Texas Observer and then-Indigenous Affairs editor for
High Country News, and Lee, a historian at Cambridge University, located 99% of the nearly 11 million acres transferred to fledgling land-grant colleges by the Morrill Act of 1862 — lands taken from their original Indigenous caretakers through the use of broken treaties, illegal seizures and outright genocide. In addition to the feature published in
High Country News, the project also created a database at landgrabu.org that translates the extensive primary source research into searchable, visual representation, clearly showing the links between nearly 250 Indigenous tribal nations and the 52 institutions that profited (and in some cases still profit) from the transfers.