The 1817 Project originated in calls to critically examine the founding of U-M, as well as institutional narratives surrounding a “gift” of land the university received from Anishinaabe communities through the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs (also known as the Treaty of the Maumee Rapids). This ceded land was alchemized into the single largest contribution to the university’s early finances and enabled numerous subsequent subdivisions, sales, and relocations of the original 1,871 acres–which, in turn, fueled additional purchases of Indigenous land across what is now the state of Michigan. Lewis Cass, the instigator of coercive treaties and architect of Indian Removal policies, served as the President of U-M’s Board of Trustees through the 1820s and orchestrated U-M’s acquisition of Indian land through the period of territorial government and early statehood. Bridging past, present, and future, the 1817 Project explores U-M’s manifold connections to Indigenous land, settler colonialism, and policies of dispossession, as well as contemporary issues of Native American student experience, campus inclusivity, and activism. Beyond excavating the 19th-century history of dispossession, we are concerned with how the history has been represented, occluded, and contested through more recent legal challenges, protests by Native American students, and statewide forms of legislation since the 1970s (including the 1976 Michigan Indian Tuition Waiver). We are particularly interested in bringing to light Native American student experiences, paying attention to the ways that the Treaty of Fort Meigs has become a touchstone for campus community interpretations of history and history’s implicit call to contemporary action, for instance, when Anishinaabe student Paul Johnson filed a lawsuit against U-M in 1971 seeking to enforce compliance with the treaty.

This roundtable will showcase these and other major components of the 1817 Project. The larger goal is to tell a deeper and more inclusive history of this world-renowned public university, while also using the collaborative, archival research produced by the project team to advocate for reparative actions. Bringing together project leaders, researchers, and community partners, our panel will introduce this major initiative to wider audiences, invite questions and comments from colleagues across the country, and provide insight into our methodology and plans for public engagement. More broadly, we hope to contribute to ongoing national debates on the longer history of Native American dispossession, the central role of indigenous land in the creation of U.S. higher education, and the University of Michigan’s possible function as a regional blueprint for the 1862 Morrill Act, which created the U.S. land grant universities and colleges.