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Land Grant Universities with Tristan Ahtone
Spurlock Museum of World Cultures
600 S. Gregory St.
Urbana, Illinois 61801
(217) 333-2360
Category
Hours
View Website
This presentation examines the entangled histories of Indigenous land dispossession,
the founding of the land-grant university system, and epistemicide in settler colonial institutions.
Building on the Land-Grab Universities and Misplaced Trust investigations,
and drawing from current efforts by the Trump administration to eliminate
diversity initiatives at U.S. institutions, this talk draws a direct line between
the violent expropriation of Indigenous territories to the erasure of Indigenous
peoples on campuses and in American institutions at large, ultimately arguing
that ideas of academic freedom cannot be disentangled from questions of historic
justice and decolonial action.
Tristan Ahtone is a member of the Kiowa Tribe and is Editor at Large at Grist.
He previously served as Editor in Chief at the Texas Observer and Indigenous Affairs
editor at High Country News. He has reported for Al Jazeera America, PBS NewsHour,
Indian Country Today, and NPR to name a few. Ahtone’s stories have won
multiple honors, including a George Polk Award, Richard LaCourse awards,
a National Magazine Award nomination, and investigative awards from the
Gannett Foundation and IRE: Investigative Reporters and Editors.
A past president of the Native American Journalists Association,
Ahtone is a 2017 Nieman Fellow.
This talk is part of At Risk U: the Past, Present & Future of Academic Freedom