Frequently asked questions about the TRUTH Project.
The TRUTH Project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through a grant to Minnesota Transform: A Just University for Just Futures and the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, to research University-Tribal relations from an Indigenous perspective. TRUTH moves at the speed of trust with the intent of provoking changes in University policy and campus climates that will promote Indigenous success.
TRUTH meets one of the calls in the June 2020 executive orders released by the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC) which brought Tribal-University relations to the local level. The first order is concerned with the Repatriation of American Indian human remains and funerary objects (06262020-02). The second is concerned with fulfilling the University’s obligations to Minnesota’s 11 tribal governments (06262020-03). Both orders detail a painful history and current harm to be redressed by the institution. In summary, the “Minnesota Indian Affairs Council Seeks Immediate Action from University of Minnesota to Address Exploitation of American Indian Nations and People” where the goal is to build a “long-term relationship based on trust and mutual respect.”
The report challenges existing revisionist narratives like that of the “land grant university.” It also reveals a history of harm long-buried. At the same time, knowing and understanding this history is essential for healing generational trauma and for transforming systemic patterns of harm.
In March 2020, High Country News published an exposé about land-grab universities (referred to as such throughout this document) that touched a deep nerve and catapulted this issue to mainstream attention, nationally. In Mni Sóta Maḳoce, Indigenous people are bringing this conversation to the forefront and situating this issue within the ancestral homelands of the Oceti Ṡakowin, and later the Anishinaabeg people. As the original people, we are from and of this land. The land has a relationship with us that is characterized by balance, longevity, and care. This relationship was ruptured, in large part, by the state of Minnesota and its institutions, like the University of Minnesota, which existed prior to statehood, and was created to encourage white settlement using genocide and ethnic cleansing in pursuit of Indigenous land dispossession.
This report is titled Oshkigin Noojimo'iwe, Naġi Waƞ P̣etu Uƞ Ihduwaṡ'ake He Oyate Kiƞ Zaniwic̣aye Kte, which we understand to translate roughly into the spirit of fire renews and heals the people in Ojibwe and Dakota languages. Oshkigin is the spirit that renews the land through the Ojibwe practice of controlled burning, a traditional land management technique. The University of Minnesota recently (November 2022) acknowledged that traditional uses of controlled burns promote a healthier and more diverse ecosystem than Western land management practices it has taught for more than a century while simultaneously discounting traditional ecological knowledge. This epistemic violence is an echo of the violent land grabs that created the U of M.
We seek not the physical destruction of the institution, but metaphorical controlled burns of institutional ways of being that perpetuate harm. We seek a transformation of policies and practices that have been harming the people and the land. We seek campuses where Indigeneity is seen, heard, and valued. We seek educational and employment experiences where we can grow and thrive the same as our white counterparts. We seek redress for seven generations. With the flames of change we honor those who come before us and prepare the landscape for the future, planting seeds to revitalize what institutional actors and forces have attempted to destroy.
This project is done with the intention of reshaping policies through a critical Indigenous analysis. The language of reconciliation uses never-ending performances of Indigenous pain. In a well known example, to the North, the Canadian government has led Indigenous peoples through traumatic retellings of boarding school experiences while never committing to real and lasting structural change, only calls for more data. Reconciliation asks Indigenous peoples to find peace in oppression. This confronts the question of what is justice when one must take the shape of a wound?* The focus on recognition that some actions are irreconcilable is critical as we move “towards healing” in the TRUTH project, and allows a continued focus on healing. Indigenous healing cannot be dependent upon settler sympathy and liberal tropes of reconciliation. Moving towards healing also holds the implication that we have not arrived yet, that there is still work to do. TRUTH is the first step in a long journey towards justice.
TRUTH seeks to challenge the historical narrative, one of what should be a series of investigations, with subsequent studies to be coordinated and paid for by the University, followed by intentional initiatives centered on justice, healing, self-determination, and revitalization.
Instead of asking what reconciliation looks like, TRUTH asks, what shape does healing take in the face of irreconcilable harms?
* See Audra Simpson on reconciliation: https://youtu.be/vGl9HkzQsGg
TRUTH is the product of many researchers from the 11 Tribal Nations and the University of Minnesota system. The full list of Tribal Research Fellows, core team members, and task force members can be found here.
The primary authors and organizers of the project are:
The Tribal Research Fellows were a core component of the project, and were appointed by their Tribal Nations to gather stories of Tribal-University relations.
Work began in 2020 under the leadership of Tadd Johnson,then Senior Director of American Indian and Tribal Nations Relations, to begin conversations with the 11 federally recognized Tribal Nations. These conversations began to uncover historical mistrust, caused by 172 years of institutional harm and neglect of institutional responsibilities to Tribes. This history includes many injustices enacted upon Indigenous peoples, from genocide, land thefts, broken treaties, and banishments to ongoing appropriation of cultural knowledge and unfulfilled opportunities for Indigenous youth to enjoy the educational success offered to other residents. Since its inception, the University of Minnesota has played a continued role in the disinvestment of Indigenous peoples.
The TRUTH Project believes in moving at the speed of trust.
Moving at the speed of trust means allowing Tribal Nations to lead conversations and recommendations. This hasn’t always happened, as seen recently with the Red Lake External Review. Working out 172 years of institutional wrongdoing and reaching trust is going to take a long time. This healing process will take as many generations as it took to begin this truth-telling: seven. It will take the work of many—Indigenous and non-Indigenous—to bring our world back into balance, but now is the time to begin the journey. Rather than shy away from this process, we seek to embrace this as an opportunity to become better relatives and set an example for other institutions to follow.
Findings indicate that institutional harm has taken many different forms since 1851. Some key findings of transgressions, harm, and erasure are:
A more detailed summary of these findings is available in the Executive Summary.
The TRUTH report has what we consider to be anchor questions rather than research questions.
The TRUTH Project was born out of MIAC’s calls for action. The report studies Tribal-University relations past, present, and future, and how we might fulfill the ambitious goal of getting in right relation. TRUTH analyzes the 170-year history of the University of Minnesota with these guiding questions:
Throughout this project, we did not seek nor do we have all of the answers. Our stance is that to offer answers disrespects the gravity of these questions.
Almost immediately in the project, TRUTH researchers encountered documents and stories that detailed a painful history and often brought up intense emotions within the research team.
The history of violence—with the University of Minnesota being an actor—is directly connected to today’s social determinants of health for Native communities in Minnesota. Interruption of original lifeways has disallowed Native people to act with agency and self-determination around health, nutrition, and well-being. Present-day marginalization causes poor health outcomes and high health disparities around education, healthcare, and housing because of the various ways that Native people are excluded from the formal market and pathways to the workforce.
We had no idea at the time of research design that this work was going to be a sadness that we continue to carry. It is in the sadness that comes from gathering the pieces of our stories that historical healing is beginning to happen.
The full report offers many concrete, measurable actions the University can take towards meaningful change. We have grouped these into broad themes, or areas of prescribed policy burns:
Land Back
The Board of Regents must commit to annual review and rematriation of Indigenous lands.
Reparations in Perpetuity
The Morrill Act stipulates that the Permanent University Fund must be held in perpetuity, as the beneficiary of perpetual wealth made from Indigenous genocide, the U of M must commit to perpetual reparations to Indigenous peoples.
Diverting PUF Streams
Engage in economic justice, including committing part of the annual investment returns of the Permanent University Fund in a way that gives back to Native Americans, in perpetuity.
Representation
The Board of Regents must adopt measurable policies that remedy the lack of Indigenous representation in administration, tenure-track faculty, staff and students on all U of M campuses.
Commitment to Education as Individual and Tribal Self-Determination
Full cost of attendance waiver for all Indigenous peoples and descendants regardless of state of residence.
Enact Policies that Respect Tribal Sovereignty and Cultural Heritage
Board of Regents must enact new Indigenous Research policies that respect the sovereignty and treaty rights of Indigenous peoples. The Board must also call for Indigenous curriculum requirements for all degree programs so future graduates are prepared with this knowledge. The U of M must also conduct a systemwide inventory of human remains and items related to Native American Cultural Heritage.
Sites for Future Research
Institutional commitments to fully funding research that continues to explore TRUTH and ways that the U of M can be in better relation with Indigenous peoples.
Meet Trust Obligations
As a federal land grant institution, the U of M has trust responsibilities to Indigenous peoples codified by law and upheld by the Supreme Court.
We hope that other places use this model to embark on similar work within their communities. The interconnectedness of academia, industry, and attempted erasure of Indigenous thought, economics, lifeways, and peoples spirals in countless directions across all sectors of society. Thus, our story is not merely an intellectual argument to have amongst academics. This is about our people. It is about the land. And the land is ready for this circle to be closed so a new circle, a healing circle, can be opened.
Some of the ways TRUTH has already moved the institution to change:
We would like the University to introduce an immediate expansion of the tuition waiver for Indigenous students that includes all Indigenous students regardless of familial income or state of residence.
We would like the University to adopt the recommendations offered in the report.
We would like the University to continue the important work of establishing and nurturing relationships with the tribes.
The TRUTH Project challenges widely accepted revisionist narratives of Indigenous Peoples, presenting opportunities for non-Indigenous peoples to commit to working towards meaningful change and healing, both individually and collectively by learning a more complete understanding of how the University and the State were formed.
We invite people to:
A regent is the highest position of leadership at the University of Minnesota. The Board of Regents is the governing body of the University. They hold the power of decision making over the University’s vast land holdings and significant financial affairs.
Merriam-Webster defines the term land grab as, “a usually swift acquisition of property (such as land or patent rights) often by fraud or force.” This is precisely what happened through the Morrill Act. Tribal Nations’ lands’ were expropriated by the US government, often through violence-backed and coercive treaties. This land was then given to states to sell to endow their universities.
The TRUTH Project uses the term land-grab instead of land-grant. We have concluded the term and narrative around “Land Grant University'' is revisionist history. In its use, prior claims to place and to land are erased. It has also offered special privileges and space for the University to act in ways that are unchecked and boundaryless. As a result, the institution holds a concentration of power and frequently transgresses and enacts harm on tribes. Considerations need to be made to break up concentrations of power, to repair the harm, to offer reparations and to impose limits and boundaries to this institution.
The Morrill Act of 1862 is a congressional act signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. This act provided states with land to be sold to establish the endowment of state universities. Then, land was obtained through violence-backed treaties with Indigenous nations. This is the case of U of M System campuses, much of the land remains unceded by Tribal Nations.
Ethnic cleansing is a policy of coerced removal of one group of people by another, under supposition of racial, ethnic, and religious superiority. In 1994, in the context of human rights abuses in Yugoslavia, the United Nations defined ethnic cleansing as, “rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area. Ethnic cleansing is contrary to international law.”[2] Tactics include “murder, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, extra-judicial executions, rape and sexual assaults, confinement of civilian population in ghetto areas, forcible removal, displacement and deportation of civilian population, deliberate military attacks or threats of attacks on civilians and civilian areas, and wanton destruction of property.” These are the same atrocities used in the Indigenous genocide that took place in Minnesota’s land grabs.
[2] UN Security Council, “Final Report of the Commission of Experts, 1992.”
Genocide is the denial of right to existence, in entirety or in part, of racial, political, religious, and other groups. Article II of the Geneva Convention defines two elements of genocide, mental and physical. The mental element is defined as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” In its physical element, this intent manifests in five acts:
TRUTH Storymap https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/d402092609d44ab7bac2ead074e7f9c5
TRUTH Website www.z.umn.edu/TRUTHProject
MIAC https://mn.gov/indian-affairs/truth-project/
Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing can be reached via email: MNTransform.TRUTH@gmail.com
