Special Edition Spring 2023: Rallying Cries for Reparations
Reparations efforts for Indigenous peoples burgeoning across the university
By Natalie Nemes
In the context of a campus culture that champions social justice, nothing seems quite so relevant as working to rectify the history of racism at St. Kate’s itself. Yet, while the university attempts to establish an environment that cultivates social change through an overall social justice-focused curriculum in many courses, it still must reckon with its origins: St. Kate’s is located on Dakota land, making it part of the history of the colonization and genocide of Indigenous people.
Holding space for this history, I set out to investigate the work that is being done to reckon with St. Kate’s occupation of Dakota land, and in doing so, discovered nebulous reparations efforts forming across our community.
I spoke with Dr. Amy Hilden, associate professor of philosophy, who is teaching a course titled Race, Racism and Reparations this semester, about the importance of reparations. Although no one today was involved in the occupation and theft of Indigenous land, Hilden said, there are still people benefiting from the stolen wealth derived from that land. She explained that “property” (placed in quotation marks here because land ownership is a colonial idea) initially acquired through unjust means by white people is often handed down through generations, meaning that land initially stolen from Indigenous peoples manifests in wealth possessed by inheritors today.
St. Kate’s recognizes its “complicity” in “the complex history of colonialism, genocide and broken treaties” surrounding Indigenous people in its land acknowledgment. The acknowledgment continues, “We … know that these words are inadequate, imperfect and must extend beyond this verbal acknowledgement.”
Hilden echoed the sentiment that the university’s actions must align with its words, saying, “We have a land acknowledgment statement, which is a very important thing to do, but it’s just not sufficient.”
As for what specific actions St. Kate’s could take, Hilden was not sure of what that would look like just yet. However, she emphasized that engaging with members of Indigenous communities, including Indigenous students, faculty and staff at the university, and then uniting under their leadership should be an important part of the process.
Hilden went on to discuss several reparations efforts for Indigenous people taking place in the broader community. Some churches, for instance, are “returning the property of the land … to an Indigenous group and then paying for use of the land.”
As one reparations example, Dr. Vincent Skemp, theology professor and affiliate of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, referred to Minneapolis-located Holy Trinity Lutheran Church’s recent $250,000 donation to the Indian Land Tenure Foundation. The foundation focuses on Indigenous land ownership initiatives that last year helped “to purchase and return more than 28,000 acres to the Bois Forte Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe,” according to the Star Tribune.
Skemp also brought up voluntary land taxes as one possible solution students in his classes that touch on reparations for Indigenous peoples — the currently running Global Search for Justice: Dismantling Racism and Mni Sota Makoce and Settler Colonialism: Communication and Theological Perspectives (an honors seminar taught fall 2021) — have discussed.
“One of the questions students have is well, what if we at St. Kate’s in our land acknowledgment, at the end said, ‘And we are also taking concrete action as an institution by paying our land rent’?” Skemp said. “That’s just one idea. Obviously, it’d have to be discussed widely amongst the entire community.”
Skemp referred to the Native Governance Center’s web page on voluntary land taxes for more information. “Each month (or on a set time interval), land tax participants pay an amount that goes directly to Native nations and/or organizations in their area,” the website says. It also states that land taxes are important because they return stolen wealth to Indigenous communities to advance their autonomy; furthermore, land taxes “demonstrate respect for the fact that the land we occupy is still Indigenous land.”
This campus is beautiful, but did it ever really belong to St. Kate’s?
As another example of a land return effort, Skemp pointed to University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel’s recommendation in February that the university return its Cloquet Forestry Center to the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. “I think that’s a really important reparation, but I’m not sure that St. Kate’s has land that we can return — physical land.” Skemp continued, “But I think that’s why that land rent idea is appealing for institutions that are on Indigenous lands and want to do reparations, but don’t have land to physically return.”
Toward the end of our interview, Hilden specifically applauded Fia Vanderlan ‘26 (Indigenous Studies and English, Music minor) for currently working to start an Indigenous Student Alliance at St. Kate’s. I spoke further with Vanderlan about her efforts to begin this student club and her ideas for steps the university could take toward reparations.
Vanderlan first said that she would want the Indigenous Student Alliance, once formed, to rewrite the St. Kate’s land acknowledgment. She pointed to St. Thomas’s land acknowledgment as an example of one she admired, saying, “It’s very blunt and in-your-face, and that’s kind of what land acknowledgments need to be.”
Explaining ways that she would revise the land acknowledgment, Vanderlan first said she would replace all uses of “American Indian” with “Indigenous,” “because it’s kind of two words that you shouldn’t really use. ‘Indian’ because Christopher Columbus was wrong, and then ‘American’ because that’s a colonized word.”
She added that she would take out the land acknowledgment’s statement that the acknowledgment itself is insufficient, saying, “If it’s insufficient, do other stuff.” Elaborating on how else she would revise the land acknowledgment, Vanderlan said it should mention “how Christianity was forced upon Indigenous people.”
Furthermore, Vanderlan also advocated for citing the authorship of a land acknowledgment written by the university’s Indigenous Student Alliance at the bottom of the website and making the land acknowledgment more visible by including it in instructors’ syllabi.
In keeping with the sentiment of a land return, Vanderlan also suggested that St. Kate’s future Indigenous Student Alliance could upkeep a medicine garden with plants like sage and sweetgrass, “and then allow Native people from St. Kate’s and the area to come in and take it.” She added, “I think that’d be a really nice way to come together and bond.”
Vanderlan kindly referred me to the Tribal Relations Winter 2022-2023 Newsletter for more information on and examples of shared land management, suggesting that St. Kate’s might implement a similar policy. The Grand Portage Band of Chippewa Indians and the National Park Service, for instance, manage the Grand Portage National Monument together to preserve the land, boost the tribe’s economy and put on events.
Another idea for reparations Vanderlan mentioned was that Indigenous students should receive free tuition at St. Kate’s. The Crookston, Duluth, Rochester and Twin Cities University of Minnesota campuses all participate in the Native American Promise Tuition Program, which currently provides “substantial financial support to first-year undergraduate students and transfer students from Tribal colleges who are enrolled citizens in one of Minnesota’s 11 federally recognized Tribal Nations.” Beginning this fall, the program will cover all tuition costs for qualifying students who have a family income of less than $125,000. The University of Minnesota, Morris and Augsburg University have similar programs.
Vanderlan additionally suggested that the university organize trips to marches, powwows and reservations to expose students to Indigenous cultures and to involve them in supporting Indigenous communities. On Saturday, May 6, 2023, the university extended an offer to students to participate in the Minnesota Humanities Center’s Learning from Place: Bdote experience. During the workshop, students and the general public had the opportunity to visit places of significance to the Dakota people in the Twin Cities area and to “learn from Dakota community members through stories and histories that have often been left out of our state’s history.”
Already, St. Kate’s has taken small steps toward becoming more involved in reparations efforts for Indigenous peoples. Students from Skemp’s settler colonialism honors course “composed a letter to the president and the board asking if they would consider having St. Kate’s join [The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition] as an affiliate, and we heard back fairly quickly, and they agreed to do that,” he said.
Hilden mentioned that she hoped this article would function as “a call out to people to kind of say, ‘Let’s join together.’” I couldn’t agree more. Social justice being one of the tenets of this university, I look forward to members across the St. Kate’s community working together to enact reparations and uphold that mission.
For more information on reparations efforts for Indigenous peoples, consider visiting:
boardingschoolhealing.org (The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition’s website)
nativegov.org (the Native Governance Center’s website)
makoceikikcupi.com (for information on the Makoce Ikikcupi — meaning Land Recovery — project in Minnesota)
