MINNEAPOLIS — The University of Minnesota should hire more Indigenous professors, offer students additional financial support and return land to atone for its historic mistreatment of Indigenous people in the U.S. state, a joint report concluded Tuesday. the institution.
The report says the university’s founding board “committed genocide and ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples for financial gain, using the institution as a front company to launder land and resources.”
Totaling more than 500 pages, the report marks the first time a major U.S. university critically examines its history with Indigenous peoples, said Shannon Geshick, executive director of the Minnesota Native Affairs Council and Bois Forte band member. from Chippewa.
The report is the result of a collaborative effort between the board and the university called the TRUTH Project — short for Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing — which received funding from the Mellon Foundation, Minnesota Public Radio reported. .
“The TRUTH project is just an opening and really reveals a narrative that I think a lot of people just don’t know about,” Ms. Geshick asserted.
The effort draws on archival documents, oral histories and other sources to examine through an Indigenous lens the troubled history between Indigenous peoples and the state’s flagship university. The university refrained from saying whether it would adopt the recommendations, but thanked the researchers in a statement for their “truth”.
The project began following a series of reports in the publication High Country News in 2020 revealing how the country’s universities were founded on the proceeds of lands that were taken from Indigenous people through the Morrill Act of 1862. .
That included a financial windfall — dubbed “the Minnesota windfall” — that funneled more than US$500 million to Minnesota’s fledgling university from leases and sales of land taken from the Dakotas after the federal government hanged 38 men of the nation at Mankato in December 1862, ending the American-Dakota War.
It was also discovered that the university’s permanent trust fund controls about US$600 million in royalties from iron ore mining, timber sales and other revenue from lands taken from the Ojibwe and Dakota communities. .
The report also revealed the university failed to teach a comprehensive history of the land it was founded on and raised questions about how some medical research was conducted.
The university has taken significant steps to address some of their concerns, the tribal leaders said. In 2021, the university created a program that offers free or significantly reduced tuition to many enrolled members of the 11 nations recognized by the United States.
University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel, who is leaving for the University of Pittsburgh, has created high-level positions in her administration focusing on Native American issues and relations, and has held quarterly meetings face to face with the leaders of the nations. But Ms Geshick, with the Native Affairs Council of Minnesota, said much more could have been done.
For example, she and others have called for an expansion of the scholarship program, which has been criticized for benefiting only a fraction of Indigenous students.
“It’s a good start. But that shouldn’t be the end,” said Robert Larsen, president of the Lower Sioux community and president of the Minnesota Native Affairs Council.
