What a land acknowledgement might look like at Ohio U

Land acknowledgements are a way for institutions to recognize the Indigenous peoples who formerly inhabited the land that they are now occupying. 

They are formal statements that also recognize the history of how the land was taken from them and the Indigenous peoples in the present day, as explained by IllumiNative, an Indigenous-led network that provides information on Indigenous topics, in its land acknowledgement guide.

Ohio University is currently working on creating an official land acknowledgement statement. The committee is chaired by Bob Klein, a professor in the College of Arts and Science and the executive director of the Alliance of Indigenous Math Circles. Athens, according to the Native Land Digital map, is on land formerly inhabited by Osage, Shawnee, Hopewell and Adena tribes.

The land acknowledgement was part of the action items in the 2021 Inclusive Excellence Strategic Plan, according to Carly Leatherwood, executive director of communications and marketing at Ohio U. 

However, Leatherwood and Klein denied answer to any questions regarding the land acknowledgement. 

“The University is currently engaged in a process to create an official land acknowledgement statement through the work of the Land Acknowledgement committee. The committee, chaired by Dr. Bob Klein, professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, was created as one of the 2021 action items in OHIO’s Inclusive Excellence Strategic Plan. We are planning to have a draft statement for review by leadership for consideration and next steps, in the near future,” Leatherwood wrote in an email. 

IllumiNative stressed that land acknowledgements must be well-researched, and that the institution should work with the tribes that formerly inhabited that land. Land acknowledgements are also not the “last step.” IllumiNative wrote that it is important to hire Native people and create opportunities for them within the institution. 

“Land acknowledgments that are done to check a box or to be politically correct are performative and insincere,” IllumiNative wrote. 

Hayden King, an Anishinaabe writer and educator at Ryerson University, helped write Ryerson University’s land acknowledgement, but he told CBC radio that he now regrets it. 

“I think I started to see how the territorial acknowledgement could become very superficial and also how it sort of fetishizes these actual tangible, concrete treaties. They're not metaphors — they're real institutions, and for us to write and recite a territorial acknowledgement that sort of obscures that fact, I think we do a disservice to that treaty and to those nations,” King said.

King also said that land acknowledgements are mostly for non-Native people because “it effectively excuses them and offers them an alibi for doing the hard work of learning about their neighbours and learning about the treaties of the territory and learning about those nations that should have jurisdiction.” 

Ohio State University, based in Columbus, is also working on a land acknowledgement as part of its Stepping Out and Stepping Up project. Stephen Gavazzi and John Low, investigators on the project, talked with The New Political on how OSU is creating a land acknowledgement, as well as the thorough research process it is taking to ensure it is done while honoring the tribes who suffered in the creation of OSU.

The project at OSU in recognition of Native peoples started with the story Land-grab universities, published in High Country News and written by Tristan Ahtone and Robert Lee. The story detailed how universities across the United States benefited monetarily from the Morrill Act. The act, signed in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln, took money raised from the sale of stolen Indigenous land and used it to fund public institutions of higher learning and affected almost 250 tribes, bands and communities.

Gavazzi, a professor of Human Development and Family Science at OSU, said the story made him realize how much greater the cost of OSU was to Native people besides being on stolen land. 

“This has lit a fire that is growing across the nation right now,” Gavazzi said. 

Low, associate professor at OSU; director of the Newark Earthworks center and “proud” citizen of the Pokagon band of Potawatomi Indians, explained that there was a desire by departments and programs to create a centralized land acknowledgement across the university. 

OSU is distributing $1 million in grant funds aimed at racial justice. Gavazzi gathered Native and non-Native scholars across OSU campuses and the group received funds from the grant. 

Gavazzi said they are focusing on interviewing leaders of tribes who OSU received money from in the sale of their lands as well as the Morrill land grant act. Low said OSU is on the land of about 40 historic tribes, but about 108 tribes had land taken and monetized for land grant universities. 

“What I’ve seen across the country is that the university — as is common, is the government institutions, organizations — they’re going to tell the Indians what they’re going to do for them. And we’re doing something much different: we connected with folks in Indian country,” Low said. 

The United States defines Indian Country as “1. All land within the limits of an Indian reservation under the jurisdiction of the United States government; 2. All dependent Indian communities, such as the New Mexico Pueblos; and 3. All Indian allotments still in trust, whether they are located within reservations or not.”

The interviews, Low explained, make the process long since the tribal leaders are also going back to their communities to give informed answers on what they want in the land acknowledgement. 

“It’s a different answer for each university, and it’s a different answer for each tribe. So it’s a spider web, it’s not linear, it’s not just one fix,” Low said. 

The group is also working with the First Nations Development Institute as a community partner to be “an honest broker with regards to the interviews,” Gavazzi said. 

Gavazzi outlined three features of the land acknowledgement: recognizing the tribes that were removed from their homes to create the state of Ohio and OSU campuses; the tribes forcibly removed from their homes and whose land was sold to raise money, which was used for the founding of OSU and a focus on the present and the future. 

“We have to recognize past wrongdoings, but we also have to identify the present harm that continues to be visited upon Native Americans as a result of these actions,” Gavazzi said. “And in my opinion, we also have to envision a future for Ohio State University that includes engagement in ongoing dialogue and reparative actions that are associated with all of these injustices.”

And, Gavazzi said, OSU needs to work with all the tribal leaders to ensure the land acknowledgment “accurately reflects the perspectives, values and traditions of all those tribal communities that are connected to Ohio State.”

Low explained that the significance of a land acknowledgement is that they can be a step towards healing, truth and reconciliation that goes beyond an apology. 

With the history of Native American boarding schools used to convert Natives to Christianity and suppress their culture, Low said many Native people are suspicious of higher education. Land acknowledgements are a way to start to change that narrative, as well as give Native people agency in how reparations for the harm done to them is made. 

“There certainly is an argument for a moral and an ethical imperative for all institutions, all organizations, including colleges and universities, to reach out and begin the process of reconciliation with the people who have sacrificed so much, the descendants of people who sacrificed so much, so these universities can be thriving institutions,” Low said. 

The land acknowledgement is only one of the projects occurring at OSU regarding Indigenous awareness. One project is bringing Native scholars and artists to OSU to educate the community about Native cultures, and speakers have come every month of this school year since September, and Low hopes will continue into next year. 

“We need to bring on Native people back to the universities so that people can become familiar with who we are,” Low said. “We are people living significant lives with substantial creativity and intelligence and sophistication. We want to get beyond the mascot and the stereotype images of Indians that people in Ohio oftentimes have to really get to know Indian people in real time on a real basis.”

Another grant is looking at different literatures and the visibility of Native American families and communities, and another is the collaborative centers grant which is focusing on the Native American population in Ohio. 

Despite having an American Indian Studies program at OSU, Low said there is a dearth of Native faculty and students at OSU. Low said increasing representation shows how Native people are not a monolithic group and have extensive diversity between each tribe. 

The land acknowledgement itself, as Gavazzi said, isn’t the totality of the work that needs to be done. He highlighted the importance of being in conversation with tribal leaders, to create opportunities for more Native American students in those tribes to come to Ohio State, hiring more Native faculty and creating a welcoming place for Native Americans to be in Ohio and get an education. 

“Those are the things that are actually infinitely more important than a land acknowledgement, but if a land acknowledgement is what grabs people’s attention first, then great,” Gavazzi said. 

IllumiNative provides ideas in the Land Acknowledgement Guide on how institutions can continue allyship beyond the “first step” of a land acknowledgement. Including:

• Hire Native peoples 

• Create opportunities for Native people in the institution

• Make space to learn from Native peoples and organizations

• Donate time or resources to Native organizations

• Support Native-led movements and campaigns, especially related to land the institution occupies.