// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

[00:00:00]
Speaker 0: Today on the 21st show, Tristan Ahtone is a member of the Kiowa tribe and editor at large at [GRIST]. His award-winning investigation "Land Grab Universities" revealed how the 1862 Morrill Act turned nearly 11 million acres of indigenous land into seed money for land grant universities, including the University of Illinois.

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Tristan Ahtone: U.S. [politicians] didn't seriously debate the ethics of redistributing indigenous land because there was widespread agreement in Congress that it was both desirable and inevitable.

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Brian Mackey: I'm Brian Mackey with Tristan Ahtone today on the 21st show, which is a production of Illinois Public Media. But first, news.

From Illinois Public Media, this is the 21st show. I'm Brian Mackey. And today we're going to talk about land and ownership and theft and profits and the sins of our great, great, great grandfathers and what this means for us today. But before we get to any of that, I want us to listen to a one-minute video from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where our station is based and our program is produced. Roll tape.

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Speaker 2: As a land grant institution, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has a responsibility to acknowledge the historical context in which it exists. In order to remind ourselves and our community, we begin with this statement. We are currently on the lands of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, [Piankashaw], [Wea], Miami, [Mascouten], Odawa, Sauk, [Meskwaki], Kickapoo, [Potawatomi], Ojibwe, and Chickasaw nations. It is necessary for us to acknowledge these native nations and for us to work with them as we move forward as an institution. Over the next 150 years, we will be a vibrant community inclusive of all our differences with native peoples at the core of our efforts.

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Brian Mackey: That of course is a land acknowledgment. It's the official one suggested by University of Illinois leaders for campus events. There's an alternate version from the school's Native American House, which is even more pointed in its historical analysis. It says, as a land grant institution, the University of Illinois has a particular responsibility to acknowledge the peoples of these lands, as well as the histories of dispossession that have allowed for the growth of this institution for the past 150 years. We are also obligated to reflect on and actively address these histories and the role that this university has played in shaping them. This acknowledgment and the centering of native peoples is a start as we move forward for the next 150 years.

My guest today has spent a lot of time thinking through these ideas. Tristan Ahtone is a member of the Kiowa tribe, and editor at large for the environmental and climate news site [GRIST]. He's written many stories on land grant universities and dispossession of indigenous land. We first spoke with Ahtone back in February 2026 ahead of a talk he was giving at the Urbana-Champaign campus, which was part of the [Mellon Sawyer] seminar series. He happened to connect with us from Finland. Because we'll be on tape for the hour today, no live calls, but let us know what you think. You can send an email to talk@21stshow.org. Once again, that's talk@21stshow.org. All right,

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Brian Mackey: let's begin by talking about the Morrill Act and what it did for universities, and we can get to the indigenous peoples as part of that.

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Tristan Ahtone: Sure. Um, well, let's take some backtracking into the 1800s, so buckle up. Um, the Morrill Act was signed into law in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln, and it's one of the sort of the three big land laws that are passed at the time that listeners are probably familiar with — the Homestead Act and the Railroad Act. Um, and the name, uh, the name of the act comes from the bill's sponsor Justin Morrill — is why you have Morrill Hall at the University of Illinois and so many other campuses. Um, but essentially what the act does is it jumpstarts, uh, the land grant university system. It's providing land to these universities to sell, uh, to put into their endowments and essentially get them off the ground, um, make those fledgling universities into sort of the powerhouse state universities that we know today. Um, so that's the short version.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah, and that's interesting because before I encountered your reporting, I guess I'd always just assumed the land being granted was the land on which the universities were built. But it's not really that [that's how] it works. So how did this process actually work in practice?

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Tristan Ahtone: Yeah, I mean, it's a common misconception and it was the same for me when I got into this reporting — that Morrill Act grants were used only sort of for campuses, right? But the grants are actually really, really large, like even larger than major cities, and were often located hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their beneficiaries. So what the act did was promise states between 90,000 and 990,000 acres of land. Um, essentially depending on the size of their congressional delegations, and once those states got that land they could sell it to raise funds for these new colleges, hence the name, uh, land grant. Um, in the case of Illinois being sort of East Coast, um. There is no public land inside the state boundaries at the time that this land, this, uh, the Morrill Act is passed. Uh, so what the federal government does is it basically gives it something called [scrip]. These are coupons for land in territories outside and to the west of Illinois. So they're able to use these coupons to pull land in as far away as California, Colorado, closer to home in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas. Basically they're pulling land from what is labeled the public domain outside of state borders, um, and then selling it.

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Brian Mackey: I first encountered your work, uh, in High Country News. I don't know if that was your first reporting on this. I think back in 2020. There's a really cool graphic — people can, um, we'll put a link to this on our website after the program today, but people can go and you can click on Illinois and it's got these very colorful lines showing all the very many places that are not Illinois. Uh, where did that land come from? Who owned that land? Why was it — like how, you know, talk about how it came to be in the possession, beyond the Morrill Act, of, you know, the federal government and then the University of Illinois.

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Tristan Ahtone: Well, um, I mean, the most straightforward answer here is that it's indigenous land. The United States is expanding westward. It's giving coupons to, uh, universities like University of Illinois, uh, to obtain that land once they get it from indigenous peoples, um, and then sell it. So the land is coming from tribal nations. Uh, University of Illinois, for instance, uh, when we adjusted for inflation, uh, they were able to raise about $11.5 million from the sale of about 478,000 acres of land, um, from more than 150 tribes. Um, so that's, that's where this land is coming from, and this is sort of part of, again, U.S. Western expansion, um, to pull this land into the system, into the U.S. real estate system, and then profit off of it and build infrastructure with it, on top of it, and from it.

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Brian Mackey: And is it — is it sale of land? Is it — are there other uses that the universities are, are getting out of these lands?

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Tristan Ahtone: Uh, generally it's sales, especially, uh, any state that got [scrip] — they can't own land in another state, so they're needing to sell it. Uh, lands west of the Mississippi though, generally, uh, they're selling a lot of it, but in many cases they're also holding on to it. So in many cases, even today, universities are still using these lands for oil and gas extraction. Um, you know, uh, uh, agriculture stations, etc. Um, these lands — some of these lands are actually still in the possession of, uh, states and universities, but generally, at least if you're kind of an East Coast, uh, state, your state has sold all of those lands.

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Brian Mackey: Just to remind our listeners maybe what some of these land grant universities are beyond the University of Illinois. Uh, there's Purdue, Kansas State, University of Maryland, um, University of Nebraska [in] Lincoln, uh, Rutgers, Cornell, the Ohio State University, Texas A&M, uh, University of Arizona in Tucson, uh, Alabama A&M, Tuskegee University, among others. The list — we could go on and on. Um, tell me more about the indigenous peoples who owned this land. Was — I mean, how much of this is, you know, sort of forced removal? Is it — are there treaties? Talk about how that played out.

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Tristan Ahtone: I mean, it's all essentially forced removal, right? I mean, when we look at — when our reporting looks at sort of the entire sort of picture about the Morrill Act. Um, what we found was that, uh, about 160 violence-backed treaties netted around 11 million acres of land from 250 indigenous nations, um, and that land was then distributed to 52 land grant universities, again, most of which sold it off for a total of about half a billion dollars in profit when, uh, when adjusted for inflation. Um, and when we're sort of thinking about the indigenous nations that were once caretakers of this land. Um, again, I think you have to remember that the Morrill Act was really — like the end goal was to provide education for the masses to sort of fuel economic growth and support Western expansion. Um, and I, I think it's important to remember that U.S. politicians didn't seriously debate the ethics of redistributing indigenous land because there was widespread agreement in Congress that it was both desirable and inevitable, um. You know, when you look at speeches made by Vermont Senator Justin Morrill trying to get his bill passed, he's, he's encouraging his colleagues to use the United States' Western empire — [amassed] through her triumphs over the savage — to fund his bill and jumpstart the land grant system. So that's really kind of what's happening politically at the time. Um, and, and why we're sort of able to start making those links to the indigenous nations that were caretakers before, um, because they are being actively removed by the United States as it moves west.

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Brian Mackey: If you're just joining us, this is the 21st show. I'm Brian Mackey. We're listening back to my conversation with Tristan Ahtone, editor at large at [GRIST], the news site that focuses on climate. He's also a member of the Kiowa tribe, and he's done reporting for years now on land grant universities, looking at how these institutions were given land to sell that before had belonged to native peoples. One of Ahtone's headlines uses the term "land grab universities" to give you an idea of his perspective. No live calls today because we first broadcast this conversation earlier this year, but you can let us know what you thought. Our voicemail line is [217-300-2121]. That's 217-300-2121.

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Brian Mackey: Maybe we can nerd out on some of the details here a little bit. Talk to me about the emergence of townships and, and how western states were developed.

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Tristan Ahtone: Um, yeah, sure, I mean, uh, one of the things that you sort of have to understand, uh, in this reporting when you're doing this kind of work is just basically how like the U.S. land system works, right? So, you know, as settlers are moving west, you know, the U.S. government is forcing indigenous peoples from their lands through military action or treaties, um, you know, the, they, uh, once that land is obtained by the government, um, they become territories and then, uh, once those territories start to sort of like form large groups of people, they start applying for statehood. Um, but basically, um, when becoming territories and then into states, uh, the United States is overlaying that area with something that's called the Public Land Survey System. It's this rectangular land survey that's sort of developed early in the U.S. by early colonists. Um, and, uh, you're, if you're listening, you're actually probably really familiar with this if you're flying over the Midwest. So when you're looking out the window and you sort of see these big squares on the ground, some of them are green, some of them are brown, you know, there's cities in some, there's farmlands in the other — you're basically seeing the, the, uh, Public Land Survey System in action like these are sort of organized ways of thinking about land, dividing it up, um, and then putting it into use. So, you know, uh, generally like a 6-by-6-mile square is called a township. Inside each township are 36 smaller squares called sections. Um, these are the really nerdy details you're talking about here, Brian, in terms of like thinking about how to sort of describe how you slice these up and how, um, and how states do this. But, um, and by doing this you're able to start sort of start understanding. Uh, how to track this stuff — it makes it easy to do this sort of investigative work to find land, track it, see who owns it, see who's got what with it, and identify it within this [PLS] system, um, very, very quickly. So, um. Complicated to play with, but massively helpful if you want to do this kind of investigative reporting.

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Brian Mackey: Yeah, no, it's just fascinating how organized it was, you know, given the, you know, what we think of as modern technology needed to do some of this work — that they were doing it with, I guess, chains and, and surveying equipment, uh, you know, way, way back then. Um. So, let me, let me again remind listeners, this is the 21st show. We are talking about land grant universities and, uh, where that land came from. I want to share a couple of messages we got from listeners, sort of teasing where we can go later in this conversation. Um, we heard from Ryan in Champaign who said, uh, I haven't heard this history. I'm very interested to hear about it. Um, and just in terms of like what things could be done, he says, how about tuition for, uh, any native peoples? It's not close to making up for American atrocities, but it seems like an easy and immediate place to start. Hopefully they already do this, but I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't done anything. Uh, we also heard from Amy in Wakanda, Illinois, who said, oh dang, their land came directly from native peoples. Oh, they owe reparations — pay up, pay up — free tuition to their members, rent payments to the nations in question, a voice in what happens to the land in the future. And ideally, start giving some back. And if you're not, pay, pay, and give their members of all ages free education. Um, and she says, look at Miami University in Ohio for an example of a good relationship model to build off of. Tristan, can you — we need to take a break in about a minute here, but can you briefly, uh, respond to anything you, you heard there?

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Tristan Ahtone: Yeah, uh, I mean these are, uh, among some of the many calls we've heard before since this reporting has come out too, uh, you know, the easiest thing to do is free tuition. A number of universities have moved in that direction, uh, you know, returning to that land that's on the opposite end of the spectrum, that's more complicated, but, um, you know, I think it's, uh, the limits of your imagination are what holds you back from doing something like that.

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Brian Mackey: All right, we need to take a break, but when we come back, more from our conversation with Tristan Ahtone, member of the Kiowa tribe, editor at large at [GRIST]. We spoke with him about land grant universities and how they made profits from land that was taken away from native peoples, helping them become the behemoths we know today. We'll have more after a short break. This is the 21st show. Stay with us.

It's the 21st show. I'm Brian Mackey. We're listening back to my conversation with Tristan Ahtone, editor at large at [GRIST], the climate-oriented news site and member of the Kiowa tribe. He's long been investigating the 1862 Morrill Act and successive laws that turned millions of acres of land that once belonged to Native Americans into seed money for land grant universities, including the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where our home station, Illinois Public Media, is based. This is a conversation that first aired in February 2026. At the time, Tristan was joining us ahead of a talk he was giving, part of the [Mellon Sawyer] seminar series on the Urbana campus. That means our program is on tape for the hour today, so no live calls, but you can always email us. The address is talk@21stshow.org. So we talked about

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Brian Mackey: the history. Are, are universities making money from this land today?

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Tristan Ahtone: Uh, yeah, they are, um, as I've mentioned before, some of those Morrill Act lands are still in state university, uh, possession. Um, they're used for various means, but, uh, moving from the "Land Grab Universities" and Morrill Act work that we had done over the years, um, we really wanted to start thinking about all the ways in which, uh, universities were still able to sort of like profit off of indigenous lands by looking at other. Um, laws that enable this sort of land transfer and wealth transfer, um, and one of them is, uh, looking at something called state enabling acts, and they are just as dry as they sound, so bear with me. Um, basically that's the legislation that allows settlers to form constitutions and state governments and then become part of the United States. Uh, so when we were talking before, um, once it becomes a state. You can add this sort of, uh, Public Land Survey System grid system to your state to start sort of divvying up land and dividing it up and and making sense of it, um. Essentially once states are doing that they're starting to carve out different sections of land to fund institutions. So I'd mentioned we've got, uh, townships, the 6-by-6-mile square. Inside of them we have 36, uh, smaller squares that are a mile by a mile. Those are called sections. Sections 16 [and] 36 of every township essentially are like typically set aside to fund K-12 schools. Uh, the remaining sections in that giant township — states could choose [whether] those lands, uh, would benefit other public institutions like hospitals, penitentiaries, or universities as well. So, uh, part of our next project, uh, that we worked on over the last couple of years was looking at how these lands were, uh, being used by universities and other institutions, um, and drawing that direct line back to the indigenous nations that they came from.

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Brian Mackey: At the beginning of our program today, I read the University of Illinois land grant acknowledgment — or actually we listened to, uh, some audio of it and then I read the one from Native American House. What, what do you think of these sorts of acknowledgments?

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Tristan Ahtone: Uh, I mean, it's a, it's a pretty strange "thanks for the real estate," uh, message I've, uh, I've ever heard, but yeah, I guess it's — I'm glad that, that, uh, I'm glad [the] university is really thinking about it, but, um, you know, it is, it is generally like "thanks for the real estate."

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Brian Mackey: Do you mean that like about this one in particular, the way it's written, or just the concept of land acknowledgments in general?

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Tristan Ahtone: Uh, I think all of them generally. I mean, I'm — again, I think there's, there's value in sort of acknowledging and making those land acknowledgments. There is value in that. There's value in thinking about that, uh, but if they don't — if they aren't coupled with action, um, I, I don't know what their purpose is.

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Brian Mackey: Do you think — yeah, well, I guess that's the question then. What, what have you heard from universities in your reporting on this over the years?

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Tristan Ahtone: Well, uh, I mean universities are slow to respond, uh, but over the years, uh, you know, there has been, uh, quite a bit of reappraisal since our work has come out. As I mentioned, University of California, uh, you know, Arizona, you know, they, they've moved to free tuition programs for native students. Others have done the same as well too. Um, you know, this is sort of the lowest level of reparations, I think, on the menu here is to say, you know what, we're gonna give free tuition because we're not — we're not talking about like 3,000 students showing up at the University of Illinois — we're probably talking about a dozen, um, that would, you know, sort of benefit from, from a program like this or at any other university, so we're not, we're not really talking about a lot and, you know, looking over a four-year period of somebody going through a, a standard degree program. It probably doesn't even match what's going into a salary for a football program, for instance, um, you know, so that's the lowest level there, I think, but in terms of thinking about what can be done about this, I think that this is where land grant institutions can really come in. We were talking about places of education, we're talking about places where people can think deeply and critically about, uh, problems, um, and that gives an opportunity to have a lot of really smart people going through an institution that could support them thinking about what this looks like and what, um, what reparations or repayment or land back or anything could look like, um, but I, I think it speaks to universities, uh, not necessarily wanting to engage with action. Um, by not really making space for those conversations to happen.

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Brian Mackey: What do you think about the fact that you are coming to a land grant university to give this talk? Have you done much of that, uh, in the past few years?

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Tristan Ahtone: Well, uh, quite a bit. Uh, land grant universities love to have me in to, uh, to talk about this stuff, and I'm more than happy to be, uh, coming into these, these institutions. I think what that speaks to though is there's a recognition by staff, faculty, and students that this is a history that has to be talked about. So these invitations never come from, you know, university administration, and these initiatives like free tuition or changes to land acknowledgments, they don't happen because an administration is coming in and saying we need to do something about this. This speaks to people power in terms of taking this up, pushing it up, and advocating for it, and making sure that a university starts to think about action.

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Brian Mackey: And let's go now to Carrie calling from DeKalb, Illinois. Carrie, thank you for calling in.

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Carrie: Hi, thank you very much for taking my call. I, um, apologize for not knowing this history already, but I'm wondering if the land that your guest is speaking of is separate from the Homestead Act land that was used to encourage westward expansion, as I understand it. Which is how actually my great grandfather acquired a lot of farmland, and I'm interested in exploring that history.

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Brian Mackey: All right, thank you, Carrie. Appreciate it. Tristan, I don't know if you can speak to that.

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Tristan Ahtone: Yeah, Carrie, thanks for the question. Uh, yeah, these are separate acts. So again, uh, Homestead Act, Railroad Act, Morrill Act. Homestead Act is setting up those homesteads that you're talking about, uh, with your family granting land to, uh, a family to, um, you know, to get set up. Railroad Act is giving land to corporations to build railroads, and then Morrill Act is giving land to universities to establish the university system. So these are separate tracts of land. So, um, if you're to imagine sort of like the homestead where your family, uh, is living, it can be right next to a parcel of land that was used for, uh, you know, for University of Illinois, for instance, uh, so these are separate acts, but they are still. Um, they're still only able to function by pulling in land from tribes as westward expansion happens. So, um, they're all coming from the same pot, I guess you could say, for lack of a better word.

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Brian Mackey: Is it, is it possible to trace like which tribe might have, you know, been on, on certain land before? Or is some of that lost to history, or is it just assumed that like pretty much, you know, at some point, if you go back far enough, all of Illinois was not in the possession of European settlers. How do you think about that?

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Tristan Ahtone: Well, uh, no, it's, I mean, it's an imperfect system, but it's actually not all that difficult to, uh, to say what tribe land came from. The United States government — uh, this is one of the reasons that we were able to do this reporting — is that not only could we track every parcel of land that the Morrill Act granted across the entire United States, we could also link it to the indigenous nation that it came from, and that is because the United States is keeping, um, uh, very, very detailed records of, uh, treaty and land cession information. So more or less if you want to think about like, you, your house, you want to think about where that land came from. Um, it's very easy to take a look at what the treaty information is for that particular area, um, because we've pulled it all down in our very handy interactive maps on the landgrabu.org where you can interact with it and actually see those land cessions. So the reason that this investigation works is that we're able to use the information from the federal government on where they got the land and who they sold it to. So when we're pulling receipts, these are the receipts and the federal government and universities made these receipts. We, we don't, we don't have to do additional sort of work to make any leaps here. This is, this is just federal paperwork.

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Brian Mackey: How did you get started? Let's talk about the reporting itself. How did you get started working on this, this, uh, project, uh, you know, years ago.

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Tristan Ahtone: Um, yeah, uh, essentially, uh, this project came about when I met my collaborator and, and partner on this, uh, Dr. Robert Lee. Uh, we were both doing a fellowship at the time in, uh, 2017 when we sort of ran into each other. Um, I had sat in on a presentation with Dr. Lee where he was showing the work he had been doing on indigenous land dispossession and specifically it was his use of, uh, GIS — uh, Geographic Information Systems. Um, as a tool to try and make sense of sort of the overwhelming scope and reach of, of U.S. colonialism. So he's, he's mapping this, um, and during his presentation, Dr. Lee had really specifically focused in on the Morrill Act of 1862, um, and, uh, was really engaging sort of with this, this version of history that was burying the question of how these lands became the United States to redistribute in the first place. So that's kind of how we met and started working together, um, you know, he had been able to do a lot of the automation in terms of pulling a lot of this land information from federal sources, uh, but there's only so much you can do in sort of like data scraping — almost the rest of this. You know, around 5 million acres of land that we identified had to be input into the system like spreadsheets by hand by a team, so it was a really long time period of being able to not only work with Dr. Lee, bring this idea into High Country News, start putting together the story, but then it was the actual sort of like legwork of researching and essentially inputting this data, which is why we have such a rich database, um, to do this. It's, uh, it's a massive amount of work that goes into [it].

[00:29:35]
Brian Mackey: Are you having to go state by state, county by county? How does that work?

[00:29:39]
Tristan Ahtone: Um, basically it's pulling, uh, pulling the sales receipts for this land that are existing in different places, you know, national archives, university resources, uh, libraries, etc. So, but, but what we're doing is we're going out, we're looking for any sort of receipts for when land was purchased — in those receipts we're being able to see what the legal description is, those [townships], that range, etc. Um, and then we're inputting that into a GIS system so that we can map them to the entire United States. Um, so I make this sound easy. It is — it, it, it does sound easy when it's just like, oh yeah, just get the receipt, pop it in the computer, and you're gonna pop out a map. That is technically what happened, but, um, obviously it's, it's, uh, quite a bit of labor that goes into, to, to inputting all of this and especially again when we're talking about literally like, you know, 5 million acres — you're having to go parcel by parcel, state by state to do this.

[00:30:39]
Brian Mackey: And the receipts — I'm guessing — what are [they] like? Little dusty pieces of paper from the 1870s or 1860s in some cases.

[00:30:46]
Tristan Ahtone: Yeah, essentially, or, uh, you know, paperwork that the, uh, the university has put together that's, you know, sort of bundled them all so they know where it is. I mean, the, the thing I think that that is, uh, always impressive to me is that when it comes to the United States and especially to colonial entities like the United States, they just love paperwork. I mean, settlers love paperwork, man. Um, so it's really easy to sort of look at the paperwork and say like, OK, great, you said what day you sold it, you said how much you sold it for, you say who you sold it to, you give me the legal description. I mean there's a massive amount of data and information in, um, in these receipts, but yeah, they can be. Bundles of receipts, they can be logs that have been put together. Um, I, I should mention to listeners — we, I did say that we had, we we mapped every acre, uh, from every university across the nation. We actually missed about a dozen because the receipts got lost in the mail in the 1800s, so pretty close, but, uh, we, we did miss like 12 acres.

[00:31:50]
Brian Mackey: And anything to add about the University of Illinois in particular and, you know, your findings there, uh, in, in relation to, to this, this history?

[00:32:00]
Tristan Ahtone: Um, no, I, I mean, I, I would just sort of, uh, uh, try to impress on listeners that when we're saying that like the University of Illinois raised like $11.5 million for, you know, at, at its founding, I mean, these classes — when, when these land grants are starting up — are not big. Uh, I don't know what the first class at at uh University of Illinois is, but I know like over like Michigan, like the first class was just 63 students, you know, Nebraska, we're talking like 2 dozen students like. We have a lot of money that's coming in and it's usually supporting very, very, very small classes, um, and faculty positions. Um, so, uh, the, the this money is really good — like these universities don't exist without this, this money. They don't exist without this, uh, this land, and they don't exist without this law, and this law doesn't exist unless you're moving westward and again, um, acquiring indigenous territory.

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Brian Mackey: And just remind me to clarify, the $11 million — that's in 1860s dollars or in present day?

[00:33:12]
Tristan Ahtone: Uh, that's adjusted for inflation in present day. Um, I should also add that money is still in the bank at at University of Illinois. Part of the Morrill Act law is that the universities had to keep that money in their accounts, um, and, and, and live off the interest. So obviously it pales in comparison to the like whatever billion dollar sort of endowment that the university has now, uh, but you know, um, a forensic accounting is going to be able to tell you what account that's in, where it is, how much interest has come off of it for the last, you know, 150-plus years. Um, this is some of the areas in which we've seen a lot of reporting happen, um, after the story and people looking into these sort of like forensic accounting practices and making sense of just what the overwhelming sort of profit was from these lands.

[00:34:01]
Brian Mackey: All right, let me reintroduce our conversation. My guest today is Tristan Ahtone. He's an editor at large for [GRIST], the climate-oriented news site, and also a member of the Kiowa tribe. He's spent many years researching land grant institutions and how the money they were seeded with came from selling or owning land that was once in the possession of Native Americans. We will continue this conversation after a short break. This is the 21st show. Stay with us.

It's the 21st show. I'm Brian Mackey. Let's get back to my conversation on land grant universities. Of course, I should note, as I have throughout the program, that our home station, Illinois Public Media, is based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which is a land grant university. We spoke about this with Tristan Ahtone, editor at large at [GRIST], the climate-oriented news site. He's also a member of the Kiowa tribe. He has spent years studying this, which stemmed from the 1862 Morrill Act, which turned nearly 11 million acres of land that did belong to Native Americans into seed money for land grant universities, including Illinois. Our program is on tape for the hour, so no live calls, though we did take calls when this first aired again back in February. Let's go to the tape with a call from John in Harvard.

[00:36:00]
John: Hi, thanks. I just [want to] ask. The guest, I mean, where, where does this end? I mean this has been humanity for 100,000 years, you know, barbarians stole from Rome. Japanese stole from Koreans, Vikings stole and murdered the English, and surprise, the Indian tribes have murdered and stolen land from other Indian tribes for tens of thousands of years. So there is no end to this, is there? I mean, is the next stop the Cherokee[s have] got to give land back to the Lakota. Do the Irish get compensated for the Vikings from the modern day Norwegians? I mean, it's, this is a [bananas argument]. It's only because it's happened in relatively recent times and that there's some receipts, but we don't compensate losers. Settlers won. Maybe they didn't win fair and square. Maybe they won with disease and guns, but they won and this just has to end. This is the sort of identitarian grift, blackmail that just is tearing society apart and uh. I just would like to get your guest to answer that. When does it end? Where, where's the stopping point if he gets his money, does he drop it and we just go back to, uh, you know, trying to live as a civil society, or do we just keep, uh, you know, this grift up endlessly to, you know, to the end, you know, trace it back to the hominids.

[00:37:30]
Brian Mackey: John, thanks for calling in to share your perspective, Tristan.

[00:37:34]
Tristan Ahtone: Yeah, I mean it, it could end right now I suppose if, uh, again there was some, some sort of thought about what justice could look like or what, uh, what kind of future you'd like to see. I mean, the, the, the implication here is that, uh, this will have no ending in terms of trying to think about what justice looks like into the past, but the other implication here is that if we do something about it, or uh, that, that's that we can't continue to do the same things anymore, right? So I think we're, we're being asked — I, I, I, I think you're kind of asking two questions at the same time, um, and I think that when we are looking to the future we can imagine better futures, um, and sure, that time is a big part of this, but I, I think I like to think of this as like, let's say. Let's say for instance, one day some guy comes down the street and steals your car, you know, and you're like, man, that guy stole my car. And you know, every day you see this person driving around in your car and you're like, hey man, like I want — I, I, I really want my car back, and the guy's just like, no, I'm not gonna give it back to you. Uh, and then one day that, that, that person was like, you know, I feel kind of bad about this, so how about I put a plaque on the side of the car that says this car used to be your car. Does that make you feel better? You're like, no, I need my car back. And he's like, hey, you know what, I'll give you like 20 bucks for it. Would that [make you] just quit asking me about your car? And you're like, no, but maybe — maybe at some point you're like, hey, I guess that is your car. I guess we can just let this go. So I, I, I appreciate the question, uh, but I think there's — I, I, I think this is a little simplistic and sort of thinking about when does what end and, uh, things aren't fixed in time, they never have been, and I think it's a question of what kind of future do you want to live in.

[00:39:24]
Brian Mackey: No, and, look, I, I appreciate John's, John's question as well. I think that's probably a, a more widespread view than, than a lot of people are willing to say out loud and in polite company like that. So I appreciate it. Um, I do think, you know, I, I wonder if, if, if, uh, Tristan, you can speak to the idea that, you know, the Visigoths — uh, if I have that correctly. Um, you know, not, not still around, not still among us necessarily to, to make these claims. And I wonder if there are other examples of other societies you think of, you know, say Germany after the war with the Jewish people, uh, that were, uh, murdered and dispossessed. Um, and, and other reparations sort of templates that that you might look to, uh, as, as examples here.

[00:40:10]
Tristan Ahtone: I mean, I think you sort of hit on it here. I mean, they're, you know, I don't know if there's any Visigoths around. I don't know anything about the Visigoths, but if they're not around, then yeah, sure they can['t] make claims. I think that's the point is that you have 575 different tribal nations in the United States that can make direct claims, and some of those direct claims are in the last 100 years. This isn't very — it's not all that far off here in terms of what reparations look like. I mean, I think that there are, again, all kinds of cases [in] history. I mean, we look at even more difficult areas like, you know, South Africa after apartheid and how that situation is continuing to be worked out, um, so I, I think that there are some possibilities here, but I am not a Visigoth. I don't know. I can't believe I've just had to say that sentence. And you know,

[00:41:04]
Brian Mackey: I might be putting words in his mouth. I don't remember the exact examples, but

[00:41:07]
Tristan Ahtone: yeah, I mean, look, I think there's a, there's a, there's a deeper thing that I hear quite a bit about this — is like why should I feel shame for something that my ancestors did, right? I had nothing to do [with it].

[00:41:20]
Brian Mackey: Or maybe — not even because my ancestors were in Lithuania when this was happening. So sure,

[00:41:25]
Tristan Ahtone: but you know this idea is that we like we shouldn't have to feel shame for our ancestors, but we feel a lot of pride about them. We feel a lot of pride about like westward expansion and that pioneer spirit. We feel, we feel pride about like, you know, fighting in the Civil War. We feel pride about World War II. Like we have those — we have, we can feel pride about different generations, but for some reason we can't feel shame. And I think that when it comes to the kind of conversations that we're having here, um, that's really what we're dealing with is that we want the benefits but we don't want to have to deal with the responsibility.

[00:41:59]
Brian Mackey: I know you've mentioned some of this earlier, but remind me — who, who's doing this right, if anyone is in your view, or, you know, better than the others at least.

[00:42:08]
Tristan Ahtone: In terms of universities dealing with —

[00:42:09]
Brian Mackey: — this, universities, yeah, exactly.

[00:42:13]
Tristan Ahtone: It's probably South Dakota State University, uh, tuition — free tuition programs for native students, uh, making sure that they're reinvesting in, uh, indigenous communities nearby, um, you know, they've really leaned into this history and they had been doing it before we even started reporting. Um, to make sure that they see what their benefit has been and try to pass that benefit on. Is it perfect? I don't — you'd have to speak with the tribes that are impacted by sort of their, their land footprint in the past. But, um, you know, I, I think this is what has been one of the shining examples of how you can start to deal with this and say, I acknowledge this history. I acknowledge what I've received from it, and I am willing to start making sure that like my benefits also benefit people who were impacted in the past.

[00:43:06]
Brian Mackey: So, I, I mentioned at the top of the show, you're connecting with us from Finland. I don't, I don't know if you're there full time. Um, but can you speak to the broader sort of change we've seen in, in the last year or so under the Trump administration, sort of away from acknowledging some of this history, you know, taking down signage at national parks is, is one example, opening up uh previously protected lands to, you know, mining and and drilling and that sort of thing.

[00:43:38]
Tristan Ahtone: I mean, uh, I'll do my best here. I guess, I guess is —

[00:43:42]
Brian Mackey: — it, is it of a piece? How do you, how do you relate that to the context of this history, I guess is maybe a slightly more pointed way to, to, to phrase that.

[00:43:50]
Tristan Ahtone: Well, I, I think the activities that we see from the Trump administration right now really aren't all that different than the activities [of] the federal government in the 1860s when they're again sort of amassing, uh, you know. The bounty of the United States by their triumphs over the savage here, right? Like this isn't all that much different in terms of thinking about land as a place where you extract, uh, wealth from, um, so, you know, I, I, I, I think it's just a different way of sort of thinking, and I think that it's being able to expand that, but I, I think generally when it comes to also sort of the removal of signs and, you know, sort of the erasure of history, you know, it's the same question as John asked before — where does it stop, for instance? I mean, I question the country that has a history that is so horrendous that they need to remove it and hide it. Um, I, you know, I think it speaks volumes to essentially what's, uh, what the United States is and does.

[00:44:51]
Brian Mackey: What, uh, what else are you gonna be talking about, uh, next week in Urbana? How do you approach these conversations, uh, at a place where I imagine a lot of the people who will choose to go to this are, are receptive, but, you know, maybe there will be a hostile, uh, you know, element to the crowd and also a university that has, in the view of many, not really sufficiently grappled with its, you know, unique history of symbolism, right? The, the so-called Chief Illiniwek mascot. Uh, which is still, you know, quite visible around campus, even though the university theoretically retired that years ago.

[00:45:27]
Tristan Ahtone: I mean, universities are usually fairly open to these conversations, I think, you know, it's very rare that we have hostile elements and you know, I, I think that even in terms of like John's question earlier, like I actually appreciate being able to have these conversations and be in a space where these conversations can take place and we can work them out because typically. This isn't about trying to change somebody's mind. It's just presenting the facts here. Like I can present facts all day and if the facts don't move you in a particular direction or not, then, you know, I think this is a different conversation. If it's just a matter of sort of trying to make sure that there are politics involved and not actually facts — and we're not having a conversation, [we're] having something else. I mean, you know, for instance when we're sort of like thinking about — you asked earlier about how, uh, you know, uh, Western expansion happened whether there were treaties, land cessions, etc. dealing with tribes. I mean, one of the areas that we like to focus on and talk a lot about, um, is looking at how Washington state, most of the West Coast, was acquired by the United States. So we're looking at, for instance, and we'll talk about this next week, is looking at the 1855 treaty between the Yakama Nation and the United States. You know, when that treaty was negotiated, Washington Territory's governor Isaac Stevens offered the tribe two choices — either accept his terms and cede that land, or walk in blood knee-deep. And this is obviously not an empty threat. Just a decade before you have, uh, you know, [the] gold rush [in] California just a little bit south, so you know, the, you know, tribes are aware of what's happening in what's currently California. Um, you know, Governor [Gavin] Newsom has, uh, labeled that genocide, uh, in the wake of, of what happened there. So these tribes know that this isn't, you know, this isn't a negotiation — like you're, you're, you're gonna do this or you're gonna die, right? So when we start looking again at like the historical documents and the facts. What does this actually tell us about the history of the United States? Like what does this tell us about the the settling of the West, um, and what does that bring up for you when you are thinking about this history, when you are thinking about what justice may be, and what are you thinking about when you're looking to the future here because this can happen again and this can happen again and again, um, and. If there's no way to reckon with the past, then you just keep dealing with it over and over again. We see this in the U.S., we see this in other parts of the world.

[00:48:05]
Brian Mackey: Indeed, we got one last text message. This will probably have to be the last word, who says this is still going on in Palestine. No one's even trying to stop it now. So yes, the question is, when does it end? Tristan Ahtone, thank you so much for being with us and sharing your perspective with us. Safe travels.

[00:48:22]
Tristan Ahtone: Thanks for having me.

[00:48:23]
Brian Mackey: Tristan Ahtone is a member of the Kiowa tribe and editor at large at the climate-focused news site [GRIST]. We'll have a link to some of his reporting on this on our website, twentyfirstshow.org. That's it for us today. Coming up tomorrow, we'll mark 25 years since 9/11 with Illinoisans who were part of the story. We also want to hear your memories. Where were you? What, if anything, changed in your life after that day? And do you get the sense that America is forgetting? And what does that mean? For this conversation in particular, please consider leaving a voicemail at 217-300-2121. And let me say, your message doesn't have to be broadcast perfect. I promise we'll edit it both for time, but also to make sure you're getting your ideas across as clearly as possible. So, if you've ever thought about leaving a voicemail, this is a great opportunity. Please give it a try. Share your 9/11 memories at 217-300-2121. Once again, 217-300-2121. The 21st show is produced by Christine Hatfield and Jose [Zaeda]. Our digital producer is Colson Kahan. Technical direction and engineering comes from Jason Croft and Steve Mork. Reginald Hardwick is our news director. The 21st show is a production of Illinois Public Media. I'm Brian Mackey. Thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.

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**Flagged for Human Review:**

1. **[00:00:00] / [00:11:18] / [00:16:16] / [00:18:34] / [00:34:01] / [00:48:23] — Publication name:** The news organization is referred to throughout the transcript with varying spellings: "GRST," "Grst," "GRs," "Grist," and "Gris." The name has been rendered as [GRIST] throughout, as this appears to be the most likely intended reference to Grist (grist.org), an environmental news nonprofit. Please verify the correct name and styling.

2. **[00:00:26] / [00:00:36] — Speaker name:** The host introduces the guest as "Tristan Atone" in the teaser but uses "Tristan Attone" elsewhere. The transcript also includes the spelling "Ahtone" in other segments. All instances have been standardized to "Ahtone" based on publicly available references to journalist Tristan Ahtone of the Kiowa tribe. Please verify the correct spelling.

3. **[00:01:33] — Tribal nation names:** Several of the nation names in the land acknowledgment were unclear in the original transcript ("Pancashaw," "Weya," "Muskin," "Msquakee," "Pottawattmi"). These have been rendered as [Piankashaw], [Wea], [Mascouten], [Meskwaki], and [Potawatomi] based on the known nations associated with Illinois. Please verify against the official University of Illinois land acknowledgment text.

4. **[00:02:28] / [00:17:17] — Seminar series name:** The seminar series is referred to as both the "Melo Sawyer seminar series" and "Meon Sawyer seminar series" in the original transcript. This has been rendered as [Mellon Sawyer] throughout, as this appears to be a reference to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Sawyer Seminar program. Please verify.

5. **[00:02:28] — Email address:** The original transcript includes "talk@2firstshow.org," which appears to be a transcription error. This has been rendered as talk@21stshow.org based on context and the host's repeated references to the program name and website. Please verify the correct email address.

6. **[00:11:18] — Voicemail number:** The original transcript gives the voicemail number as "217-32121," which appears incomplete. This has been rendered as [217-300-2121] based on the complete number given later in the transcript. Please verify.

7. **[00:18:34] — Section numbers:** The original transcript refers to "Sections 16 to 36" being set aside for K-12 schools. Ahtone later clarifies the township contains 36 sections. The reference to "Sections 16 to 36" has been rendered as "Sections 16 [and] 36" as this appears to be the intended meaning (i.e., two specific sections per township traditionally reserved for school funding). Please verify against source material.

8. **[00:44:51] — Mascot name:** The original transcript refers to "Chief Ilanaw." This has been rendered as "Chief Illiniwek," which is the name of the retired University of Illinois mascot. Please verify.

9. **[00:48:23] — Staff name:** The name "Jose Zaeda" could not be independently verified. It has been flagged as [Zaeda] pending confirmation of the correct spelling.