Edge Effects is supported by the Nelson Institute’s Center for Culture, History, and Environment at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which occupies ancestral Ho-Chunk land, a place their nation has called Teejop (day-JOPE) since time immemorial.
In an 1832 treaty, the Ho-Chunk were forced to cede this territory to the United States. In the decades that followed, both the federal and state government repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, sought to forcibly remove the Ho-Chunk from Wisconsin. Despite these attempts, many Ho-Chunk people continued to return to their home in present-day Wisconsin.
Thanks to the investigative reporting by Robert Lee, Tristan Ahtone, and colleagues at High Country News, we also know that UW-Madison, along with 51 other universities across the nation, benefited from the Land Grant College Act of 1862, or the Morrill Act, which seized over ten million acres from nearly 250 tribes, bands, and communities.
At Edge Effects we are committed to condemning this violence, while simultaneously celebrating contemporary efforts of resistance, survivance, and revitalization of Indigenous communities. We acknowledge the sovereignty of the Ho-Chunk Nation, along with the eleven other First Nations of Wisconsin. We publish content from traditional homelands near and far, and so we also acknowledge the Indigenous communities that are connected to this work. While recognition and acknowledgement constitute important steps to unsettling and unlearning colonial histories, they are not enough. Healing requires material and structural change, and the members of this editorial board support ongoing efforts at reparations.
