Mounds and Memory Gathering 2024: Indigenous Sovereignty, Ceremonial Spaces, and Stories of the Mound Builders

​May 15, 2024

Cartoon Room 1, Ohio Union, Columbus Campus
9 a.m. - 7 p.m.

The Newark Earthworks are the largest set of geometric earthen enclosures in the world. Honored as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023, the entire Newark Earthworks originally encompassed more than four square miles. It was built between CE 1 to CE 400 by the ancestors of contemporary American Indian peoples who are identified today as the Hopewell Culture/Era. This architectural wonder was part cathedral, part university, part social space, part cemetery and part astronomical observatory. Through their genius, hard work, and collaborative efforts these ancestors inscribed upon the land a remarkable wealth of indigenous knowledge relating to geometry and astronomy encoded in the design of these earthworks. The Octagon Earthworks are aligned to the four moonrises and four moonsets that mark the limits of a complicated 18 year and 219 day-long cycle north and south on the eastern horizon.

This Gathering is built upon the hard work of organizers and attendees of previous Mounds & Memory workshops and the goal of this Gathering is to reunite participants in previous workshops, including representatives of the Rainy River First Nations (Ontario), the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Nation, The Ohio State University, the University of Toronto, and Harvard University. to share and celebrate these "monuments of the Ohio River Valley." 

Our Lecture Agenda will be posted on this page shortly.

Speakers:

• Jennifer Aultman, Chief Historic Sites Officer, Ohio History Connection
• Kevin Daugherty (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi) Language Specialist and Elder
• Steven Gavazzi, Director of CHHR, The Ohio State University
• Bradley Lepper, Curator of Archaeology, Ohio History Connection
• Lucy Murphy, Professor Emeritus of History, The Ohio State University
• Kevin Nolan, Director and Senior Archaeologist of Applied Anthropology Laboratories, Ball State University
• Justin Parscher, Assistant Professor of Practice Landscape Architecture, Knowlton School of Architecture
• Richard Shiels, Associate Professor Emeritus of History, The Ohio State University

If you require an accommodation such as interpretation to participate in this event, or other accommodations, please contact Megan Cromwell (cromwell.34@osu.edu) . Requests made by April 30 will help provide seamless access.

Organized by the Newark Earthworks Center-John Low, Steven Gavazzi, Cheryl Cash, Marti Chaatsmith, and Megan Cromwell, with financial support from the Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Themes Program, the Center of Religion, Center for Ethnic Studies, and American Indian Studies and our donors. Thank you.​

Confronting the Wealth Transfer from Tribal Nations That Established Land-Grant Universities

Spring 2022

Stephen Gavazzi and John Low [Pokagon Band of Potawatomi], within the Academe of the American Association of University Professors, have written an exploratory article about confronting the wealth transfer from tribal nations that established land-grant universities and steps towards accountability and atonement.

"The project conceptualized the unjust actions historically taken against these tribal nations as having contributed to a wide range of economic, educational, and health disparities experienced by Native American peoples past and present. Beyond this framing of the influence of past inequities, we have also sought to be sensitive to how colonialism continues to sever Indigenous peoples from traditional territories and practices. Hence, the main task at hand was to facilitate the beginning of a restorative dialogue between Native peoples and SOSU project team members..."

-Stephen M. Gavazzi and John L. Low [Pokagon Band of Potawatomi], American Association of University Professors Academe.

To read the full article, read it on the American Association of University Professors.

For more information,

Visit:

• Stepping Out and Stepping Up Racial Justice Project
• Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme
• Research | Newark Earthworks Center
• Indigenous Land Acknowledgement
• First Nations Development Institute
• CHRR at The Ohio State University
• Dr. Casey Hoy and Dr. Brian Snyder, formerly of InFACT
• High Country News | Land-Grab Universities
• Land-Grab Universities Report
• GitHub Repository for the HCN investigation, "Land-Grab Universities" including the "Morrill Act of 1862 Indigenous Land Parcels Database."
• Note: Control+F or Command+F on a Mac will bring up a search box which you can use to search for specific text within the data.
• National Congress of American Indians | Policy Research Center
• Making the Case for Data Disaggregation to Advance a Culture of Health
• Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative | U.S. Department of the Interior
• Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report. (PDF) U.S. Bureau of Interior. May 2022.
• Press Release May 11, 2022.
• Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
• Land-Grab Universities: Owning the Truth and Sharing the Path to Make Amends Webinar YouTube Video | Stephen M. Gavazzi. 
  • Keynote address by Trstan Ahtone and Robert Lee. Sponsored in conjunction with the Humanities Collaboratory. October 6, 2021.
• What is a land-grant university? | The Lantern Who Knew? Episode 2.
• Senator Morrill Act of 1862
• "Wokini: A Morrill Obligation to Create a New Beginning" President Dunn, South Dakota State University, Lecture at the Annual Association of Public and Land-grant Universities meeting 2019.
• Utilizing Indigenous Methodologies in Modern Research with Dr. Corey Still [United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee] "Exemplifying the Teachings of Our Elders: Utilizing Indigenous Methodologies in Modern Research". Webinar on QualLab @ The Ohio State University YouTube. December 8, 2022.
• "Developing Stamina for Decolonizing Higher Education: A Workbook for Non-Indigenous People." ResearchGate. Sharon Stein, Cash Ahenakew, Elwood Jimmy, Vanessa De Oliveira Andreotti, Will Valley, Sarah Amsler, Bill Calhoun. Higher Education Otherwise. January 2021.
• "Intervention: Indigenous Studies Reflections on The Land-Grab Universities Project"Native American and Indigenous Studies Journal. Vol 8, No 1, Spring 2021. | Project Muse

Land-Grab Universities: Owning the Truth and Sharing the Path to Making Amends

 

Humanities Collaboratory

October 6, 2021 

12 - 2 PM Eastern Time. 

The two lead authors of High Country News’ Land-Grab Universities Report: Tristan Ahtone and Bobby Lee will discuss their ground-breaking account of how the Morrill Act was funded through the seizure and sale of Native lands, with ongoing legacies in endowment funds and Indigenous dispossession.  

ADDITIONAL SPEAKERS:

• Tsianina Lomawaima (Arizona State U) & Kelly McDonough (U of Texas): Co-Editors of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Special Issue on Land-Grab Universities
• Theresa Ambo (UC San Diego): The Complicity and Complacency of Land-Grant Universities
• Michael Roberts (First Nations Development Institute): Connecting Universities with Leaders of Tribes Whose Land was Taken and Sold to Fund Land-Grant Institutions

FREE, Zoom Registration Link. 

If you require an accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to participate in this event, or other accommodations, please contact the Humanities Institute.

In partnership with The Ohio State University’s Humanities Institute and funded through generous support from The Ohio State University’s Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Grants Program. Co-sponsors include the First Nations Development Institute, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, as well as the editors of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Journal.

For more information,

Visit:

• Stepping Out & Stepping Up Racial Justice Project Blog
• Research
• Senator Morrill Act of 1862 Resources
• High Country News | Land-Grab Universities
• Land-Grab Universities Report
• GitHub Repository for the HCN investigation, "Land-Grab Universities" including the "Morrill Act of 1862 Indigenous Land Parcels Database."
• Note: Control+F or Command+F on a Mac will bring up a search box which you can use to search for specific text within the data.

Grappling with the Land Grant Truth | Inspire Podcast

 

August 18, 2021

Inspire Podcast | The College of Education & Human Ecology

The motivation for change comes in strange and unsettling ways. In this podcast series, faculty and alumni at Ohio State’s College of Education and Human Ecology tell how they discovered their calling, sometimes against incredible odds.

'Ohio State Professor Stephen Gavazzi learned a painful truth about Land Grant Universities-just after his book on the subject went to press. Now he's working with a team of Ohio State faculty to find a path to healing harm done to indigenous nations when they lost lands to fund the university through the Morrill Act of 1862.' 

Inspire podcast episode link.

-Transcript

Featuring interviews with Tristan Ahtone, John Low, Jacquelyn Meshelemiah, and Steve Gavazzi. Name drops included our work with First Nations Development Institute and the scholarship of Robert Lee.

For more information, 

Visit:

• The Ohio State University
• Stepping Out & Stepping Up Racial Justice Project Blog
• "Stepping Out & Stepping Up: Towards Truth & Reconcilliation with Dispossessed Native American Tribes" -Stephen M. Gavazzi and Brian Snyder. December 17, 2020.
• Humanities Collaboratory
• Upcoming webinar: Land-Grab Universities: Owning the Truth and Sharing the Path to Making Amends 
• October 6, 2021 12-2PM EST. 
• The two lead authors of High Country News’ Land-Grab Universities Report: Tristan Ahtone and Bobby Lee will discuss their ground-breaking account of how the Morrill Act was funded through the seizure and sale of Native lands, with ongoing legacies in endowment funds and Indigenous dispossession.
  Co-sponsors include the First Nations Development Institute, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, as well as the editors of the Native American and Indigenous Studies journal."
• ADDITIONAL SPEAKERS: Tsianina Lomawaima (Arizona State U) & Kelly McDonough (U of Texas): Co-Editors of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Special Issue on Land-Grab Universities; Theresa Ambo (UC San Diego): The Complicity and Complacency of Land-Grant Universities; and Michael Roberts (First Nations Development Institute): Connecting Universities with Leaders of Tribes Whose Land was Taken and Sold to Fund Land-Grant Institutions
• Zoom Registration Link.
• If you require an accommodation such as live captioning or interpretation to participate in this event, or other accommodations, please contact the Humanities Institute.
• Initiative for Food and AgriCultural Transformation (InFACT)
• "InFACT and Partners to Pursue Racial Justice with First Nations Tribes." December 2020.
• Newark Earthworks Center
• Research
• Senator Morrill Act of 1862
• First Nations Development Institute
• High Country News | Land-Grab Universities
• Land-Grab Universities Report
• GitHub Repository for the HCN investigation, "Land-Grab Universities" including the "Morrill Act of 1862 Indigenous Land Parcels Database."
• Note: Control+F or Command+F on a Mac will bring up a search box which you can use to search for specific text within the data.
• "Stepping Out & Stepping Up: Towards Truth & Reconciliation with Dispossessed Native American Tribes" Stephen M. Gavazzi and Brian Snyder. December 17, 2020.
• "Intervention: Indigenous Studies Reflections on The Land-Grab Universities Project"Native American and Indigenous Studies Journal. Vol 8, No 1, Spring 2021. | JSTOR [OSU login required; also available with OSU login on Gale Academic OneFile: 2014 to present]
• "Editors' Introduction: Reflections on the Land-Grab Universities Project." (pg. 89-91) K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Kelly Mcdonough, Jean M. O'Brien and Robert Warrior.
• "Morrill Issues and Academic Liberalism" (pg. 92-96) David R. Roediger.
• "The Wealth of Knowledge: Land-Grab Universities in a British Imperial and Global Context." (pg. 97-105) Caitlin P.A. Harvey.
• " "Drawing a Line from their Institution": One Origin Story of Indigenous GIS Design." (pg 106-111) Mark Palmer.
• " "Unrefutable Responsibility": Mapping the Seeds of Settler Futurity and Seeding the Maps of Indigenous Futurity." (pg. 112-122) Marcel Brousseau.
• "Stolen Lands and Stolen Opportunities." (pg. 123-128) Randall Akee.
• "Repaying a Debt? The Performance of Morrill Act University Beneficiaries as Measured by Native Enrollment and Graduation Rates." (pg. 129-138) Donna Feir and Maggie E.C. Jones.
• "Myths, Erasure, and Violence: The Immoral Triad of the Morrill Act." (pg. 139-144) Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy and Amanda R. Tachine.
• " "We Grow the Ivy": Cornell's Claim to Indigenous Dispossession." (pg. 145-150) Judy Kertész and Angela A. Gonzales.
• "Campuses, Colonialism, and Land Grabs before Morrill" (pg. 151-156) Alyssa Mt. Pleasant and Stephen Kantrowitz.
• "Reckoning with the Original Sin of Land-Grant Universities: Remaining Land-Grant Fierce While Insisting on Contrition and Repentance." (pg. 157-161) Stephen M. Gavazzi.
• "The Future Is in the Past: How Land-Grab Universities Can Shape the Future of Higher Education." (pg. 162-168) Theresa Stewart-Ambo.
• "The Future of Land-Grab Universities." (pg. 169-175) Meredith McCoy, Roopika Risam and Jennifer Guiliano.
• "Looking Forward from Land-Grab Universities." (pg. 176-182) Tristan Ahtone and Robert Lee.
• Tribal Connections Map | U.S. Forest Service
• "designed to illustrate the relationship between lands administered by the Forest Service, Indian lands, and lands ceded to the United States as documented in the 67 maps from "Indian Land Cessions in the United States", compiled by Charles C. Royce and published as the second part of the two-part Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896-1897."
• Land-Grant Universities for the Future: Higher Education for the Public Good [OSU Login required, Project Muse]
• Stephen M. Gavazzi, E. Gordon Gee, C. Peter Magrath. John Hopkins Press. 2018.