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As we reflect on the recent passage of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we must remind our University to reckon with its fraught relationship with Native peoples.
In the opening line of the Harvard Charter of 1650, President Henry Dunster outlined Harvard’s mission: to further the “education of the English and Indian youth of this country in knowledge and godliness.” 400 years later, however, Harvard’s relationship with the Indigenous community is colored by centuries of pain.
Harvard, both deliberately and not, has consistently marginalized indigenous communities. If Harvard is to live up to its founding mission, it must offer more resources supporting those that it spent centuries harming. It can start by taking a page from the Harvard Kennedy School’s book.
From its inception, Harvard has disempowered indigenous people. John Winthrop, one of Harvard’s first stewards, enslaved Native Americans and engaged in their trade. Harvard gradually stocked its museum collections with the ancestral remains of thousands of Native people. Now, hundreds of years later, the University engages in decades-long feet dragging when it comes to returning indigenous artifacts.
Beyond active harm, however, is apathy: Harvard has consistently disregarded and overlooked the Native community. In 1698, the brick building housing the Harvard Indian College fell apart due to neglect, taking the College’s tenuous commitment to Native education with it. In the mid-1990s, the American Indian Program, the College’s first attempt at Native American recruitment in nearly 300 years, would have slid into disrepair without concentrated efforts from Native students to replace federal funding with aid from the University. Native American students report struggling with problems of “indigenous invisibility” due to Harvard’s lack of support once they arrive on campus.
Despite years of criticism, the AIP, now the Harvard University Native American Program, remains siloed within the Provost’s office rather than having the resources of a full-fledged academic department. Despite the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990, Harvard’s Peabody Museum has spent decades neglecting repatriation efforts, sometimes going years without repatriating a single ancestor.
Ten years ago, the Weekly Times reported that a subsidiary of the Harvard Management Company failed to provide evidence that it had conducted “due diligence” on a property it was developing in Australia, allegedly damaging six aboriginal cultural sites. Moreover, a 2018 report co-authored by the nonprofit GRAIN and Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos charged HMC with displacing Brazilian communities from their lands and destroying the local environment. HMC no longer owns the properties involved in the allegations.
For almost the entirety of its institutional lifespan, Harvard has failed to properly protect and acknowledge the indigenous community. Yet there is hope. HKS’s Project on Indigenous Governance and Development offers a blueprint for how Harvard writ large can both increase awareness of and create tangible change in indigenous communities.
Commonly referred to as the Harvard Project, the program has worked with scholars of indigenous life and the communities themselves to identify and facilitate practices that support indigenous sovereignty and economic development. Among its offerings are practical academic research materials, toolboxes built to assist Indigenous communities in achieving and sustaining self-governance, leadership development trainings, speaker services, and celebrations of successful indigenous improvement programs. It has helped numerous tribal nations across nation-building, economic strengthening, and self-governance efforts.
The Harvard Project is a fantastic example of how an educational institution can use its resources and expertise to collaborate with and enrich underserved communities. Harvard’s other schools would do well instituting similar initiatives that play to their strengths.
For instance, what if Harvard Medical School had a program that worked directly with indigenous communities to improve medical care, integrating it with tribal practices and helping bridge the divide between Native populations and the healthcare system? Could Harvard Law School work with local tribes to establish an initiative to challenge antiquated laws surrounding Native governance and landback movements? At an institution like Harvard, the possibilities are limitless.
Aside from initiatives and programs, Harvard’s other schools can take inspiration from courses offered at HKS. Native Americans in the 21st Century: “Nation Building I,” for example, builds on much of the research done by the Harvard Project, teaching students crucial information about Native governance that is almost impossible to find elsewhere. Alumni have gone on to the White House, ambassadorships, tribal councils, and prominent positions in the business world, often citing the class’s profound impact on their careers.
Members of the Native community have long since called for more courses on indigenous studies. Developing classes like Nation Building I at other Harvard schools would be a worthwhile first step in renewing Harvard’s commitment to indigenous people.
Of course, emulating the work done at the Kennedy School will not fix centuries worth of harm and institutional neglect. The Harvard Project isn’t a comprehensive program that can fully address the complex needs of all indigenous groups, nor was it intended to be. As an institution, however, Harvard has an increased responsibility to do right by all indigenous communities, especially given that its past interactions with Native and Aboriginal populations did not end at the American border.
Harvard has a moral obligation to meaningfully engage with the communities it has harmed. The Kennedy School is on its way there — it’s time the rest of Harvard caught up.
Khadija T. Khan ’28, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Currier House.
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