Agraria_Journal_WINTER_2022

6 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2022 A STORY OF DISPOSSESSION In particular, the connection between Native land and the founding of the nation’s land grant universities, including The Ohio State University, is often overlooked and forgotten. They “were built not just on Indigenous land, but with Indigenous land,” according to “Land-Grab Universities,” a 2020 report by the High Country News 1 . The history of the land from which land grant universities were built tells a story of dispossession that’s hidden in plain sight. It is also uniquely available to historical analysis, as the land transactions are still on the books of many of these public universities. In 1862, President Lincoln signed the Morrill Act, which distributed public domain lands to states to establish and endow land grant institutions, with the mission of making higher education more accessible and focusing on practical sciences, like agriculture, military science, mining, and engineering. This act redistributed around 11 million acres, which were sold, and in some cases kept, to generate funds to found and sustain land grant institutions like Ohio State. The amount of land given to each state was proportionate to the number of that state’s congressmen, or near-proportionate to the state’s population. Notably, at this time Indigenous peoples and nations were not counted in the census. The founding mission of land grant universities is an honorable one and typically praised by academics and communities alike. However, the High Country News (HCN) investigation identified 99% of the land distributed through the Morrill Act and connected it to the Native American tribes who were removed from their ancestral lands. The HCN report revealed that land was taken from nearly 250 tribes, bands, and communities through “violence-backed treaties and land seizures.” This land became the foundation of 52 institutions across the country. (For more information, see the interactive report at landgrabu.org ) LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF LAND LOSS Inherently braided with the story of “land-grab universities” is the story of stolen resources and opportunities from Indigenous peoples since removal from their land. For many Native Americans, the result today is food insecurity and poverty. According to the 2018 U.S. Census, Native Americans experience the highest poverty rate among minority groups, at 25%; it is roughly the same rate for food insecurity. 2 Further, access to food is an issue; only 25% of Native people on tribal lands live within 1 mile of a supermarket, compared to 59% nationwide. 3 Using the data in the “Land-Grab Universities” report and the U.S. Forest Service Tribal Connections database, our Stepping Out & Stepping Up (u.osu.edu/landgranttruth) Under the 1862 Morrill Act, nearly 11 million acres of Indigenous land were expropriated — through violence-backed treaties and land seizures — from approximately 250 tribal nations to fund the nation’s 52 land-grant institutions. Money raised off of expropriated land built university endowments, often at huge rates of return. In Ohio, for example, 4,410 parcels from multiple tribes totaling 614,165 acres were expropriated, raising $6.8 million for The Ohio State University in today’s dollars. Source: Data and analysis from High Country News , landgrabu.org. TOP 10 LAND GRANT PARCELS, BY ACREAGE, BENEFITTING U.S. LAND-GRANT UNIVERSITIES UNIVERSITY ACRES U.S. PAID* UNIV. RAISED* RETURN 1 Cornell University (NY) 977,909 $41,166 $5,739,657 139x 2 Pennsylvania State University 776,354 $38,089 $439,096 12x 3 The Ohio State University 614,165 $35,410 $340,818 10x 4 University of Illinois 477,710 $15,270 $648,767 42x 5 Purdue University (IN) 380,440 $22,474 $212,149 9x 6 University of Massachusetts 366,711 $9,177 $158,313 17x 7 Mass. Institute of Technology 366,711 $4,520 $77,975 17x 8 University of Kentucky 323,130 $14,473 $143,515 10x 9 Kentucky State University 323,130 $2,163 $21,445 10x 10 University of Tennessee 301,083 $6,985 $271,731 39x *Original value.