Cornell University, a private Ivy League institution in upstate New York, is responsible for dispossessing 251 tribal nations from their homelands in its formation, the university said this week.
That’s according to a list the university has been compiling since March 2020, when High Country News (HCN) reporters Tristan Ahtone and Robert Lee broke the investigative story about how federal policy turned Indigenous land into college endowments. Their work showed how The Morrill Act of 1862, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, redistributed 10.7 million acres of land taken from 250 tribal nations throughout the United States into seed money to support 52 universities.
Out of the 52 land grant universities, Cornell University was the greatest beneficiary, High Country News’ research shows: it received federal vouchers for the selection of Indigenous-held land parcels in the Western United States. Cornell sold all of its Morrill Act lands by 1938, and its revenues funded the university’s operating budget for the next 30 years, according to the report.
In response to the 2020 High Country News story, Cornell’s American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program formed a Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Committee (CU&ID). The goal of that Committee was to determine federally recognized and unrecognized tribal nations—including First Nations in Canada— who were displaced as a result of Cornell’s land grabs, notify each group by written letter, and “advocate for redress to mend that history.”
They even sent letters. Actual written letters. What more could they do?