Land Acknowledgment for Cornell University Campus

Northeastern IPM Center joins host institution in acknowledging use of traditional Indigenous homelands, history of dispossession

The Northeastern IPM Center is based at Cornell University, an Ivy League institution with a global footprint but headquartered in Ithaca, New York—a small city in the largely rural Finger Lakes Region that constitutes the geographic heart of the state.

Cornell as it exists today was made possible by the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862. The university was chartered in 1865 and is “the largest recipient of appropriated Indigenous land from the Morrill Act and the institution that accrued the greatest financial benefit from that land.” (Learn more at landgrant.cornell.edu.)

The enormous societal benefits yielded by the creation of Cornell and similar institutions came at an immeasurable involuntary cost to the Indigenous peoples who had previously called the granted lands home.

Cornell has sought to reckon with the duality of its history and recently adopted a land-acknowledgment statement. As beneficiaries of the university’s presence and existence, the Center echoes and affirms the ideas and sentiments therein:

Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' (the Cayuga Nation). The Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign Nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York state, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' dispossession, and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' people, past and present, to these lands and waters.

This land acknowledgment has been reviewed and approved by the traditional Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ' leadership.

Read more at news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/05/cornell-shares-land-acknowledgement.