Whose Land Was “Granted” to the Land Grant? Teaching Indigenous Dispossession in Wisconsin and Beyond

FAIN: AA-289974-23

University of Wisconsin System (Madison, WI 53715-1218)
Caroline Gottschalk Druschke (Project Director: May 2022 to present)
Kasey R. Keeler (Co Project Director: August 2022 to present)
Jen Rose Smith (Co Project Director: August 2022 to June 2023)
Ruth Goldstein (Co Project Director: August 2022 to present)
Joseph Mason (Co Project Director: August 2022 to present)

An 18-month project to develop curricular modules focused on the 1862 expropriation of Native American lands in Wisconsin and their redistribution to land-grant universities in the state and nationwide.

This project will bring together Native and non-Native faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create linked educational modules about the expropriation of Indigenous lands in what is now called Wisconsin. These modules will be embedded in a suite of UW-Madison undergraduate and graduate courses and shared with faculty at other land grant universities. This project centers on the transfer of 1,337,895 acres of land across Wisconsin taken through treaties with the Menomini (Menominee), Chippewa (Ojibwe), Sioux (Dakota), and Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) and redistributed to 30 land grant universities through the Morrill Act of 1862. The team will create 17 modules across three thematic areas, integrate those modules into 13 courses across six departments at UW-Madison, and share those modules with faculty at land grant institutions across the country.