Native @ Msu
Becoming good ancestors
to future generations
Boozhoo/Aanii/Welcome to Native@MSU — your gateway to American Indian and Indigenous life, history, and community at Michigan State University.
Access Native programs and partnerships that increase awareness of Indigenous histories, presence, and knowledge systems among students, faculty, staff, and our greater Native communities. Find resources, learn about Indigenous histories and languages of the Great Lakes region, and connect with the vibrant Native presence shaping MSU today.
Land Acknowledgement
Illuminating ongoing Indigenous presence and countering settler-colonial legacies of violence and
Land expropriation
Michigan State University’s campus is located in what is called Nkwejong by the Anishinaabeg.
Michigan State University occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg – Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodéwadmi peoples. The University’s campus resides on the traditional Lands of the Saginaw Band of Chippewa, ceded under coercive or violent circumstances in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw. Michigan State University is supported through the Land Grant Act, where 10.7 million acres were taken from 245 Tribal nations through the treaty system to fund and establish agricultural colleges. Michigan State University was established on and with 235,193 acres of Anishinaabe Land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw and the 1836 Treaty of Washington.
Michigan State University recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Anishinaabe Nations from the Great Lakes area, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their homelands. By offering this Land Acknowledgement, we affirm Indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold ourselves more accountable to the needs of Indigenous peoples and to the creation of equitable and fair policies for years to come.