Unsettling Mission Statements: An Indigenous Critique of Espoused Institutional Responsibilities

Within the last decade, several U.S. colleges and universities have made noticeable efforts to attend to their role in the disenfranchisement of Indigenous Peoples through diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, government relations, and community engagement (e.g., forming advisory boards, creating offices, hiring personnel, expanding programming, and adopting land acknowledgments). However, most institutions uncritically reinforce the assimilative intentions of settler colonial schooling, undermining the fundamental role of education in native nation-building. This resistance draws attention to the literal and philosophical purpose of higher education, including professed efforts to address the historical and ongoing exclusion of the most marginalized student populations. As such, this article examines how institutions of higher learning enact their espoused mission statements-institutional, land grant, and diversity-regarding Indigenous students and communities. Drawing from a multiple-case study, I examine interviews with 10 participants responsible for Indigenous academic and student support programs at two public universities in California. Findings demonstrate that: (a) Indigenous students and communities were not deliberately included in enacting publicly espoused statements, (b) institutional actors resisted acknowledging their colonial inheritance, and (c) historical circumstances should further obligate universities to Indigenous students and communities. I argue that institutions must redress their responsibilities to Indigenous Peoples in accordance with articulated institutional missions and legacies of land theft and dispossession.