Today, the founding days of Macalester and the decisions made about its location have taken on greater significance as the nation and the college begin to reckon with their colonial histories. In the summer of 2018, the college’s Department of Multicultural Life drafted a land acknowledgement in coordination with the student organization Proud Indigenous People for Education (PIPE).¹ The land acknowledgement is now often read at official college events and at the beginning of classes:

“We ask that you take a moment to honor that we are on Dakota land. Macalester is situated on the ancestral homeland of the Dakota people, particularly the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands, who were forcibly exiled from the land because of aggressive and persistent settler colonialism. We make this acknowledgement to honor the Dakota people, ancestors and descendants, as well as the land itself.”

Coming face to face with Macalester’s colonial history has also led to physical changes on campus. In 2013, Macalester’s Board of Trustees had voted to give the Humanities Building a new name: Neill Hall. The renaming was a part of a campus-wide effort to improve wayfinding, and the name change had been suggested to reduce confusion, given that many departments in the humanities were actually housed in Old Main, rather than the Humanities Building.

However, In 2019, student journalists for the Mac Weekly published a special edition of the college newspaper, Colonial Macalester, reporting on Macalester founder Edward Duffield Neill’s hearty endorsement of white supremacism, his involvement in enforcing settler colonialism in Minnesota, and his rejection of co-education.² Their investigation led many Macalester community members to reconsider the history of the institution of Macalester and its founder, and it ultimately had a tangible impact on Macalester’s campus. After the release of Colonial Macalester, the college chose to remove Neill’s name from the building and revert it to its original name: the Humanities Building. While the story of Macalester may begin with Edward Duffield Neill, student activism has meant that it does not end with him.