The University of Minnesota Morris will hold a teach-in about the history and impact of Native American boarding schools, including the ones that operated on our campus site, on Saturday, Nov. 18 in Imholte Hall room 109.
Educational speakers for the event are Gabe Desrosiers, Anishinaabe; Dorothy Jeffery; and Dennis Jeffy, Diné.
Please note that Sandy White Hawk, who was scheduled to be the keynote speaker, has had to cancel her participation.
The event begins at 8:45 a.m. with a light breakfast, followed by a blessing and welcome at 9:15 a.m., then first speaker at 9:30 a.m. Following the presentations, lunch will be served in Oyate Hall.
For those unable to attend in person, the Teach-In will also be available via Zoom. Registration is required: z.umn.edu/BoardingTeach2023
The University of Minnesota Morris campus is situated on original Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and Dakota and Lakota (Sioux) homelands. The campus was founded in 1887 as a Native American boarding school. When the US Bureau of the Interior turned over the building and lands of the boarding school to the State of Minnesota in 1909 to establish the agricultural boarding high school (1910–63), it was with the stipulation that American Indian students would be admitted on the same conditions as other students, and tuition-free.
When the Minnesota State Legislature established the Morris campus of the University of Minnesota in 1959 as a selective public liberal arts college, this same stipulation remained.
UMN Morris upholds the federal- and state-mandated tuition waiver tied to the transfer of the campus from the federal government to the State of Minnesota and admits eligible American Indian students tuition-free. Today, UMN Morris is the only federally recognized four-year Native American-Serving Nontribal Institution (NASNTI) in the Upper Midwest.