by Somayeh Nikkoonaari and Mike Greco
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the University of Minnesota received more than 94,000 acres of Native American land in Minnesota, which it sold for roughly $18.4 million in today’s dollars to fund its endowment. Across the country, a total of 10.7 million acres of Native land was transferred to 57 universities through direct land grants or land scrip certificates.
These windfalls were a result of the Morrill Act of 1862, which granted to the states “public land” for the purpose of establishing public colleges “for the Benefit of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts,” thus creating the foundation for America's land-grant university system. This transfer of Native land acquired largely through violence-backed land cessions has moved some to use the term “Land-Grab Universities” to describe the higher education institutions that benefited from the Morrill Act.
In 2020, High Country News reporters undertook an expansive investigation of historical land data to document all of the land that was ceded or seized from 250 Indigenous nations and transferred to land-grant institutions. In an article titled “Land-grab universities”—which received a George Polk Award for Education Reporting in 2020—the authors write, “the institutions seldom ask who paid for their good fortune. Their students sit in halls named after the act’s sponsor, Vermont Rep. Justin Morrill, and stroll past panoramic murals that embody creation stories that start with gifts of free land. Behind that myth lies a massive wealth transfer masquerading as a donation.” The investigation found that the land transferred to these institutions is now worth an estimated $500 million.
With assistance from the Resilient Communities Project (RCP), the Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing (TRUTH) Project analyzed the High Country News data to highlight the substantial financial windfall that Minnesota's colleges and universities have reaped from Indigenous lands.
Mapping the Journey of Stolen Lands
Established in response to resolutions passed by the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC) in 2020 that called on the University of Minnesota to be “better relatives” to Minnesota’s federally recognized Tribal Nations, the TRUTH Project is a collaborative effort between Minnesota's eleven recognized Tribes, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC), and the University of Minnesota's Office of American Indian and Tribal Nations Relations.
The project revealed a complex web of historical land transactions that shaped the state's higher education system. "The idea was to take the collected data [from the High Country News investigation] and tell Minnesota's story—how much the University of Minnesota and other colleges and universities have benefitted from land grabs, and then to put a dollar value on the land," explains Kyle Malone, an RCP Scholar who worked on the project.
At the heart of this investigation lies an innovative story map that has become instrumental in visualizing the impact of these historical land transfers. "Story maps allow you to create online shareable, digital-friendly narratives, naturally embedding texts and pictures to build a visual narrative," Malone explains.
The project's scope extended far beyond simple mapping. The development of this comprehensive digital resource spanned eighteen months and involved multiple RCP students and projects.
A Community-Driven Investigation
RCP co-founder and director Mike Greco describes how the program’s involvement in the TRUTH Project grew from a chance conversation into a full-scale investigation. “I first heard about the TRUTH Project when I attended a Tribal–Local Government Relations Training taught by Tadd Johnson.” Johnson is now a University regent, but at the time, he was the University’s first Senior Director of American Indian Tribal Nations Relations. “Tadd and I chatted for a while after the training. I told him about RCP and our partnerships with local government agencies. He mentioned that his office was kicking off an initiative called The TRUTH Project, and that they were looking for University partners who could assist with the work.”
Johnson explained that the most immediate need was mapping the data from the High Country Newsinvestigation and calculating the current-day value of the land appropriated under the Morill Act. “I offered that RCP could provide some pro bono assistance with these tasks,” Greco recalls, “and that’s how our involvement started.”
A Fiscal Analysis of Land-Grants
Most of RCP’s research and technical assistance is provided by matching community-identified projects with graduate and professional students at the University of Minnesota. Typically students are engaged through a for-credit course or capstone they are enrolled in, where the instructor has agreed to incorporate the RCP project as a group experiential learning opportunity. Other students choose to work individually on an RCP project to fulfill a requirement of their graduate degree program, such as an internship or field experience, with their academic advisor serving as a mentor. A few select students apply to become RCP Summer Scholars, and are hired as graduate research assistants for the summer to complete a project in collaboration with a community partner under RCP’s supervision.
RCP initially matched the TRUTH Project with a team of RCP Scholars that included Applied Economics Ph.D. candidate Madison Bozich, Master of Public Policy student Shuping Wang, and Master of Geographic Information Systems student Kyle Malone. Malone worked closely with representatives from the University’s Office of American Indian and Tribal Nations Relations to craft a visual narrative that addressed the following questions:
What does the University of Minnesota's land grab equate to in today’s dollars for the Dakota and the Ojibwe tribes? Can a dollar amount be determined for each Tribal nation?
The sale of Tribal lands in Minnesota created an initial endowment for 32 other universities around the nation through land scrip certificates. How much was taken, by what universities, and how much is this land worth in today’s dollars?
To answer these questions, Malone used the High Country News data to catalogue and map Tribal land in Minnesota that was transferred to land-grant institutions throughout the country. As Malone explains, this involved tracking multiple attributes of each individual land parcel. “What treaty was it part of? What tribe was forced to sign it over? What university was the land granted to? When did the university ultimately sell it?”
The resulting story map illustrates how much the University of Minnesota earned from the initial sale of Native lands, parcel by parcel, between 1868 and 1904: a total of $579,431, equivalent to roughly $18.4 million in inflation-adjusted dollars. The federal government paid Tribal nations only $2,309 for this land. In addition, 32 other colleges and universities around the country raised funds for their endowments from the sale of Native land equivalent to $18.7 million in inflation-adjusted dollars. Because of a stipulation in the Morrill Act, those initial funds remain on University endowment ledgers to this day.
The University of Minnesota and other institutions benefitted not just from the money they received through the initial sale of land, but also from investment earnings and interest on the endowment. Using the High Country News data as a starting point, Bozich and Wang conducted archival research to calculate compounded investment earnings and interest from the proceeds of the initial sale of Native land allocated to the University of Minnesota. Bozich calculated that the total value could be as high as $293 million, adjusted for inflation.
Another continuing source of revenue for the University of Minnesota is proceeds earned from mineral leases and permits on formerly Native land still held by the University. RCP engaged a team of urban and regional planning capstone students from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs to investigate how much revenue has accrued to the University from these sources. Graduate students Danielle Fuecker, Audrianna Goodwin, Henry Paddock, and Madeline Titus conducted research at the Minnesota Historical Society and the University of Minnesota Archives, and used Geographic Information Systems data analysis to calculate the total value of mineral leases on land-grant lands: over $190 million dollars. This figure is not adjusted for inflation, and does not include returns made or interest earned from reinvesting these revenues over 130 years. Because the University still owns many of these parcels, they continue to provide millions of dollars to the Permanent University Fund annually.
While the project puts a dollar amount on the historical land transfers that undergird the land-grant institution system, the true cost extends far beyond monetary value. "It may be impossible to completely quantify the value of the land sold" or other harms inflicted, Malone acknowledges, "but institutions think in terms of dollars and cents, so providing a dollar amount makes sense to these major institutions."
A Model for Future Investigations
The success of the TRUTH Project highlights the vital role of academic-community partnerships in addressing historical injustices. The Resilient Communities Project has established itself as a crucial bridge between academic resources and community needs. Working alongside local government agencies, cities, counties, school districts, and tribal governments, the program demonstrates how institutional resources can be channeled toward meaningful community engagement.
The project's methodology—combining historical research, economic analysis, and digital storytelling—has created a template for similar investigations nationwide. By engaging students across multiple disciplines, from Applied Economics to Geographic Information Systems, the project demonstrates how comprehensive research can illuminate complex historical issues.
The research team's approach to valuing the land also breaks new ground in how institutions can quantify historical debts. While acknowledging the impossibility of putting a complete price on cultural and spiritual losses, the project's economic analysis provides a concrete starting point for discussions about restitution and reconciliation.
Looking Forward: A Legacy of Learning and Healing
The TRUTH Project represents more than just a historical accounting—it's a step toward acknowledgment and potential reconciliation. Through the combination of cutting-edge digital tools, rigorous research, and community collaboration, the project has created a framework for understanding and addressing historical injustices in higher education.
In addition to conducting their financial analysis, the Humphrey School capstone team interviewed Tribal relations officers at other universities around the country to identify opportunities for the University of Minnesota to acknowledge and make amends for past and present harms to Indigenous communities. In its final report, the team offered a number of recommendations, including instituting land acknowledgements as a first step, providing tuition support or free tuition to Native students, expanding the American Indian Studies Program and Ojibwe Language Program to offer graduate degrees, and expanding efforts to recruit and retain Native staff and faculty.
As Minnesota's universities grapple with this legacy, the project's findings continue to inform discussions about reparations and acknowledgment. More importantly, it has opened pathways for future collaboration between academic institutions and Native communities, suggesting that the true value of this work may lie not just in understanding the past, but in building bridges for the future. RCP has already embarked on one such project in the City of La Crescent: an Indigenous public history project in collaboration with the Ho-Chunk Nation (Wisconsin) and Prairie Island Indian Community (Minnesota), which both have historic and current ties to this area of southeastern Minnesota.
RCP is actively seeking additional partnerships with Tribal nations in Minnesota on Tribal-initiated projects that would benefit from student research and technical assistance. For more information or to discuss a project idea and how RCP might be able to assist, email us at [email protected] or call us at 612-625-6550.
For more information:
TRUTH Project
RCP Reports
- Kyle Malone, TRUTH Project Story Map
- Madison Bozich. (2021). TRUTH: A Strategic Analysis of the Morrill Land Grab in Minnesota.
- Danielle Fuecker, Audrianna Goodwin, Henry Paddock, and Madeline Titus. (2022). The Permanent University Fund: Land Grants and Mineral Leases.
- Danielle Fuecker, Audrianna Goodwin, Henry Paddock, and Madeline Titus. (2022). University Relationships with Tribal Nations: Opportunities for University Action.