Land Acknowledgments at Land-Grant Libraries and Archives: A Systematic Review

Increasingly, land-grant universities are acknowledging their history of benefitting from colonization and the dispossession of Indigenous communities through the Morrill Act of 1862. This study looks at whether academic libraries and archives acknowledge this history in the form of online land acknowledgments; and, where such acknowledgements exist, whether the university also acknowledges its occupation of Indigenous lands. A systematic review of the websites of land-grant colleges and universities and their libraries and archives was conducted. The results indicate that a majority of 1862 land-grant colleges and universities do have a land acknowledgment for the entire campus, but most academic libraries do not have a land acknowledgment specific to the library or archives