The City of East Lansing and Michigan State University occupy the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary lands of the Anishinaabeg–Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples. In particular, the City and University reside on Land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw.
The author of this site is aware that the Land Grant system, which created the Agricultual College that became Michigan State University, could not have been possible without the availability of government-controlled lands that were expropriated from Indigenous peoples. This author understands that this fact cannot be reconciled with his overall belief in the Land Grant philosophy and deep-seated pride in being an alumnus of Michigan State University, “the nation’s pioneer land-grant college.” This author acknowledges the real ways that the State of Michigan, the City of East Lansing, Michigan State University—and the author personally—have benefitted from the forced and systematic removal of Anishinaabeg and other Indigenous peoples from Michigan, and understands that offering this Land Acknowledgement does not absolve settler-colonial privilege or diminish colonial structures of violence, at either the individual or institutional level.
This site respectfully suggests a visit to the Michigan State University American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program for further study.