The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has a long, uneven history with American Indians. Today the university publicly avows that its very origins lie in a land grant obtained in Article 16 of the Treaty of Fort Meigs (1817). Only recently has the University launched a serious inquiry into Native American Studies. The interest may have begun in 1972, when the Native American Student Association formed at the University of Michigan. As with American Indian student organizers elsewhere, Michigan?s NASA students sought both to rid the campus of culturally insulting practices and to create and bolster Native American Studies programs. Coinciding with this Native American student activism since 1972 were intellectual and cultural changes in the university more generally that lay the groundwork for the establishment of a Native American Studies program. The university founded a Native American Studies program within the Program in American Culture in 1983, but only in recent years has it had the human and financial resources to make an impact on the campus. Meanwhile, the U of M found itself adopting forthright and bold stands on issue of affirmative action, broadening the diversity of its campus, and expanding its support for historically unrepresented social groups and cultures.
If Native American Studies has developed recently in partial consequence of Native American Student Association demands, another of those demands helped pave the way for a recent dedication on campus. The demand was that the university recognize, in a formal manner, its special historical relationship with Native Americans. At noon, on November 21, 2002, the university formally dedicated a plaque on the central campus commemorating Article 16 of the Treaty of 1817, also known as the Treaty of Fort Meigs.
The event has a history. In 1971, Paul J. Johnson and the ?Children of the Ottawa, Chippewa and Potawatomi Tribes,? filed a legal complaint against the Regents of the University of Michigan, alleging that Article 16 effectively created a trust to guaranty the education of the tribes? children and their descendants. The language of the article follows:
Some of the Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomy Tribes, being attached to the Catholic religion, and believing they may wish some of their children hereafter educated, do grant to the rector of the Catholic church of St. Anne of Detroit, for the use of the said church, and to the corporation of the college at Detroit, for the use of the said college, to be retained or sold, as the said rector and corporation may judge expedient, each, one half of three sections of land, to contain six hundred and forty acres, on the river Raisin, at a place called Macon; and three sections of land not yet located, which tracts were reserved, for the use of the said Indians, by the treaty of Detroit, in one thousand eight hundred and seven; and the superintendent of Indian affairs, in the territory of Michigan, is authorized, on the part of the said Indians, to select the said tracts of land.
In 1981, an appellate court confirmed a lower court ruling that denied that Article 16 bound the university in a legal relationship with the Native American tribes. As one university publication puts it: ?The courts found that the state was under no such legal obligation, but the case did kindle a sense of moral obligation that led to the passage of Public Act 174, the Michigan Indian Tuition Waiver Program, in 1976.? But if the university had fought and won, two decades ago, a legal case against an Indian treaty claim, it nonetheless appears now to be acknowledging its own ethical obligation to Native Americans. The relationship is now written in brass, and the plaque commemorating it sits centrally on the main campus.
President Mary Sue Coleman spoke at the plaque?s dedication, thanking one of the student organizers and rededicating the university to Native American Studies and to the recruitment of Native American Students. Among the dignitaries present was chairman Tom Peters of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe (Ojibwa) and Frank Ettawageshick of the Little Traverse Bay Band (Odawa). University Regent Katherine White publically thanked the Anishinabeg for the land grant. Ettawageshick sang a courting song to express the sense of relationship, and he reminded the audience that Michigan?s Indians have had a long and intricate history with the state?s institutions of higher learning. Coleman read the plaque aloud:
This plaque commemorates the grant of lands from the Ojibwa, Odawa, and Bodewadimi through the Treaty of Fort Meigs, which states that 'believing they may wish some of their children hereafter educated [they] do grant to the rector of the Catholic church of St. Anne of Detroit..., and to the corporation of the college at Detroit, for the use of the said college, to be retained or sold, as the rector and corporation may judge expedient....' The rector was Gabriel Richard, a founder and first vice president of the corporation of the college, chartered by the territorial legislature as the University of Michigania in 1817. These lands were eventually sold to the benefit of the University of Michigan, which was relocated to Ann Arbor in 1837.
The student to whom Coleman referred, Andrew Adams III, recalls that ?When I came to Ann Arbor in 1992, I was shocked to find a number of markers around campus recognizing people who had been ?playing Indian,? but not a single thing to commemorate Native Americans? historical contributions to this school -- the premier educational institution in the state.? Now, in addition to the plaque on the central campus, one can find many references to the Indian land gift in university publications and pronouncements.
The dedication also involved an afternoon academic seminar, in which Professor Gregory Dowd presented a paper on Pontiac?s War (1763-1765). That evening, Ettawageshik (Odawa artist, teacher and former tribal chairman of the Little Traverse Band) addressed an audience at the Michigan Union about his relationship with the university and his life in the state.
Andrew Adams III quoted in Steeh, ?University celebrates history of land gift from Native Americans,? cited above. Adams is consciously acknowledging the work of Professor Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (Yale, 1998) while referring as well to NASA?s victory over the Michigauma society. In addition to being a Ph.D. candidate in American Culture, Adams is an employee of the university?s Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives.
