Staff with North Dakota’s two flagship universities and a college in Wahpeton, N.D., are working on statements that will recognize the campuses sit on land that once belonged to Native Americans.

Experts say land acknowledgments are a way to respect tribes who occupied the land before the U.S., recognize the atrocities committed in taking that land, give people an understanding how colonialism impacts Native Americans today and start a conversation about the future.

"That practice, even if it is only a ritual formality, it nevertheless, I believe, sets a tone that makes for a more civil society in a land where a settler society lives alongside Indigenous peoples," said Tom Isern, a history professor at North Dakota State University.

Several NDSU employees have addressed Fargo’s Native American Commission, sharing two draft versions of a land acknowledgment agreement that says the Anishinaabe, Dakota, Lakota and Nakota peoples lived on and cared for land now oc