More Than Morrill: The Intertwined History of Indian Land Dispossession, Arizona Statehood, and University Enrichment [Article]

Abstract

Through the federal government’s university land-grant programs, which began with the Morrill Act in 1862 and continue today, Congress has systematically allocated millions of acres of land in the western United States to states to create endowments to support the public higher education of its citizens. In Arizona, land was taken from Indigenous people, communities, tribes, and nations by treaty, act of congress, executive order, and force to accomplish this. As a result, by the time of statehood in 1912, the state of Arizona had accumulated approximately 850,000 acres of land around the state on behalf of higher education including the University of Arizona, then the state’s only university and its designated land-grant institution. Today, the Arizona State Land Department still holds and manages 688,706 acres of land in trust for the benefit of public higher education. All three of Arizona’s public universities receive distributions from the revenue generated by these trust lands. The goal of this paper is to explore and analyze the University of Arizona’s historical and ongoing enrichment from land taken from Indigenous peoples by the federal government and transferred to the territory and, later, the state of Arizona for the benefit of institutions of higher education in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A comprehensive understanding of Arizona’s history and the state’s current holdings and financial benefits is required to examine the policy implications and moral and legal obligations that Arizona and its universities have to Indigenous peoples in Arizona.