For their class gift, the CWRU School of Law class of 2023 raised money for a land acknowledgment marker. The money the class raised was matched by three alums from the law school class of 1958 -- George Aronoff, Jim Berick and Robert Reitman.
“We are pleased to announce the installation of the marker in the law school courtyard where it will be read by generation after generation of law students,” said law school co-dean Jessica Berg. “This is a great way to pay tribute to the Indigenous peoples who inhabited University Circle, the modern home of our law school,” added co-dean Michael Scharf.
The law school’s marker reads: “We express our gratitude and appreciation to those who lived and worked here before us; those whose stewardship and resilient spirit makes our residence possible on this traditional homeland of the Lenape, Shawnee, Wyandot, Ottawa, Potawatomi and other Great Lakes tribes.”
After the Revolutionary War, the U.S. military waged a series of campaigns against the Great Lakes tribes to pave the way for westward expansion and settlement in Ohio. The law school’s installation of the land acknowledgment marker comes at a time when this history is front-page news due to debate over a proposal of the U.S. Forest Service to rename Ohio’s Wayne National Forest.