The city of Ann Arbor (known to the Potawatomi as Gaa-bigooshkaaning) occupies Indigenous land ceded through coercive treaties that seized large swaths of land to be sold to colonizers. These are the traditional and contemporary homelands (the Anishinabewaki) of the Anishinaabeg: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi who together make up the Three Fires Council, established at Michilimackinac in 796 AD. 

Due to land dispossession and tribal warfare in preceding centuries, many tribes were living on the traditional homelands of the Anishinaabe at the time of colonial contact, including the Wyandot, in what was to become Detroit and the Washtenaw County region. The Anishinaabe and other Indigenous peoples are here today, and maintain their relationships with the living lands.

Today, we refer to the state of Michigan, (Mzhigénak, “place that has been clear cut” in Bodéwadmimwen, Potawatomi language) but political borders and names of territories rapidly changed with encroaching colonial contact. In 1668, the region was part of French Canada, then the province of Quebec under the British in 1774. It soon became part of the “Old Northwest” in the newly-formed United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the Northwest Territory in 1787, and finally the Indiana Territory in 1800 before it became known as the “Michigan Territory” in 1805.

French Explorers first landed in Newfoundland in 1534 before making their way to Michigan from the St. Lawrence Valley in the 1600s. The French became the first Europeans to enter the Great Lakes region in the first two decades of the 17th century. By then, many tribes including the Peoria, Miami, Lenape, Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Kickapoo, Wyandot, and members of the Haudenosaunee from the East and South had been driven into new territories in the Great Lakes by treaties that ceded their lands in neighboring regions, and wars. Centuries of conflicts with European colonizers as well as intertribal warfare contributed to migrations and forced displacements. Relocation and forced movement were consistent and happened over centuries, but a general overview of what drove these changes, and where each nation called their homeland is below: 

Historically, the Peoria were located along the western shores of the Great Lakes in what is now Illinois and Indiana. In 1854, they entered into a single tribe with the Kaskaskia (from the Illinois Confederacy ranging from southern Wisconsin to northern Illinois and as far south as Des Moines River, Iowa), Piankashaw (from lands bordering south/southeast Michigan and into Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois), and Wea Tribes (a subtribe of the Miami, whose homelands were in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio). 

The Miami nation's homelands are in the Wabash River Valley. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma traces their origin story to the region where the St. Joseph's River meets Lake Michigan, and they have been located on lands bordering south and southeast of Michigan into lower Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

The Lenape were located in the Delaware and Hudson River Valleys, a large region including northeastern Delaware, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, Northeastern Pennsylvania, New York Bay, western Long Island, and Manhattan. 

The Shawnee were located to the Southeast in the Ohio River Valley including parts of Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, the Virginias, and other neighboring states. 

The Sauk [Sac] were located in the St. Lawrence River Valley around 1600 and later lived in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa. 

The Fox [Meskwaki] were historically located in the St. Lawrence River Valley along the Canadian border, Michigan, and later Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa. 

Members of the Haudenosaunee, also referred to as the Iroquois, were comprised of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. Their homelands surrounded Lake Ontario in Canada and upper New York. They initiated the French and Iroquois or Beaver Wars in the 17th century, which were responsible for mass displacements of surrounding nations. 

The Kickapoo lived in the Wabash River Valley and Great Lakes region. In the early 1600s, their presence was recorded in Indiana, and in the 1660s near Green Bay, but their territories spread from Michigan into Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, and into the Southwest and Mexico. 

The Wyandot, sometimes erroneously referred to as Huron, were comprised of Wendat, Petun, Neutral, and Erie tribes who fled west in the mid-1600s and became known as Wyandot in the 1730s-1750s.

Rapid changes in the “Treaty Period” (1778 - 1871), in which an estimated 370 such documents were ratified in the United States, provided the impetus for the Americans to colonize southeast Michigan. In 1787, the “Northwest Territory" was declared off-limits to colonizers, and was home to the Anishinaabe and other Indigenous peoples who had been there for centuries, in addition to those who had been displaced from their own homelands. Because of the ongoing displacement of Indigenous peoples, treaties often included tribes that were refugees in Anishinabewaki, like the Wyandot who had been pushed west in the 1640s. In the 1807 Treaty of Detroit, a land cession that included what is now Washtenaw County, representatives of the Wyandot signed alongside the Anishinaabeg. The Wyandot were included because they were, according to William Hull’s November 18, 1807 letter, “an old and respectable Nation,” though the Wyandot did not have a prior history of political control or ancestral ties to the region.

Before the first colonists arrived, the lands that would become Ann Arbor were home to Anishinaabe villages with complex political systems and routine council meetings. Potawatomi villages were located in present-day Ann Arbor, Saline, and Ypsilanti for centuries. Here, the Anishinaabeg stewarded and maintained relationships with the lands in innumerable ways, such as maple sugaring, the cultivation of crops, and through routine controlled fires (Ishkode, or “fire” in Anishinaabemowin). Several botanical species in Michigan, including blueberries, oaks, red pines, black spruce, and jack pines are dependent on fire to continue their life cycle. 

Early Washtenaw County colonist accounts frequently noted encounters with Indigenous peoples, including the Potawatomi. In an 1852 feature on Mary Ann Rumsey, the author writes that in 1824 “‘Ann Arbor’ had been the favorite dancing-ground of the Potawattomies, many families of whom lived in the neighborhood. Their place of council was in the light ‘opening’ selected by Allen for his garden.” The article also notes that the Potawatomi often traded deer and turkeys for “other articles” from the colonists. 

In an 1895 Ann Arbor Register article, Mrs. Julia Dexter Stannard recalls her childhood, circa 1828, when “the Indians had a camp near the junction of Mill Creek and the Huron river, and were very friendly bringing cranberries and venison to exchange for potatoes, pork and bread, and for the children they brought little box made of birch bark worked with porcupine quills, brightly colored, and the boxes were filled with new maple sugar.” The Potawatomi ensured that the new “pioneers” of Washtenaw County would survive their first years by trading them food. Yet the Potawatomi and other Indigenous groups were mischaracterized as “primitive” or “backwards,” despite overwhelming evidence that the lands had been purposefully inhabited for thousands of years, including the Indigenous trails that colonizers used to travel.

Those trails converged at the Huron River in Ann Arbor. Surveyor C.S. Woodard recalls in an 1893 letter that “It has always been understood that our most important highways–the Chicago Road and others followed the general lines of these main Indian Trails thus admitting the Indian’s skill in their part of civil engineering, selecting the best ground on which to locate our highways.” Colonists’ language choices were strategic, in order to promote the idea that Indigenous tribes were “uncivilized,” and represented “a vanishing race.” 

In an 1873 history of the state of Michigan, the author states that in their early years, Ann Arbor and surrounding colonial settlements were “not yet free from the annoyance of the Indians,” and that “the Foxes and Sacs annually made their appearance to receive thousands of dollars of presents from the British agents at Malden”, passing through Ann Arbor on their way to Fort Malden to receive annuities for contracts made in past treaties. Efforts to relocate Indigenous people away from Washtenaw County had already begun, but in 1830 the Indian Removal Act formalized military force and targeted remaining Indigenous peoples in Michigan for removal. In 1895, J. Warner Wing recalls the first time he saw the Huron River in what is now Scio Township in 1832. The “water was clear as crystal, well stocked with fine fish, and good resort for deer ... At the point where I reached the river there was a large Indian planting ground ... rows of corn in the cornfield were regular, but not at right angle ... At the upper end of this planting ground ... was an Indian cemetery where many braves and least one chief had been buried," and notes that the "Potowatamie [sic] Indians were quite plenty here in 1832-3" but that "there were not very many Indians here after '32." After six more years of forced removal, in 1838 the Potawatomi Trail of Death forced displaced Potawatomi from Michigan on a 660-mile march to present-day Kansas.

Today, treaties remain important as Indigenous people fight for rights that have not been honored. The Enbridge Line 5 Pipeline is a contemporary example impacting the Great Lakes, as Indigenous people continue to fight against the destruction of a recently-discovered cultural heritage site, and Great Lakes fishing rights. The U.S. Constitution states that “treaties are the supreme law of the land,” while the Commerce Clause established Tribal sovereignty, allowing the United States to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, among several states, and with the Indian tribes.” Despite these provisions, and language in the Northwest Ordinance that “the utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians,” these legal documents were originally created and executed in favor of colonial settlers. 

A Background on Treaties

Treaties were not new to Indigenous peoples, and had been used as kinship documents before colonial contact. For Indigenous peoples, these contracts were seen as signs of “mutual respect, equality, and diplomacy,” as two families coming together. For colonizers, the goal was to make the land profitable and extract maximum value, changing the landscape and eradicating wetlands, including the historical Anishinaabe manoomin (wild rice) beds in Detroit. Colonizers were intentionally ignorant of Indigenous politics, history, and ways of viewing land management, and often used treaties as a mechanism to exploit cultural misunderstandings in their favor, buying lands for much less than they were worth. Settlers also conceptualized land ownership within a colonial framework whereby land would be divided with strict borders. This was vastly different from Indigenous stewardship of the lands, in which hunting territories were often shared through long-held political understandings. 

Indigenous groups in the Great Lakes region did not conform to rapidly-shifting European borders. Then, the United States and Canada did not exist as separate nations, and Indigenous peoples traveled freely between them before their borders were created in the 1700s-1800s. The Jay Treaty of 1794 addressed this, allowing travel between the two countries for Indigenous people, though not without issue. This treaty is still applicable today, though many do not attempt to use it for fear of harassment at the border.

In an 1811 letter to the President of the United States, members of the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Wyandot, and Miami tribes explained the coercive nature of treaties through prior experience: “[We] cannot make known our mind and complaint by writing, not having acquired that art nor have we the Information necessary to understand what white people put upon paper, we are therefore easily duped and imposed upon by the white people.” Six years later, another Treaty signed in Fort Meigs would “grant” land for a University, which ultimately became the University of Michigan, with the provision that Indigenous children would be educated at that university. It would take over 100 years before the first Indigenous students enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1908. 

Alongside treaties, several laws worked in favor of colonizers, prevented Native Americans from buying land, and targeted Indigenous people for removal with the Indian Removal Act. An 1823 Supreme Court ruling declared that tribal nations did not own or hold title to their lands. In 1829, Michigan’s first boarding school, New L’Arbe Croche opened in Harbor Springs, ten years after the Indian Civilization Act made “provision for the civilization of the Indian tribes” through education. By 1887 the Dawes Act or General Allotment Act was passed, allowing the allotment of Tribal lands in exchange for U.S. citizenship, breaking up reservations and ultimately selling Tribal lands reserved through treaties to colonizers.

Today, treaties might be referenced in a multitude of cases, from Great Lakes hunting and fishing rights, education, sovereignty, and more. A guide on Michigan treaties, created by Central Michigan University, compiles a list of 14 treaties signed between 1795-1864 that ceded the lands that are now known as Michigan. Rematriation, land back, and sovereignty are at the forefront of current discussions.

Treaties and Ann Arbor

Over 40 present-day nations throughout the country are descendants of those who signed the treaties below, with 16 groups located in Michigan: Bay Mills Indian Community, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Hannahville Indian Community, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, Match-e-be-nash-she-wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi, Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Grand River Band of Ottawa Indians, Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians, Swan Creek Black River Confederated Ojibwa Tribes of Michigan

Three main treaties are associated with the cession of lands that became Ann Arbor, and the eventual founding of the University of Michigan here:

1795 Treaty of Greenville, Fort Greenville, Ohio

This treaty was signed by the “Wyandots, Delawares [Lenape], Shawanoes [Shawnee], Ottawas, Chipewas [Ojibwe], Putawatimes [Potawatomi], Miamis, Eel River, Weea's [Wea], Kickapoos, Piankashaws and Kaskaskias,” and ceded parts of Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan, lands that would become Chicago, Sandusky, and Detroit. This treaty set the foundation for future land cessions in Southeast Michigan. With the aim of keeping peace between settlers and Indigenous groups, the treaty set provisions for hunting and fishing rights. In Article 7 of the Greenville treaty, language on hunting and fishing rights appears as follows: “The said tribes of Indians, parties to this treaty, shall be at liberty to hunt within the territory and lands which they have now ceded to the United States, without hindrance or molestation.” Tribal fishing and hunting rights were established for previously ceded lands, and would be included in future treaties. Article 10 notes that all prior treaties “since the treaty of 1783, between the United States and Great Britain, that come within the purview of this treaty, shall henceforth cease and become void.”

The Treaty of Greenville was cited in the 1976 court case People vs LeBlanc, in which tribal Great Lakes fishing rights came under attack with the arrest of Bay Mills Indian Community member Albert LeBlanc. “Big Abe” was arrested for using a gillnet, a traditional Anishinaabe fishing tool that is legal under tribal law, but was illegal under Michigan state law. This case helped re-affirm Great Lakes fishing rights that were provided for in articles under several former treaties. 

1807 Treaty of Detroit 

This treaty was signed by the Ojibwe, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Wyandot. The Treaty of 1807 ceded a total 5,611,532 acres in a tract known as Royce Area 66. Of the ceded 5,611,532 acres, 469,116 were Ottawa, 3,298,637 Ojibwe, and 1,843,779 were Potawatomi. When ceded in 1807, these tracts of lands were purchased for as little as 1.2 cents per acre, for a total of $57,717.32, unconscionably low for their estimated value of $6,400,000. In 2024, this amounts to about .27 cents per acre. 

In 1978, a Petition by Plaintiff (Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan v. The United States of America) resulted in the commission awarding the claimant $3,479,308.00 for 3,298,637 acres of land. Ottawa and Potawatomi plaintiffs received sums of $579,308.00 and $2,292,000.00. In 1978 the court held that at the time of purchase the Ottawa tract was worth $1.28 per acre, the Ojibwe tract at $1.06 per acre, and the Potawatomi tract at $1.23 per acre. Inflation would not be taken into account. Like the Treaty of Greenville, Article 5 of the 1807 treaty provides for hunting and fishing rights: “Indian nations shall enjoy the privilege of hunting and fishing on the lands ceded as aforesaid, as long as they remain the property of the United States.”

Foot of the Rapids (Fort Meigs) in 1817 

The Treaty of the Foot of the Rapids, orchestrated by Lewis Cass and signed by “The Wyandot, Seneca, Delaware [Lenape], Shawnees, Potawotomee [Potawatomi], Ottawa [Odawa], and Chippewa [Ojibwe], “provided stipulations for the future education of Indigenous children at a University,” or the future University of Michigan, which was to be established with funds from 2,000 acres of ceded lands in Ohio. Part of a broader trend in which public universities were funded and founded through land grabs, these institutions were built on and with indigenous lands, with materials from Michigan being shipped elsewhere to build universities like Harvard and Cornell. 

The Treaty of Fort Meigs stipulated that half of the funds from the land sale in Ohio would be used for the future University of Michigan, while the remainder would go to St. Anne’s Church in Detroit. Article 16 of the 1817 treaty created provisions for education: “Some of the Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomy tribes … wish some of their children hereafter educated, do grant to the rector of the Catholic church of St. Anne of Detroit, for the use of the said church, and to the corporation of the college at Detroit, for the use of the said college, to be retained or sold … one half of three sections of land, to contain six hundred and forty acres, on the river Raisin, at a place called Macon and three sections of land not yet located, which tracts were reserved, for the use of the said Indians.” The 1,920 acres allocated by the Anishinaabeg for a college in the 1807 Treaty was explicitly said to be selected by the Superintendent of Indian Affairs “on the part of the said Indians.” Though the college was founded in 1817 in Detroit, the campus would move to Ann Arbor in 1837. 

In August 1971, a complaint was filed in which a provision for education at the University of Michigan in the Treaty of 1817 was cited against the Regents of the University of Michigan by the “Children of the Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomy Tribes”. Graduate student Paul J. Johnson argued that the treaty “created a trust whereby certain land belonging to the Indians was conveyed to the defendant for purposes of ensuring that the Indians and their descendants would receive an education.”

The trial continued for three more years, with local Indigenous-run news sources reporting on the trial and hosting events to show support, such as a benefit at Huron High in May 1979, advertised in the Detroit-based Native Sun. Both the Native Sun and Ann Arbor-based Nishnawbe Muzinigun regularly reported on the case, supporting the fight through its eight years in court. Three years after the tuition waiver was created, Judge Edward Deake of the Washtenaw Circuit Court decided that the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs does not include a land trust, though he claimed that he “attempted to construe the 1817 treaty in favor of the Indians.” 

Over the course of the Children of the Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomy Tribes v. The Regents of The University of Michigan, a new act was established in 1976. Michigan’s Public Act 174 provided state funds for free tuition under the Michigan Indian Tuition Waiver (MITW) for federally recognized Native Americans residing in Michigan with one half blood quantum, reduced to one quarter two years later.  No court has recognized the 1817 treaty provisions for education, but the Michigan Indian Tuition Waiver provided another route. The act was created on the grounds that it was specifically not out of “moral obligation based on a treaty" but instead to mitigate the high dropout rates that were found in a 1971 survey by the Michigan Commission on Indian Affairs. The program was fully funded by the state until 1998, when legislators froze the budget of the program. Future tuition increases would not be considered moving forward, reflecting tuition rates of the 1998 year in perpetuity, forcing students or institutions to make up the difference. In the following years, tuition rates skyrocketed. In 2019, Governor Gretchen Whitmer once again fully funded the program in the state budget. In 2024, the MITW moved from the Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) to the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential (MiLEAP).

Conclusion

In May 2024, the University of Michigan’s library system announced free borrowing (of their physical collection only) to “Native and Indigenous people not already affiliated with the university.” The library system names this as “one small step in the library's efforts to honor the intent and spirit of the treaty upon which the university was founded,” tracing the effort back to the Treaty at the Foot of the Rapids that specifically set aside Indigenous lands for the University of Michigan to be built. The University of Michigan Museum of Art’s Future Cache exhibit, which opened in June 2022 and will be on display through June 2025, explores the history of the Burt Lake Band in response to the Burt Lake Burnout of 1900 and the University of Michigan’s acquisition of the lands for their Biological Research Station. 

Though no examples or rematriation currently exist in Ann Arbor, Gidinawemaaganinaanig: Endazhigiyang (All My Relations: The Place Where We All Grow) offers an example of local land rematriation beginning on the campus of Oakland University in what is currently Rochester, Michigan.

Selected Timeline

This selected timeline is not inclusive of every era, event, treaty, ordinance, court case, or law, but offers some examples that had a direct impact on the Indigenous peoples who once inhabited the lands that are now Ann Arbor.

~12,000-13,000 B.C.E.	Current estimates place the retreat of glacial ice sheets in the Great Lakes region to around 20,000-13,000 years ago. The earliest recorded human presence in Washtenaw County and the lower peninsula is currently around 15,000-13,000 years ago, discovered through evidence of interaction with mammoths, and recent Clovis period archeological findings.
100 B.C.E - 500 C.E.	Pre-contact Indigenous cultures in what we now call the Midwest, known collectively as the Hopewell tradition flourished in the Great Lakes region, creating large earthwork mounds throughout what is now Michigan.
500-1000 C.E.	The Anishinaabe migrated from the Atlantic Seaboard in the St. Lawrence Valley to what is now Michigan and established the Three Fires Council in 796 C.E. Several burial mounds from the Late Woodland period (500-900 C.E.) have been found in Ann Arbor.  Many artifacts and human remains taken from these sites are in the process of repatriation.
~1441	Many Potawatomi migrated to Southern Lower Michigan when the Three Fires Council split into three groups.
1632	The first recorded Michigan Anishinaabe encounter with Europeans through trade with the French is dated circa 1632-1634.
1640 - 1701	The French and Iroquois Wars displaced Indigenous groups from surrounding regions into the Great Lakes area.
1701	The Grand Settlement Treaty in Canada was an agreement to shared hunting grounds in the Great Lakes region, described in “A Dish With One Spoon.”
1765	Potawatomi living in Detroit established a village on the Huron River.
1768	The Treaty of Fort Stanwix created a “Permanent” Ohio River boundary that excluded future settlers from the Great Lakes region.
May 18, 1785	The 1785 Land Ordinance allowed colonizers to purchase “undeveloped” land by surveying and dividing land into square plats, which created townships “six miles square, by lines running due north and south,” and created many of Michigan’s modern counties.
1790	The Nonintercourse Act was the first of six such statutes to limit the ability of Native Americans to sell their land and trade with settlers.
August 3, 1795	The Treaty of Greenville was a “treaty of peace” between the United States and tribes in the Great Lakes region. It ceded the majority of lands in what would become Ohio for settlement, further shrinking Indigenous territories in the Great Lakes.
June 30, 1805	Michigan officially became a territory.
November 17, 1807	The 1807 Treaty of Detroit ceded millions of acres of land in southeast Michigan and Northern Ohio, including the lands that would become Ann Arbor. Known as Royce Area 66, the tract included three divisions of land ceded from the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi.
September 29, 1817	The treaty of the Foot of the Rapids (Fort Meigs) ceded 4.6 million acres in Ohio, parts of Indiana, and Southeastern Michigan, and an additional 1,920 acres from the Anishinaabeg for a “college of Detroit” which would become the University of Michigan.
March 3, 1819	The passing of the Indian Civilization Act made “provision for the civilization of the Indian tribes” through education: “teaching their children in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and performing such other duties as may be enjoined, according to such instructions and rules as the President may give and prescribe for the regulation of their conduct…”, and providing annual funding for the establishment of boarding schools.
1822	Lewis Cass delineated the borders of Washtenaw County.
1823	The Supreme Court Case Johnson v. McIntosh held that Native Americans could not sell title to their lands to anyone other than the federal government.
1824	John Allen and Elisha Rumsey purchased 640 acres for $1.25 per acre, for a total of $800, establishing Ann Arbor on lands ceded in the 1807 Treaty of Detroit. Potawatomi had several villages in the Washtenaw County region.
1829	The first of Michigan’s boarding schools was built in Northern Michigan, in what is now Harbor Springs. The school was known as “New L’Arbre Croche” or “Little Traverse”, which reopened as "Holy Childhood of Jesus Catholic Church and Indian School" in 1884.
1830	Lewis Cass, Governor of Michigan (1813-1831) and Secretary of War under Andrew Jackson was the driving force for the Indian Removal Act policy, which had been underway in Michigan informally for decades.
March 28, 1836	The Treaty of Washington was signed, which provided further stipulations for education based on the Treaty of 1817. This Treaty would often be cited in legal cases in the following years, including those involving the Burt Lake Band and the University of Michigan. The 13,837,207 acres ceded in this treaty led to Michigan becoming an official state in 1837.
September 4, 1938-November 4, 1838	The Potawatomi Trail of Death began in Indiana, where many displaced Potawatomi from Michigan were forced from Indiana on a 660-mile march to a reserve in present-day Kansas.
February 4, 1855	The Court of Claims was established; many Native American claims were listed, but none were investigated.
August 2, 1855	The 1855 Treaty of Detroit: treaties 297 and 298 were signed, creating reservations for the Odawa and Ojibwe. This treaty became important in several 20th- and 21st-century legal cases.
March 3, 1863	Congress amended the Court of Claims enabling act to specifically exclude Native Americans from bringing claims.
January 1881	The court ruled that “all Indians should have the opportunity of appealing in the courts for the protection of their rights of person and property.”
February 8, 1887	The Dawes Act or General Allotment Act was passed, allowing the allotment of Tribal lands in exchange for U.S. citizenship, breaking up reservations and ultimately selling Tribal lands to colonizers.
October 15, 1900	The Burt Lake Band’s village was illegally “sold” to John McGinn. In a violent event known as the Burt Lake Burnout, a local militia burned the village to the ground. Part of the land is now owned by the University of Michigan and used as their Biological Research Station.
June 2, 1924	Indigenous people born in the United States were guaranteed U.S. Citizenship with the Indian Citizenship Act. When the 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to anyone “born or naturalized in the United States” passed on July 9, 1868, Native Americans were intentionally excluded and defined as foreigners on American land. Four years earlier, white women had earned the right to vote, but voting rights were still not guaranteed for Native Americans under the Indian Citizenship Act. It would be decades before full voting rights were realized in all 50 states.
June 18, 1934	As a result of the 1928 ‘Meriam Report’, the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) was passed. The IRA recognized Tribal governance systems and aimed to ”restore to tribal ownership the remaining surplus lands of any Indian reservation,” ending allotment that began with the Dawes Act. It was introduced as “An Act to conserve and develop Indian lands and resources; to extend to Indians the right to form businesses and other organizations … to provide for vocational education for Indians; and for other purposes.” Though generally lauded for its push for Tribal self-governance, this act was also criticized for ignoring different forms of Tribal governance, attempting to homogenize them, and never fully delivering on its promises.
1937	The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe became federally recognized after adopting a constitution and electing a tribal council, as directed by the Indian Reorganization Act.
August 13, 1946	The Indian Claims Act of 1946 creates the Indian Claims Commission to handle Indian claims related to treaty rights.
1956	The Indian Relocation Act was passed as a part of a series of laws passed during 1940-1960 known as the Indian Termination Policy that removed federal Tribal recognition. This law encouraged Indigenous people to move from reservations to urban areas for employment. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was instrumental in the effort to remove Native peoples from reservation lands by purchasing one-way tickets to cities through the “voluntary relocation program” in order to dissolve Tribal sovereignty through claims of extinction.
August 5, 1971	Paul Johnson, a Native American graduate student at the University brings action, citing the Treaty of Fort Meigs in “Children of the Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomy Tribe v. the Regents of the University of Michigan.” The case was ultimately lost in 1979.
1976	Michigan Indian Tuition Waiver (MITW) was passed with Act 174. The waiver provides free tuition for federally recognized Native Americans with one quarter or more blood quantum through the State of Michigan.
June 22, 1978	A Petition by Plaintiff (Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan v. The United States of America) resulted in the commission awarding the claimant $3,479,308.00 for 3,298,637 acres of land in Royce Area 66, the cost of the land when it was ceded in 1807.
1979	In the Supreme Court case United States v State of Michigan, the court ruled that Indigenous Great Lakes fishing rights were guaranteed under the 1836 Treaty of Washington. The court ruled that "treaty with Indians must be construed as the Indians would have understood it…(it) must be construed liberally in favor of Indians so that Indians are not wholly disadvantaged by the strength and resources of the United States."
May 27, 1980	The Grand Traverse Bay Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians regained federal recognition.
1984	The Holy Childhood of Jesus School (New L'Arbre Croche Mission School) in Harbor Springs “officially” closed in 1984, but students reported attending up until 1986. The building remained in use as a daycare and thrift store until 1993.
September 21, 1994	The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, and the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians gained federal recognition.
December 19, 1995	The Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi’s federal recognition was restored.
1998	Michigan froze the budget for the MITW program, and would not keep in line with increasing tuition costs going forward by increasing the amount offered.
August 23, 1999	The Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish’s Band of Potawatomi Indians (Gun Lake) gained federal recognition.
2019	Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer once again fully funded the MITW program in the state budget.
2024	The MITW moved from the Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) to the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential (MiLEAP).

The Library wishes to thanks the Indigenous scholars, writers, and consultants who engaged with this process and helped to produce and refine this document.