotta love how museums drag their feet about returning items they purloined from peoples and nations deemed inferior (indiginous people, India, Egypt, Greece…). Have to make sure that they are capable of being in possession of historic materials.
Umm…I thought Native American tribes were compensated for this land under the Indian Claims Commission. Those records show the Dakota and Ojibwa tribes as being paid millions of dollars for these claims back in 1967.
I read in the past week an article clearly showing how reparations needs to be a NATIONAL event and not state (Probably Pioneer Press).
Several issues:
What tribes get reparations? Does it make sense to give it to today’s American Indians?
What other groups are included: in MN the Irish come to mind (also mentioned in article I read), Veterans & survivors of veterans of our wars come to mind, and of course, the Chinese building our railroads are the most obvious examples.
It gets sticky when you consider all the whites (sic) dying in our Civil War for black (sic) rights. How will we compensate them? Remember some American Indians helped in this war. See https://substack.com/redirect/c1ed2e28-dd4f-4bb8-ae48-4212f13cb3b1?j=eyJ1IjoiMThuemVoIn0.f1h8J5CxRNeKplZuboH6J5WZmxvZ-0FdafwABjrRH8Q, which is Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter today. Check out her credentials.
Are these other groups represented in this reparation effort? If not, why not? As Joe Smith said, history can be a dirty game, and I would add, especially if parts are ignored or covered up. Can you imagine covering up the Nazi Holocaust or Columbus spreading disease among people he encountered in “India?” It appears this reparations idea is not well thought out and perhaps driven by well-intentioned guilt? Do other groups get regular “reparations” already like the American Indians do now.
American Indians do not value land ownership so that Cloquet land donation back to only ONE tribe makes zero sense. I believe the Forestry Center belongs to all Minnesotans like our parks.
Finally, which century in the past are we speaking about? There used to be an ocean here. Who did the current American Indians get the land from? We are still learning about pre-Indian cultures (remember Indians got that name as Europeans & Africans thought they were in India).
“What other groups are included: in MN the Irish come to mind (also mentioned in article I read), Veterans & survivors of veterans of our wars come to mind, and of course, the Chinese building our railroads are the most obvious examples.”
Was there an official governmental campaign to take land away form the Irish in the United States (and please spare me the racist revisionism about indentured servitude being as bad as slavery)? “Veterans & survivors of veterans of our wars” are eligible for many benefits, which I would hesitate to call “reparations.” The Chinese railroad workers were working for private corporations, so maybe look to Union Pacific or BNSF for reparations.”
“It gets sticky when you consider all the whites (sic) dying in our Civil War for black (sic) rights.”
And they aren’t the least bit grateful, are they, with their rap music and their droopy pants? Crack a history book someday. The North fought the South to preserve the Union, while the South fought to preserve slavery
You wrote “American Indians do not value land ownership….”. Don’t expect anyone to take your garbage rant seriously. Do you speak for all American Indians? I know quite a few who value land ownership very much, which means your rant is flawed from the get go.
Again! INDIAN CLAIMS COMMISSION of 1946! The tribes were paid millions of dollars and agreed not to contest this issue ever again. I don’t think we owe them anything anymore.