$979.69
I don't know much (anything) about economics and I feel like maybe that's impeding my understanding of this article....Is the money from these parcels just made off of interest and inflation? Or are the universities being funded by the businesses and homes and agricultural operations that exist on the parcels?
In this context, Indigenous people are an inconvenient truth.
I think one of the big takeaways from this article, for me, is the fact that so many college students don't know this information. Partly that's because the information isn't publicized or made accessible to us, but it's also partly because universities often portray themselves as honoring Indigenous people, by reading land acknowledgements (at every. single. opportunity.) and by putting up plaques - I know at Santa Cruz we even took down the mission bell that was on our campus. But also, this is an uncomfortable truth, and society has moved in such a dystopian direction that we can afford to stay blissfully unaware about these things.
one of the most fertile parts of the most agriculturally productive state in the nation.
This is of particular interest to me because I'm an agroecology major; I wonder if Cornell made any revenue off of farming operations on this land, or if it was an accident that their land grant happened to be one of the most important ag regions in the entire U.S.
Dubiously acquired Indigenous land was the engine driving the growing nation’s land economy.
Although they're very different circumstances, this reminds me of the way that the U.S. economy was built with slave labor, and nobody talks about it. Everyone is always boasting about the strength of the U.S. economy, but it's all thanks to thievery and exploitation: from the stolen land this country is built on, to the enslaved people who basically built the foundations of the U.S. economy with their own hands, to the unpaid prison labor our nation still depends on for production; the U.S.'s success is all owed to people who have never received any share of that success or any recognition.
The idea was simple: Aid economic development by broadening access to higher education for the nation’s farmhands and industrial classes.
There seems to be a common theme in all of the social justice classes I take, that one person's "freedom" is usually built on another person's "unfreedom". The Morrill Act seems like it gets touted for providing opportunities for higher education to blue-collar workers who might otherwise not have access to it; but this benefit was a detriment for the Indigenous people whose lives and land were being stolen to make those "opportunities" possible. Really makes you wonder if the idea of "freedom" would exist without unfreedom.