Advocates continue to push for campus engagement with Indigenous issues following the University of Missouri's decision last month not to implement any of the recommendations issued by the Indigenous Affairs at MU Task Force.
Faculty members and students said the university administration should do more to meet its responsibility to the Indigenous community, especially given Mizzou's status as a land-grant university that was funded in part by land taken from Native people.
The decision comes amid a growing national movement for universities to recognize and partner with Indigenous Nations on education, land management, cultural restoration and other activities. The University of Kansas, for example, has an Office of Sovereign Partnerships & Indigenous Initiatives, and the University of Illinois provides full tuition to all students of the Peoria Tribe.
MU Task Force member Melissa Horner-Petrone, a doctoral student at Mizzou, a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation and a first-generation unenrolled descendant of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, provided a statement in response to the university's decision not to follow the Task Force's recommendations. These included creating a tribal liaison position, an Indigenous advisory council, in-person spaces for Indigenous peoples, tuition waivers and new internal resources for research and outreach.
"I came to the task force on Indigenous Affairs at MU hoping we would research, explore and document many threads of Native history, lands, lived realities and experiences as they intersect with research, teaching, service, values and priorities at Mizzou—we accomplished this," Horner-Petrone said in an email.
"My hope moving forward is that this thorough report will be of use to future students, faculty and administrators interested in forging relationships with Native Nations, especially in the surrounding areas. Attention to these relationships could create capacity for Mizzou to better practice its values as a land-grant institution while supporting Native students and faculty and providing non-Native students and faculty with connections to Indigenous knowledge that long precedes and extends beyond any current federal or local laws and policies."
The student group MU Four Directions: Indigenous Peoples and Allies also provided a written response. "We at Four Directions are frustrated by our university administration's dismissal of the MU Indigenous Task Force's recommendations," the statement from the group's board of directors reads in part. "If our university seeks to foster 'an environment that embraces diverse perspectives,' as stated in its 2024-2030 strategic plan, it must reconsider the unique challenges faced by Indigenous students attempting to enter academia …. As a member of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, Mizzou has an obligation to implement the resources and opportunities recommended by the task force report. By neglecting this responsibility, our university fails to honor the land grant status it so often promotes."
The report has been discussed at several MU Faculty Council meetings, and a follow-up meeting to go further in detail about the report is scheduled for July 24, according to the Faculty Council's website.
Task Force member Robert Petrone briefly presented to the council April 17, and university spokesman Travis Zimpfer shared the university's statement at a Faculty Council meeting May 15. The statement reads, in part:
"University of Missouri leadership appreciates the thoughtful work of the Indigenous Affairs Task Force. However, we will not be establishing any new administrative positions or assembling an advisory council. Some of the remaining recommendations would violate the 2023 SCOTUS decision and/or Title VI. The university already has extensive support programs and spaces that are open to all faculty, staff and students, as well as visitors. Likewise, the University has numerous merit and need-based scholarships to support students."
The statement references a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision ending affirmative action in college admissions and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of race, color or national origin. This spring, the Trump Administration's Department of Education tried to crack down on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs in higher education, but court orders stopped enforcement. MU dissolved its Inclusion, Diversity and Equity division in 2024 amid conservative backlash against DEI.
Faculty Council chair Tom Warhover said in an email that he was deeply disappointed in the administration's response to the report, which UM System President Mun Choi commissioned in October 2020 to address the needs of Indigenous peoples on campus. The task force report, made public in January, found that "substantial work needs to be done to create the necessary conditions for a thriving Indigenous presence at MU."
"I didn't expect the administration to accept all the recommendations, but this response implies an outright rejection of the Task Force's work. In doing so, we are only perpetuating one of the primary findings: That Indigenous faculty and students feel invisible at a campus built on land taken from Native nations.
"I hope the Faculty Council will continue to work with Task Force members to find ways to keep the conversation alive."
University of Kansas provides support to Indigenous peoples
Mizzou missed a chance to make a big leap in its support of Indigenous students and faculty as the Task Force brought these concerns to light.
Across the state border about 165 miles to the west of Columbia, a very different example of a university's role played out. Despite facing rocky times, the University of Kansas has made some important changes to its relationships with Indigenous peoples.
Nearly 100 people gathered April 21 at the University of Kansas's Burge Union, a modern conference hall with rows of black cloth-wrapped tables. Wadulisi's Indigenous Food served a lunch of Three Sisters soup, a mix of pumpkin purée, black beans, corn, zucchini and butternut squash, along with cornbread cake, eggs with wild green onions and pumpkin maple butternut squash cookies.
Some of the sharpest advocates in the Midwest gathered for the Great Plains LandBack Leadership Summit to address a growing movement: Getting Indigenous peoples their land back.
While it's no new concept, the Land Back movement continues to pick up steam.
The University of Kansas conference brought in experts and tribal spokespeople from across the region, and the seven-hour meeting was an opportunity for people to talk about their successes, and challenges, within the Land Back movement. It also helped to highlight some of the differences that the university had made on campus, which was a focus of the morning overview panel.
Melissa Peterson, acting director of KU Hawk Link and previously KU's director of Tribal Relations, was born and raised on the Navajo Nation. After introducing herself in the Navajo language, she addressed why the Land Back movement is so important to her and the leadership at the University of Kansas.
"I think our narrative for what Land Back means is giving back to the community," Peterson said."The work we do with our students, the work we do in the Indigenous Studies program … is definitely going to be a testament to what that Land Back here means for us."
Peterson also spoke on the steps that the university has been taking toward stronger support for Indigenous peoples on campus.
Hayden King, an expert on Land Back at Toronto Metropolitan University, explained that the movement takes many forms besides the literal return of land to Indigenous stewardship. It can include the return of Indigenous culture, language and knowledge. "The movement is part of a very long chain of activism among Indigenous people for the return of Indigenous land but also the return of Indigenous life," said King, who is Anishinaabe from Beausoleil First Nation on Gchi'mnissing, in Huronia, Ontario.
"At the University of Kansas, though we have not physically given any land back, hopefully that's in the future," Peterson said.
Kansas has done more in recent years to help its Indigenous population, this was preceded by events damaging to the Indigenous culture.
In the fall of 2021, an outdoor art installation by artist Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation, was vandalized by two Kansas students, according to news reports. The artwork, which was part of the university's Common Read celebration of the book "Braiding Sweetgrass," named Native tribes who historically or currently inhabited the region.
Following these events, KU created the Office of Sovereign Partnerships and Indigenous Initiatives under the chancellor's office in October of 2024. According to a news release, the office's goal is to "work to cultivate a community of care for KU to develop healthy, vibrant and ethical relationships with tribal citizens on campus and across Indian Country, along with international Indigenous communities and nations."
KU also set aside land for the annual powwow held at the university. This spring, the 36th annual KU Powwow was held at the official KU Powwow Grounds on April 12.
"KU administrators did give us, as faculty staff and students, our first KU powwow grounds. It's not much, right? It's a small piece of plot," Peterson said at the conference.
"I don't think a lot of people understand how hard we fought to get that, and it's really fun to see it."
Missouri's woeful history with Native American tribes
There are four federally recognized tribes in Kansas, each with a reservation in the state: the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska, and the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska.
But Missouri has no federally recognized tribes — and there's a historical reason for that.
The federal Indian Removal Act of 1830 forcibly relocated Indigenous Nations and communities east of the Mississippi River, through the state of Missouri to lands west of the river to create space for the influx of Europeans settling on and profiting from the land. Several tribes, such as the Osage, were forced to give up vast areas of land through coercive treaties. Some of this land was sold to support the fledgling Mizzou.
Then in 1839, Missouri made it illegal to be an Indigenous person in the state, and ever since, the Show-Me State has tried to sweep its Indigenous people and their histories under the rug.
Historian Greg Olson, author of "Indigenous Missourians: Ancient Societies to the Present," had this to say about the history of the relationship between Missouri and its Indigenous peoples:
"For a long time, the state didn't do anything," Olson said. "After the 1830s and 1840s, the state didn't have any legal responsibility to the Natives one way or another. They just pretended that they didn't exist."
Olson pointed out that some Indigenous people who remained "would try to pass as white, or Black, or Italian, and in that process, a lot of the Indigenous people who have been in Missouri for a long time lost connection with their tribes."
Missouri's wretched history with Indigenous people is reflected in Mizzou's demographic data. Mizzou currently has just 52 students identifying as American Indian or Alaska Native, and the number of Indigenous faculty on campus has dwindled to just three.
In light of the damaged relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state of Missouri, the university appointed the Indigenous Affairs at MU Task Force.
Released after more than four years of work, the group's report called on the university to honor its responsibility to Native nations and create more institutional support for Indigenous issues. For each recommendation, the report pointed out other universities that provide similar supports.
For example, nearby Midwestern universities having Native American student centers or other in-person spaces include Minnesota, North Dakota, Northwestern, Purdue and Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Of schools with tuition waivers for Indigenous students, the University of Kansas's partnership with Haskell Indian Nations University helps to provide free tuition to all students from federally recognized tribes, while the University of Illinois provides full tuition to all students of the Peoria Tribe.
Mizzou Geography professor Mark Palmer, a member of the Kiowa Tribe in Oklahoma and a member of the task force, believes it will take some time for the task force's recommendations to come to pass because of financial challenges. He said there are other ways to make changes at Mizzou. For one, he wants people to have open conversations.
"We could have a few of the task force members in an auditorium and invite the students in," said Palmer. We can see how can we better inform you about some of these issues and situations and have a back-and-forth."
Palmer encourages people from different backgrounds, including Indigenous students, to come to Mizzou, even if it's hard at first. "You don't come to a university to be comfortable. In fact, you come to a university to have your world rocked, because there's so much diversity here," he said. "When you feel a little scared, when you feel a little uncomfortable, you're learning something."
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