New report details how ‘land grabs’ from tribes have enriched the University of Minnesota

WASHINGTON — A new report details the substantial wealth the University of Minnesota has earned from land it obtained through what critics call “land grabs” from the state’s Native American tribes.

The report shows that since its inception in 1851, the University of Minnesota acquired nearly 187,000 acres of land from the tribes, which over the years has produced many millions of dollars in revenue for the school.

The university is one of 14 land-grant colleges that were founded with the help of transfers of Indian land to the federal government and then to the states.  

Grist, a nonprofit media organization that focuses on climate change and efforts toward a “just future,” spent a year looking at state trust lands, which are managed by state agencies for the schools’ continued benefit.

Those trust lands total more than 500 million acres across 21 states.

As far as these “land-grabs,” Shannon Geshick, executive director of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, called them “the most well-kept secret that people are finally becoming aware of.”

Geshick is a member of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, a tribe that lost about 53,000 acres of land, according to the Grist report.

The University of Minnesota and other land-grant universities were founded with the help of legislation Abraham Lincoln signed into law in 1862.

Known as the Morrill Act, that legislation 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 the 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.

The federal government continues to hold about 30% of what Grist called “plundered land,” parcels that have been turned into national parks, and national forests, as well as military bases and used for other purposes as well.

Besides acquiring land through the Morrill Act, the University of Minnesota received tribal lands through other transfers, including “enabling acts” that helped western territories become states and join the Union.

Related: University of Minnesota fields comments on plan to return Cloquet Forestry Center lands to Fond du Lac band

The land acquired by the school was widespread, with parcels in 22 Minnesota counties, especially St. Louis, Itasca and Mille Lacs counties. But there were also transfers of land in Kanabec, Pine, Aitkin, Cass, Hubbard, Renville, Lake, Cook, Pope, Sherburne, Todd, Wilkin, Norman, Blue Earth, Stearns, Sibley, Wright, Dodge and Otter Tail counties.

In its investigation, Grist located and mapped more than 8.1 million acres taken from 123 tribes, land that continues to produce income for the land-grant universities.

For instance, between 2018 and 2022 the University of Minnesota earned nearly $17.2 million just in mineral revenues from the land it has obtained from the state’s tribes, Grist said.

The school received the mineral revenues from the state Department of Natural Resources, which manages most of the trust land.

Money earned from the trust lands managed by the DNR is placed in the school’s Permanent University Fund, which totaled about $918.7 million as of June 30, 2022.

The University of Minnesota provided MinnPost with a different amount – about $11.6 million – in trust land revenues during the five-year period studied by Grist. There was no explanation for the discrepancy.  

Grist found that nearly 25% of land-grant university trust lands are designated for either fossil fuel production or the mining of minerals, such as iron-rich taconite — and that grazing cattle is permitted on about a third of these lands.

Grist also researched how much the United States paid for the tribal land — when it did pay for it. The total price paid for the land acquired by the University of Minnesota was $241,013.   

It’s not just the University of Minnesota that benefited from the transfers of lands from tribes in the state. For instance, the White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa lost about 143,000 acres of land to North Dakota State University and the University of Wisconsin as well as to the University of Minnesota.

A dark history

The TRUTH report, which stands for Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing, produced by a collaboration of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council and the University of Minnesota, retells the dark history of how the  school was founded.

Released last year, the report said the school’s first regents “were the very men who negotiated treaties, wrote the state charter and the University charter, and lobbied Congress for the Indigenous lands.”

“Because the governor simultaneously sat on the board, the University was privy to the land that would yield the most return on investment. They invented the game, the rules, and then even when they were winning, they still cheated,” the report said.

Henry Sibley, a fur trader who became Minnesota’s first delegate to Congress and the state’s first governor, was also a founding regent of the University of Minnesota.

In 1851, Sibley and fellow regent Alexander Ramsey signed the Treaty of Traverse De Sioux, which transferred to the state a massive amount of tribal land — enough to create nearly half of the state of Minnesota. This transfer of land, and other transfers, including those allowed under the Morrill Act, would afford the University of Minnesota nearly 187,000 acres of land.

Under the terms of the treaty, the Dakota were to be paid $1.4 million for the land, but never received the money. That led to the Dakota War of 1862, which resulted in the execution of 38 captured Dakota men.

The TRUTH report accused the University of Minnesota of “persisting intergenerational effects of trauma caused by genocide and land dispossession.”

“In 172 years, UMN has shown no meaningful contribution or commitment to Tribal self-determination. UMN seems to be ignoring many opportunities to ameliorate its impact on the persistent achievement, employment, income, wealth, or health gaps experienced by Native American” the report said.

The Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, in response to the Grist report, provided MinnPost with a written statement that criticized the university for continuing to use “the same mechanisms of wealth displacement.

“While the University of Minnesota has begun to … implement various programs that in name make the institution more welcoming for Indigenous students, like the Native American Tuition Promise Program, these programs are not enough and do not come close to demonstrating that the University of Minnesota is truly committed to reinvesting the massive wealth it generates from Native land into Native communities,” the statement continued. “So, while change is being made, it is but a drop in the bucket compared to the millions UMN is making off Native land.”

In an emailed statement, University of Minnesota spokeswoman Andria Waclawski said the school is actively trying to rebuild its relationship with tribal communities.

“In recent years, U of M leaders have prioritized acknowledging the painful realities of the University’s past and have taken action to rebuild and strengthen the relationships between the U of M and Indigenous communities across Minnesota, including with the state’s 11 Tribal Nations,” Waclawski said.

She also said university leaders meet regularly with leaders of Minnesota’s Tribal Nations and the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council — “conversations that were not routine as recently as five years ago.” 

The university has also taken steps to repatriate Indian burial artifacts that had been on display for years at the school’s Weisman Art Museum and increase the amount of tuition assistance and other financial aid offered to Native American students.

The school has also hired Karen Diver, a former Fond du Lac tribal chairwoman and former Obama administration Native American affairs adviser, to help the school try to redress injustices and strengthen relationships with Minnesota’s tribal nations.

Among 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, and held a public hearing on the issue Feb. 13 in Cloquet. The forestry center is wholly located within the tribe’s reservation.

Misty Blue, who participated in the Truth Project, said the new revelations about state trust lands are “super important” and build on the Truth report, a document she helped write.

“It expands the conversation on what reparations can look like and it is our hope that tribal voices can remain at the center,” Blue, a member of the White Earth Nation, said.

Blue said it is imperative that people know the land-grant universities continue to profit from tribal land.

“This may start a conversation about how these parcels of land can be returned to Indian communities,” she said.