By Hannah Z. Morley
A seemingly harmless Civil War-era law that gave “public” land to dozens of U.S. colleges actually stole the property from indigenous people to invest it for university endowments, says Robert Lee, a historian at the University of Cambridge.
Lee and journalist Tristan Ahtone, editor-in-chief of The Texas Observer, spoke last week as part of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s “Living Democracy” series. The event was co-sponsored by UCSB’s American Indian and Indigenous Collective Research Focus Group to share an interactive version of Lee and Ahtone’s research on what they have dubbed “land-grab universities,” findings which have been published as a website by the Colorado-based High Country News.
Journalist Tristan Ahtone , bottom left, historian Robert Lee, upper right, American Sign Language translator Jo Malizia, upper left, and event host IHC Director Susan Derwin, bottom right, discuss how indigenous lands were turned into university endowments. Photo by Hannah Z. Morley
Land-grant universities are any colleges that benefited from the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890. First signed during the Civil War by President Abraham Lincoln, the Morrill Act eventually gave 74 universities public land as a way for the colleges to raise funds.
But the land was far from vacant. In total, 10.8 million acres of land were taken from more than 250 tribal nations. And the few nations that were compensated for their land received, on average, only $1 for every $57 the affiliated university made on the land.
“That land, when grouped together, is an area approximately the size of Denmark,” said Lee.
After meeting at Harvard in 2018, Ahtone and Lee set out on the ambitious project to document the history behind each of the 80,000 parcels of land sold by or still owned by these universities. The two led a team that for two years researched the indigenous histories of these sites to better understand the relationship between higher education and “violent colonialism,” as Ahtone characterized it.
UC Santa Barbara was an apt location to host this discussion as UCSB itself resides on Chumash lands. While UCSB did not receive land through the Morrill Act, UC Berkeley received 148,636 acres of land, none of which the U.S. government paid the first inhabitants for, and the university made $730,860 from this endowment.
In total, although the land-grant system raised $23 million for universities, indigenous landholders only received $400,000 when their lands were taken.
Journalist Tristan Ahtone, bottom, presents his and historian Robert Lee’s research on the parcels of indigenous land that were given to universities to help them raise and invest money. Jo Malizia , top, translates into American Sign Language. Photo by Hannah Z. Morley
With their project now completed Ahtone and Lee have made their website and hard data sheets user-friendly to encourage other journalists, researchers, or interested parties to funnel the data into other projects. Even if you’re not a hard data user, Ahtone said, “the instructions we left on our site and spreadsheets will teach any visitor how to use our information.”
Journalist Tristan Ahtone and historian Robert Lee’s opening slide that shows the names of “land-grab” universities and the indigenous lands that were taken. Image by Marty Two Bulls Jr.
Their interactive website allows for any user to click on an identified parcel and be transferred to a page showing photos of it today and the newly researched history of the land. They even made the site work on mobile devices so that anyone can see where they are on a map and travel to specific sites or find parcels in their own neighborhoods. Since their work was published last April, they have inspired numerous other research projects by allowing their site to be a “build your own adventure” experience.
“This choose your own adventure and this idea of an open-source investigation has really led to a lot of interesting developments. The story has started a conversation about the debts the universities owe to indigenous peoples,” Ahtone said.
While they have no plans to do further research at this time all of the information they did will be, for the seeable future, available at LandGrabU.org.
Hannah Z. Morley is a fourth-year UC Santa Barbara student, majoring in Writing & Literature at the College of Creative Studies. She is a web and social media intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.