Investigation reveals how universities profit off land taken from Indigenous people

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• Amna Nawaz:

  There's a new spotlight on some universities and whether they should be helping Native American students more than they are now.

  That follows a new investigation that found some schools have long profited from land essentially taken from Native American tribes and leased to industries like oil and gas.

  Stephanie Sy takes a look at the impact of this legacy on Native American students as part of our series Rethinking College.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Nineteen-year-old Alina Sierra long hoped to attend the University of Arizona. Her elders, including her beloved grandfather, told her, knowledge was power and an education could never be stolen.

• Alina Sierra, College Student:

  Before he passed away, he made me promise, like, you're going to make it. You're going to continue education. So I said, yes, I promise.

  So, ever since then, I just — like, the school was always like, I'm going to do it, I'm going to get a degree, I'm going to do it for him.

• Stephanie Sy:

  But soon after she began attending the Tucson-based college, the bills started coming due.

• Alina Sierra:

  So I ended up getting like really nervous and I started like freaking out with, how am I going to pay for it?

• Stephanie Sy:

  She had gotten a Pell Grant, and the U-of-A awarded her an Arizona Native Scholars Grant, which ensures mandatory fees and tuition are covered for the state's Native undergraduate students. Alina is to Tohono O'odham.

  But she says her meal plans weren't covered, nor was transportation or housing. She had an hour-long bus commute to campus and initially struggled to get Internet access.

• Alina Sierra:

  I would say there was just barrier after barrier. I ended up going on academic probation because of everything, like, I was going through. And I couldn't really focus on school. And it was just, like, really hard.

• Stephanie Sy:

  She eventually dropped out. U-of-A officials did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

  But Felisia Tagaban Gaskin is a graduate student who runs a program for Native students there. She says the university has not done enough.

  Felisia Tagaban Gaskin, University of Arizona: Unfortunately a lot of what we do around representation is performative. I mean, we're great at renaming buildings with Native language, or we provide big events like land acknowledgement football games, for example.

  But, really, when you peel back all of those external layers for publicity, you look at each individual story, and you say, well, where is the support for these students? Where are they supposed to go.

• Stephanie Sy:

  The layers were peeled back four years ago, when High Country News published a bombshell investigation about what it called land-grab universities.

  The report laid out that expropriated indigenous land is the foundation of the land grant university system and that 10.7 million acres were taken from nearly 250 tribes. The land grant university system was established under the Morrill Act and signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln.

  The act enabled states to establish public colleges through the development or sale of lands granted to them by the federal government; 14 universities continue to generate revenue from lands retained under the Morrill Act. Most of them offer funding for Native American undergraduates, including free tuition, but it may not be enough.

  The majority of Native students have reported running out of money while attending college.

  Amanda Tachine, University of Arizona: Where are the Native students, and are they getting supported? Because the university is receiving millions and billions of dollars in revenue yearly. And how much of that support is given to the Native peoples, the first peoples of this place and the peoples that the institutions are benefiting from?

• Stephanie Sy:

  Amanda Tachine teaches about issues in indigenous higher education at Arizona State university.

• Amanda Tachine:

  Since the Great Recession, Native students' enrollment has drastically decreased by 40 percent. That's 15 years of ongoing decrease of college enrollment of our Native peoples. That scares me.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Washington State University is another land grant institution. Native students make up a minute percentage of the student population.

  And Vice Provost Zoe Higheagle Strong is trying to change that.

• Zoe Higheagle Strong, Vice Provost, Washington State University:

  They need that home away from home when they come to campus. Some call it rez away from rez, but it's important that they see Native faces, Native faculty, Native staff, and that they have food supports and even just supports for fees and things that they wrestle with. Some students prior had dropped out for a simple $200 fee.

• Stephanie Sy:

  What do you personally feel is owed to Native prospective students at WSU?

• Zoe Higheagle Strong:

  Tuition, I think coming to our institution without cost and getting the adequate support for recruitment, retention.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Calls for reparations have recently been renewed with a new analysis by, revealing that universities that retain their land grant rights are profiting from leasing land for oil and gas extraction, logging, mining and fracking.

  Tachine was one of the investigation's co-authors.

• Amanda Tachine:

  The receipts are just adding up more and more.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Between 2018 and 2022, the lands generated almost $6.7 billion. The University of Arizona received $7.7 million from these leases in 2022 alone.

  Maria Parazo Rose is a spatial data analyst at grist.

• Maria Parazo Rose, Spatial Data Analyst, Grist:

  So not only were they sort of robbed of that land in the first place. They have also been sort of prevented from having any access to whatever kind of revenue can be generated, because they no longer have claim on those lands.

• Stephanie Sy:

  The loss of land means a lack of generational wealth, preventing Native communities from not only thriving, but surviving, says Amanda Tachine.

  Isn't all of the United States previously tribal land?

• Amanda Tachine:

  All land in this nation-state is tribal nations, but people are not acknowledging that or recognizing the ongoing ways that that — those policies continue to maintain Natives to a status quo of being not provided the support and the services that they need for us to survive.

• Stephanie Sy:

  The University of Arizona is literally built on the land of Alina Sierra's ancestors, Tohono O'odham land she considers stolen.

• Alina Sierra:

  They were taken advantage of. And I feel like, especially Natives, they should get, like, free education no matter what, because it's on their land.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Since the publication of the Grist article, Alina's debt was forgiven by the U-of-A and a private donor paid off the remainder of her loans.

  She is now enrolled at Tohono O'odham Community College, a nearby tribal college that is actually free. She hopes to one day complete her four-year degree.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy in Tucson, Arizona.