THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN
Monday, September 20, 2020 Vol. 130, No. 10 COLLEGIAN.COM
In 2019, Colorado State University adopted its land acknowledgement statement to recognize that the land the campus is built upon is the homeland of the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Ute Nations and peoples. PHOTO BY GREGORY JAMES THE COLLEGIAN
‘A long-lasting impact’: Details behind land acknowledgment By Serena Bettis @serenaroseb
Colorado State University celebrated its 150th anniversary in February, but the land the University sits on has a much longer history. CSU adopted its land acknowledgment statement in 2019 as a way to respect the land the University occupies and recognize the ties Indigenous nations have to their traditional homelands. “A land acknowledgment extends our understanding of how CSU fits into the bigger picture of people who were here
and are here, who are not always acknowledged or understood to be part of the history that kind of includes the formation of CSU,” said Jamie Folsom, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and a CSU journalism and media communications instructor. Those here first Archaeologists can trace back 13,000 years of Indigenous presence in the area that is now called Northern Colorado, according to a 2009 timeline compiled by Brenda Martin, who worked at the Fort Collins Museum for nearly four years. The timeline states that “tribal groups as we know them today are not recognized as be-
ing present until 1,000 A.D., if not longer, beginning with the Numic (Uto-Aztecan) speakers, commonly known as the Ute.” Starting in the mid-17th century, the timeline said, is when oral tradition and ethno-historic records show evidence of other tribal groups in Colorado, including the Apache, Arapaho, Comanche, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Lakota, Pawnee and Shoshone tribes. Land in Northern Colorado was primarily occupied by the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Ute tribal groups. According to Fort Collins History Connection, white settlers started arriving in the area around the 1840s. The settlers
brought contagious diseases and cattle that depleted the grazing grass of area buffalo. It is estimated that measles, whooping cough and cholera epidemics killed half of the Cheyenne living between the Platte and Arkansas rivers. The Fort Collins History Connection website said that in the Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek of 1867, “the combined tribe of Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho gave up all their Colorado land and were moved to a new reservation in Oklahoma. A reservation for the Northern Cheyenne was established in southeastern Montana in 1864.” In 1862, the United States Congress passed the first Mor-
rill Act, granting land to colleges across the country. CSU was founded as a land-grant institution under this act. Developing the land acknowledgment Tiffani Kelly, the assistant director for the Native American Cultural Center and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, said the Native community had been talking about a land acknowledgment for many years. Kelly said the incident in which a parent called the police on two Native American prospective students during a campus tour in May 2018 catalyzed the rest of the University to action. see LAND on page 3 >>