State trust lands generate millions of dollars for carceral facilities and programs every year, largely from extractive industries like oil and gas drilling.
Land-grab universities
Posted inOctober 2024: Latino Vote
States own lands on reservations. To use them, tribes must pay.
How schools, hospitals, prisons and other institutions in 15 states profit from land and resources on 79 tribal nations.
Posted inArticles
5 takeaways from our investigation into state trust lands on reservations
An investigation by High Country News and Grist reveals how public institutions benefit from extractive industries on Indian reservations.
Posted inApril 2024: Epic Journeys
How states make money off tribal lands
Ten states own 1.6 million acres of land within 83 tribal nations’ reservations. How did they get there?
Posted inArticles
Stolen Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system. Climate change is its legacy.
Extractive industries are filling public university coffers on stolen land.
Posted inMay 1, 2021: Beauty and Biodiversity in the Borderlands
So you want to acknowledge the land?
Some notes on a trend, and what real justice could look like.
Posted in2021
‘Land-grab universities’ wins IRE award
The award from Investigative Reporters and Editors marks the second major honor for the project.
Posted in2021
‘Land-grab universities’ wins Polk Award for Education Reporting
The project ‘sparked public conversations about the debts universities owe to Indigenous nations.’
Posted inJanuary 1, 2021: No Place Like Home
Students and faculty urge deeper look at land-grant legacy
University officials face pressure to address their history as the recipients of dispossessed Indigenous land.
Posted inNovember 1, 2020: When the Smoke Clears
Cornell University addresses stolen Indigenous land in new project
The university obtained almost 990,000 acres of expropriated Indigenous land through the Morrill Act and hopes to provide some remedies.
Posted inArticles
The land-grant universities still profiting off Indigenous homelands
There are at least 16 land-grant universities making money from the expropriated Indigenous lands they retained from the Morrill Act.
Posted inArticles
Colorado State University acknowledges its establishment at ‘dire cost to Native Nations’
The land-grant university hopes to recruit more Indigenous students.
Posted inArticles
Land-grant universities should acknowledge their debt to Indigenous people
Many of the nation’s universities were created with stolen wealth.
Posted inArticles
Explore the land-grab universities data
Reconstruct the ties between Indigenous dispossession and the funding of land-grant universities.
Posted inApril 1, 2020: Land-Grab Universities
Land-grab universities
Expropriated Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system.
Posted inArticles
How we investigated the land-grant university system
A methodology of our two-year inquiry into the origin of wealth that undergirds the nation’s system of higher education.
Posted inArticles
Further reading on HCN’s land-grants university investigation
Dive deep into our bibliography.