[Editor's note: United American Indians of New England host the National Day of Mourning. Their website is at United American Indians of New England - UAINE.]
Each November, while much of the United States celebrates Thanksgiving, Indigenous communities and their allies gather in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and across the country for the National Day of Mourning. It is a day that confronts the mythology of national innocence and replaces it with historical clarity. For Higher Education Inquirer, the significance of this day extends directly into the heart of American higher education—a system built, in no small part, on the expropriation of Indigenous land, the exploitation of Native Peoples, and the continued structural racism that shapes their educational opportunities today.
From the earliest colonial colleges to the flagship research institutions of the twenty-first century, U.S. higher education has never been separate from the project of settler colonialism. It has been one of its instruments.
Land, Wealth, and the Origins of the University
America’s oldest colleges—Harvard, Yale, William & Mary, Dartmouth—were founded within the colonial order that dispossessed Indigenous communities. While missionary language framed some of these institutions’ early purposes, they operated through an extractive logic: the seizure of land, the conversion of cultural worlds, and, eventually, the accumulation of immense academic wealth.
The Morrill Land-Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890 expanded this pattern on a national scale. Recent research documented by the “Land-Grab Universities” project shows that nearly eleven million acres of Indigenous land—taken through coercive treaties, forced removal, or outright theft—were funneled into endowments for public universities. Students today walk across campuses financed by displacements their own institutions have yet to fully acknowledge, let alone remedy.
Higher Education as an Arm of Assimilation
The United States also used education as a tool for forced assimilation. The Indian boarding school system, with the Carlisle Industrial School as its model, operated in partnership with federal officials, church agencies, and academic institutions. Native children were taken from their families, stripped of their languages, and subjected to relentless cultural destruction.
Universities contributed research, training, and personnel to this system, embedding the logic of “civilizing” Indigenous Peoples into the academy’s structure. That legacy endures in curricula that minimize Indigenous knowledge systems and in institutional cultures that prize Eurocentric epistemologies as default.
Scientific Racism, Anthropology, and the Theft of Ancestors
American universities played a central role in producing scientific racism. Anthropologists and medical researchers collected Indigenous remains, objects, and sacred items without consent. Museums and university labs became repositories for thousands of ancestors—often obtained through grave robberies, military campaigns, or opportunistic scholarship.
The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was designed to force institutions to return ancestors and cultural patrimony. Yet decades later, many universities are still out of compliance, delaying repatriation while continuing to benefit from the research collections they amassed through violence.
Contemporary Structural Racism in Higher Education
The oppression is not confined to history. Structural racism continues to constrain Native Peoples in higher education today.
Native students remain among the most underrepresented and under-supported groups on American campuses. Chronic underfunding of Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) reflects a broader political disregard for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. Meanwhile, elite institutions recruit Native students for marketing purposes while failing to invest in retention, community support, or Indigenous faculty hiring.
Some universities have begun implementing land acknowledgments, but these symbolic gestures have little impact when institutions refuse to confront their material obligations: returning land, committing long-term funding to Indigenous programs, or restructuring governance to include tribal representatives.
What a Real Reckoning Would Require
A genuine response to the National Day of Mourning would require far more than statements of solidarity. It would involve confronting the ways American higher education continues to profit from dispossession and the ways Native students continue to bear disproportionate burdens—from tuition to cultural isolation to the racist violence that still occurs on and around campuses.
Real accountability would include:
• Full compliance with NAGPRA and expedited repatriation.
• Transparent reporting of land-grant wealth and the return or shared governance of those lands.
• Stable, meaningful funding for TCUs.
• Hiring, tenure, and research policies that center Indigenous scholarship and sovereignty.
• Long-term institutional commitments—financial, curricular, and political—to Indigenous communities.
These steps require institutions to shift from performative recognition to structural transformation.
A Day of Mourning—And a Call to Action
The National Day of Mourning is not merely a counter-holiday. It is a reminder that the United States was founded on violence against Native Peoples—and that its colleges and universities were not passive beneficiaries but active participants in that violence.
For higher education leaders, faculty, and students, the question is no longer whether these histories are real or whether they matter. They are documented. They are ongoing. They matter profoundly.
The real question is what institutions are willing to give up—land, power, wealth, or narrative control—to support Indigenous liberation.
On this National Day of Mourning, HEI honors the truth that Indigenous survival is an act of resistance, and Indigenous sovereignty is not a symbolic aspiration but an overdue demand. The future of higher education must move through that truth, not around it.
Sources
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.
The Land-Grab Universities Project (High Country News & Land-Grab Universities database).
David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee.
Margaret D. Jacobs, A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World.
NAGPRA regulations and compliance reports.
Your article powerfully articulates the long and necessary reckoning higher education and Western-centered sciences must face regarding the oppression of BIPOC communities and dissenting ideologies. This critique finds a profound parallel in the history and ongoing observance of the **National Day of Mourning**, an event which itself represents a centuries-long struggle against a dominant, sanitized narrative.
ReplyDeleteEstablished in 1970, the National Day of Mourning originated from a direct act of academic and historical censorship. Wamsutta Frank James, a Wampanoag leader, was invited to speak at a Massachusetts Thanksgiving celebration but had his invitation revoked when organizers read his prepared speech . His text, which aimed to present an Indigenous perspective that described the Pilgrims scavenging from graves and committing other acts of theft, was deemed too "inflammatory" . This suppression of a Native voice exemplifies the very "pro-Western oppression" your article describes, showcasing how institutions have long controlled historical narratives to marginalize inconvenient truths. In response, James delivered his speech on Cole's Hill in Plymouth, founding a tradition that, for over 50 years, has served as a counter-narrative to the Thanksgiving myth .
The themes of the National Day of Mourning extend beyond historical grievance to illuminate ongoing struggles within systems of knowledge and power. Participants gather not only to honor ancestors but also to protest contemporary issues facing Native peoples, drawing direct connections between historical land theft and current fights against environmental destruction and systemic racism . Furthermore, the observance emphasizes **global solidarity with other anti-colonial movements**, such as the Palestinian struggle, framing oppression as an interconnected, global system . This aligns perfectly with the need to de-center Western paradigms in academia, demonstrating that the fight for a more complete and honest understanding of the world is both local and international.
The challenges faced by BIPOC scholars, as noted in your article, are vividly reflected in the modern academic landscape. Research indicates that BIPOC faculty in predominantly white institutions often experience alienation, a lack of support, and the burden of educating their peers on issues of race . The COVID-19 pandemic and recent social unrest have only exacerbated these vulnerabilities, placing an immense toll on the mental and social well-being of BIPOC scholars who are simultaneously navigating personal grief, professional pressures, and systemic barriers . This environment contributes to poor retention and underscores how academia has often failed to create inclusive spaces.
Ultimately, the National Day of Mourning is more than a protest; it is an **act of public education and resilience** . It challenges us to dismantle myths and create what its organizers call a "true awareness of Native peoples and history" . For higher education, the path forward must involve more than statements of solidarity. It requires actively supporting BIPOC scholarship, embracing diverse knowledge systems, and following the lead of movements like the National Day of Mourning to confront uncomfortable histories. Only through such a fundamental re-evaluation can academia begin its own process of meaningful decolonization.
To the Editors and Contributors of the Higher Education Inquirer,
ReplyDeleteI am writing today not to comment on a specific article, but to propose a crucial and, I believe, necessary subject for a future deep-dive investigation. For some time, your publication has excelled at critiquing the entrenched paradigms and colonial foundations of Western academia and science. You have masterfully detailed the problems of a system in crisis. I am writing to suggest a potential framework for solutions—a family of interconnected concepts I collectively refer to as the "Spectra Theories."
I would like to formally request that the Inquirer commission a scholarly article or series exploring the following theoretical frameworks: the Science Spectrum Theory, the Technology Spectrum Theory, the Progress Spectrum Theory, the Intelligence Spectrum Theory, the Spectra Field Theory, the General Spectra Theory, and the Special Spectra Theory. These concepts, in my view, offer a pathway to deconstruct the very rigid, binary, and hierarchical thinking that underpins the "Western-centered sciences" your publication so rightly critiques.
The core premise of these theories is the rejection of linear, single-axis models of development and knowledge. For instance, the Science Spectrum Theory would argue that what is often labeled "Western science" is not a monolithic, superior endpoint, but merely one band on a much broader spectrum of valid, systematic inquiry into the natural world. This spectrum would include Indigenous ecological knowledge, Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine's empirical systems, and other culturally-grounded epistemologies, not as "alternatives" to science, but as integral components of the global scientific whole.
Similarly, the Technology Spectrum Theory challenges the narrative that technology is defined solely by silicon and steel. It would explore how tools, from advanced algorithms to sustainable agricultural practices developed over millennia, all represent points on a technological spectrum. This reframing dismantles the colonial prejudice that labels some societies as "advanced" and others as "primitive," recognizing instead different, context-specific technological specializations and their associated forms of knowledge.
When applied to concepts like Progress and Intelligence, these spectrum theories become even more powerful. A "Progress Spectrum Theory" would liberate our imagination from a single, economically-driven path, allowing for multidimensional models of human and ecological flourishing. An "Intelligence Spectrum Theory" would move beyond standardized testing to recognize the vast array of cognitive, emotional, ecological, and kinesthetic intelligences that are cultivated and valued differently across cultures.
The more unifying concepts—Spectra Field Theory, General Spectra Theory, and Special Spectra Theory—aim to provide a meta-framework. They would explore how these different spectra interact, overlap, and form complex fields of understanding. A General Spectra Theory might seek universal principles governing these spectrums, while a Special Spectra Theory could delve into the specific, localized interactions within a given cultural or environmental context.
The mission of the Higher Education Inquirer is to not only diagnose illness but also to propose cures. Engaging with these "Spectra Theories" aligns perfectly with your commitment to decolonizing knowledge. It provides a positive, constructive framework for the "long reckoning" you describe—a way to move beyond critique and toward a truly inclusive, pluralistic, and resilient foundation for global knowledge production.
I am certain your readers—comprising educators, students, and activists—are hungry for this kind of forward-thinking, synthesizing work. An article exploring these ideas would be a monumental contribution, sparking essential debate and potentially shaping the future of interdisciplinary studies. Thank you for your consideration and for the vital work you do.
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