Nice Plaque. Now What?
Photo of Columbia University’s land acknowledgment plaque, courtesy of Jasmine Lianalyn Rocha.
Every time Columbia University opens an event with a land acknowledgement, I find myself asking what comes next? The university publicly claims to recognize that it sits on Lenni Lenape land, but beyond symbolic gestures, there is little to show for it. The carefully worded acknowledgment is circulated in brochures and buried in admissions webpages, but uses neutral and distant language that avoids naming Columbia’s role in the displacement it alludes to. In Columbia’s own storytelling, the university’s relationship to the land is selectively framed through prestige and physical expansion, rarely through the lens of dispossession and resistance.
The Geography of Power
Columbia’s rise has always depended on the logic of removal and replacement. When the university relocated to what is now Morningside Heights in 1897, it displaced a diverse community of working-class and immigrant families, framing the move as a necessary step toward building a modern academic enclave. The university even had a heavy influence in popularizing the name “Morningside Heights” to rebrand the area and distance it from its past identity as part of Manhattanville and Bloomingdale—neighborhoods that were associated with industry, poverty, and the former asylum. By renaming and remaking this space, Columbia literally rewrote the landscape to fit its own vision of prestige.
That same pattern drives Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion today, where the university cites innovation, community revitalization, and economic development to justify absorbing entire city blocks. These explanations echo a familiar structure where land is taken in the name of progress, while the people tied to it—first the Indigenous tribes and now current Harlem residents—are treated as means to an end, rather than community stakeholders. Columbia’s acquisitions are strategic, using physical development to further university influence in the area, and establishing itself as the largest private landowner in New York City. In doing this, Columbia turns its physical campus into a monument not just of scholarship, but also of the quiet persistence of settler-colonial power.
The Illusion of Acknowledgment
Columbia’s long history of land acquisition and transformation sets the stage for the university’s current approach to Indigenous recognition. Columbia’s 2016 land acknowledgement is marked by a modest plaque, a gesture which stands in sharp contrast to the scale of the institution’s expansion and serves as a symbolic nod to a history the university continues to sidestep in practice. The plaque reads:
IN HONOR OF THE LENAPE PEOPLE: The Lenape lived here before and during the colonization of the Americas. This plaque recognizes these indigenous people of Manhattan, their displacement, dispossession, and continued presence. It stands as a reminder to reflect on our past as we contemplate our way forward.
Installed in response to sustained advocacy by the Native American Council, the plaque was intended to serve as a reminder of the land’s original stewards. In practice, however, it functions more as a decorative landmark on campus tours than a meaningful opportunity for reflection. Unsurprisingly, the only officially scripted part of Columbia campus tours is a “required” land acknowledgement, one that some tour guides refrain from delivering due to its blatantly performative purpose. The intent behind this addition to the tours further strips the acknowledgement of the reverence it deserves.
Other Ivy League institutions have also adopted land acknowledgments that reveal the spectrum of symbolic versus substantive recognition. Harvard’s statement, developed in consultation with the Massachusetts Tribe, has an entire webpage under the Harvard University Native American Program and is occasionally incorporated into university events. Yale’s acknowledgment names the local tribes of Connecticut and is published on its diversity and inclusion platforms, though it remains largely ceremonial. Students have criticized it for framing native peoples in the past tense rather than as present and active members of the university’s community. Princeton has created online resources to guide event organizers on how to responsibly deliver a land acknowledgment. Its art museum has also hosted exhibits on Lenape displacement, and they have made steps in Indigenous student recruitment, seminars, and scholarships.
Even still, most Ivy League institutions stop short of directly addressing the ongoing structures of settler colonialism that make their functioning possible. However, Columbia’s approach is more superficial because its acknowledgment exists almost entirely as a silent, physical marker that turns recognition into a tour stop rather than a means of critical education. This refusal to truly engage with the university’s past shows Columbia’s current neglect of its relationship with Indigenous communities today.
Indigeneity in the Peripheral
Columbia’s engagement, or lack thereof, with its Indigenous student communities reflects a consistent pattern of performative recognition. The Native American Council, Mālama Hawai’i, and the Special Interest Community (SIC) Indigehouse are central to Indigenous life on campus, yet their visibility and impact remain entirely student-driven. These student groups receive substantial support from the student representatives on the Activities Board at Columbia, but this nonetheless remains separate from the university administration. Columbia highlights event photos on their website, showcases them in promotional materials, and hosts a Native Graduation ceremony—yet, it did not recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day until 2020, and only after years of student petitioning from the Native American Council.
This performative engagement exposes this institution's half-hearted and hollow intentions, further fueling the feelings of exhaustion and isolation amongst Columbia’s Indigenous students. While these small, tight-knit identity groups form deep bonds, they exist in a broader campus climate of ignorance and misinformation, where Indigenous students remain vastly underrepresented and their political realities overlooked. The burden of advocacy falls entirely on Columbia’s Indigenous students, even as the university profits from the image of diversity they’re attempting to portray. This dynamic leaves many frustrated, seeing clearly that Columbia is comfortable celebrating Indigenous presence when it is ceremonial, but avoids any structural change that would acknowledge its attempts to simply “check a box” through insincere acts.
Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?
The Core Curriculum is an example of where this erasure becomes structural. Students spend a whole year studying “foundations” of political and intellectual life, yet the syllabi remain overwhelmingly Eurocentric, dominated by thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes; theorists whose ideas fit with Columbia’s attachment to the Western canon and are used in arguments to legitimize colonial domination.
Many may walk away with a cursory understanding of how these ideals were used to oppress, but few will grasp the ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples still fighting for tribal sovereignty and cultural independence under U.S. policies. Many will also fail to truly connect these oppressive ideologies to America’s history of aggressive expansion and imperialism. By excluding Indigenous political thought and lived experience in balance with current Core Curriculum offerings, Columbia signals that these systems are secondary, reinforcing the learned ignorance that protects Western institutional comfort.
Some faculty and staff recognize these gaps and responsibly integrate Indigenous perspectives and history into class sessions; however, these interventions remain piecemeal by relying on individual initiative rather than institutional mandate. In recent years, external pressure from outside entities—particularly regarding instances of campus activism—has influenced many decisions and silenced deeper curricular changes in multiple ethnic studies departments, pushing the university further away from any genuine commitment to inclusion.
Indigenous Studies, or the Lack Thereof
Columbia’s greater failure to require serious engagement with Indigenous histories produces a student body unaware of the depth of native governance, culture, and resilience. Despite their claims of diversity and inclusion, Columbia consistently underfunds Indigenous studies in comparison to other programs.
It’s no surprise that Columbia’s Native American and Indigenous Studies program remains little more than a concept of a concentration. Attempts to launch an “American Indian studies program” moved painfully slowly, with other institutions making far more progress over the years. For example, Northwestern University began developing its program in 2013 and 2014 following strong student activism, which has now evolved into initiatives described in its 2024 Native American and Indigenous Strategic Plan. At Columbia, even faculty members have described the Indigenous Studies program as inconsistent, under-resourced, and dependent on ad hoc activism rather than institutional mandate. Of course, this comes at no fault of the professors, faculty, and scholars engaging in this key educational field; rather, it’s a result of Columbia’s inability to follow in the footsteps of peer institutions that devote significantly more funding and attention to their Indigenous Studies departments and staff.
Columbia prides itself on its program of study and well-connected departments, yet Indigenous Studies remains severely underfunded and inaccessible. Most students are left unaware of the rich systems and traditions that tribal nations built long before colonization. They will study how Enlightenment thinkers shaped concepts of liberty and governance, but not how those same ideals were weaponized to manipulate divine belief, seize land, and suppress Indigenous leadership and identity. Instead, they read the skewed Western portrayals of Indigenous nations as uncivilized and disorganized. This is not just a Columbia-centric problem, as it reflects a broader, nationwide absence of Indigenous education; yet the fact that such omission persists at a world-renowned institution that claims to be progressive and globally minded exposes how deeply ingrained this neglect runs in American intellectualism.
Tokenism Has a Price Tag
The consequences are both local and societal. The severe lack of education regarding Indigenous history keeps Indigenous communities in a subordinate position to the institutional powers in America that relentlessly refuse to give voice to the unheard. A campus that doesn’t encourage respect for and education regarding Indigenous sovereignty and history inevitably fosters an environment where Indigenous voices are ignored and tokenized. Even further, when elite universities perpetuate the obscuring of Indigenous exploitation and marginalization done in K-12 classrooms across the country, they legitimize a national culture that honors indigeneity only when it is exotically palatable, profitable, or symbolic, and ignores it when it is political or demanding of justice.
Columbia has perfected the art of selective recognition by installing a small plaque obscured by bushes and mandating an acknowledgment statement on all campus tours, all while its curriculum, campus, and institutional power remain close-minded to meaningful engagement with Indigenous communities. It’s easy to honor an identity group when they’re kept in the past tense, but indigeneity is not a flashy metaphor, a dissipating theme, or a burdensome checkbox; it’s a lived sociopolitical reality, carried by real people deserving of recognition, respect, and redress. Until Columbia truly confronts the colonial ideology it continually reaffirms, its gestures will remain fragile, fake, and meaningless.
Jasmine Lianalyn Rocha CC ‘27 is a staff writer for the Columbia Political Review studying Political Science & American Political History. She can be reached at jar2383@columbia.edu.