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Marquette University’s land and water acknowledgment is a statement that developed over weeks of reflection and conversation led by Indigenous student leadership with key faculty and staff. The statement recognizes the long history of Native people and nations that lived on and stewarded the land and water where the university now resides. It also celebrates the unbroken connection Native people and nations still have to this land and waterways, their traditional territories.
Beginning in 1778 with a treaty with the Delaware, the United States made hundreds of treaties with Native American Indian tribes. In 1871, the practice of making treaties with Indian tribes stopped with the passage, on March 3, 1871, of the Indian Appropriations Act, 1871. Codified at 25 USC 71 (with amendments), the text reads: "No Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty; but no obligation of any treaty lawfully made and ratified with any such Indian nation or tribe prior to March 3, 1871, shall be hereby invalidated or impaired..." After 1871, the government used formal agreements between the government and Indian tribes to replace treaties. These agreements included executive orders. Treaties that had been ratified prior to 1871 remained valid.
American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly by 
Enduring Legacies: Native American Treaties and Contemporary Controversies by 
Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United states and American Indian Nations by 
Pen and Ink Witchcraft: Treaties and Treay Making in American Indian History by 
Tribes, Treaties and Constitutional Tribulations by 