Report: U of Minnesota ‘committed genocide’ of Native people

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (AP) — The College of Minnesota ought to rent extra Native American college, provide college students extra monetary help and provides again land to atone for its historic mistreatment of the state’s tribes, a report launched Tuesday concluded.

Totaling greater than 500 pages, the report marks the primary time a serious American college has critically examined its historical past with Native folks, stated Shannon Geshick, govt director of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council and a member of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa.

The report is the results of a collaborative effort between the council and the college referred to as the TRUTH Undertaking — quick for In the direction of Recognition and College-Tribal Therapeutic — which has obtained funding from the Mellon Basis, Minnesota Public Radio reported.

“The TRUTH Undertaking simply rips that open and actually reveals a story that lots of people I feel simply don’t know,” Geshick stated.

The hassle attracts on archival information, oral histories and different sources to look at by way of an Indigenous lens the troubled historical past between Native folks and the state’s flagship college. The college stopped in need of saying whether or not it could undertake the suggestions however thanked researchers in a press release for what they referred to as their “truth-telling.”

The challenge began following a collection of experiences within the publication Excessive Nation Information in 2020 revealing how universities across the nation have been based on the proceeds of land that was taken from tribes by way of the 1862 Morrill Act.

That included a monetary bonanza — dubbed the “Minnesota windfall” — that channeled greater than $500 million to the fledgling College of Minnesota from leases and gross sales of land taken from the Dakota tribe after the federal authorities hanged 38 Dakota males in Mankato, Minnesota, in December 1862, ending the U.S.-Dakota warfare.

The report stated that the college’s founding board of regents “dedicated genocide and ethnic cleaning of Indigenous peoples for monetary acquire, utilizing the establishment as a shell company by way of which to launder lands and assets.”

In the meantime, it discovered that the college’s everlasting belief fund controls roughly $600 million in royalties from iron ore mining, timber gross sales and different revenues derived from land taken from the Ojibwe and Dakota tribes.

The report additionally discovered that the college had failed to show a full historical past of the land on which it was based and raised questions on how some medical analysis was carried out.

The college has taken significant steps towards addressing a few of their issues, tribal leaders stated. In 2021, the college created a program that gives free or considerably decreased tuition to many enrolled members of the state’s 11 federally acknowledged tribes.

College of Minnesota President Joan Gabel, who’s leaving to take over the College of Pittsburgh, created high-level positions inside her administration specializing in Native American points and tribal relations, and held quarterly, face-to-face conferences with tribal leaders. However Geshick, together with the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, stated much more may have been achieved.

For instance, she and others have referred to as for an growth of the scholarship program, which has been criticized for under benefiting a fraction of Native college students.

“It’s an excellent begin. Nevertheless it shouldn’t be the tip,” stated Robert Larsen, president of the Decrease Sioux Indian Group and chair of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council.