2023 Guido A. Binda Lecture: Tristan Ahtone

Land Grab Universities: A legacy of profit and a just climate future

Through the Morrill Act of 1862, nearly 11 million acres of Indigenous land became seed money for higher education. Land Grant Universities got their money through violence and Indigenous dispossession, but they continue to make money from lands granted through other legislative actions. In this talk, journalist and Land-Grab Universities co-author Tristan Ahtone will cover the history of land grant universities, as well as current efforts to investigate how institutions profit from extractive industries on Indigenous territories.

Tristan Ahtone is a member of the Kiowa Tribe and is Editor at Large at Grist. He previously served as Editor in Chief at the Texas Observer and Indigenous Affairs editor at High Country News. Ahtone’s stories have won multiple honors, including a George Polk Award, a National Magazine Award nomination, and investigative awards from the Gannett Foundation and IRE: Investigative Reporters and Editors. A past president of the Native American Journalists Association, Ahtone is a 2017 Nieman Fellow.

This event is supported by the Guido A. Binda Exhibit and Lecture fund. For seven decades, Guido Binda, B.Arch.’31, practiced architecture in Western Michigan, specializing in school design. Guido, with his wife Elizabeth, created this fund to provide for an exhibit program and annual lecture by visiting professionals.

Related events & exhibitions

• October 26, 5:30 p.m.: Cannupa Hanska Luger: How Do We Remember? A conversation with Monument Lab Co-Founder Paul Farber, Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty, Ann Arbor, MI
• October 27-28: Under the Campus, the Land, UMMA and Stamps Gallery
• October 27, 5:00 p.m.: Under the Campus, the Land – ​2023 Binda Lecture: Keynote by Tristan Ahtone
• October 28, 12:00 – 4:00 p.m.: Memory & Monuments Open House
• October 28, 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.: Live podcast recording of Broken Boxes by Ginger Dunnill and Cannupa Hanska Luger, with artists Andrea Carlson and Matika Wilbur, UMMA
• October 28, 6:00 p.m.: Matika Wilbur Artist Talk and Book Signing, Stamps Gallery, 201 S. Division, Ann Arbor, MI
• October 26 – 28: Andrea Carlson Future Cache, UMMA
• October 26 – 28: Cannupa Hanska Luger You’re Welcome, UMMA

Related events & exhibitions coordinated as part of the Memory & Monuments Weekend program of the Arts & Resistance Theme Semester, organized by UMMA and the U-M Arts Initiative in partnership with the Stamps Gallery and “Under the Campus, the Land” series of conversations by Taubman College faculty Andrew Herscher.

The Arts & Resistance Theme Semester, organized by UMMA and the U-M Arts Initiative, is generously supported by the U-M Office of the Provost, the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch, and Erica Gervais Pappendick and Ted Pappendick.