The 1817 Project: U-M's Origins and Indigenous Lands

IN PERSON REGISTRATION

Signed on September, 1817, the Treaty of Fort Meigs ceded 4.6 million acres of Indigenous land to the United States, setting aside 1,920 acres for “the corporation of the college at Detroit”–the fledgling University of Michigan. This was just the beginning of U-M’s complex history with Michigan’s Native American communities. The 1817 Project research team will present four snapshots of their research into this history, spanning over 200 years, from a re-examination of U-M’s origins to a 1971 lawsuit claiming U-M had broken the treaty and a study of broader patterns of Native American student enrollment.

One of the foundational Project Sites of the Inclusive History Project, the 1817 Project team includes Jay Cook (Professor of History and Director of Research for the UM-Ann Arbor Inclusive History Project); Michael Witgen (citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, Professor in the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University); as well as postdoctoral and graduate students Jonathan Quint, Gabrielle Hickmon, Veronica Williamson, and Cheyenne Travioli (citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe), all part of a larger team working on the project.

Find virtual registration here.

Host or Publisher The Detroit Observatory