What makes Chicago an Indigenous place, past, present, and future?

By the end of this hook, I can… 

• describe Potawatomi connections to Chicago
• articulate the history of legal challenges and land rights at the Chicago lakefront
• analyze how artists are claiming Chicago as a Native place

This exercise directly relates to:

• Challenges of the 21st century

History

• SS.9-12.H.5. Analyze the factors and historical context, including overarching movements, that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras.
• SS.9-12.H.10. Identify and analyze ways in which marginalized communities are represented in historical sources and seek out sources created by historically oppressed peoples. 

Note to teachers: We invite you to use the components of the Indigenous Chicago curriculum that best align with the needs of your classroom. The following suggested steps can be modified as needed, and we invite you to use the teacher’s history brief to inspire new exercises that best meet the needs of your students. Please note that we suggest shortening, rather than modifying, the language of historical sources to best reflect the original source’s context, intention, and voice.  

North America has been home to Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Indigenous relationships with lands and waters for thousands of years have shaped Indigenous languages, foods, medicines, architecture, technologies, religious or spiritual beliefs, governments, and so much more. These lands show Indigenous people who they are and how to live in a good way. These lands are Native lands. 

Native nations’ relationships with this place long pre-date the arrival of settlers, and Native people have never given up their connections to their lands and waters. When French, and later British and American settlers, arrived in the Chicago area, they were entering an established Native world. They didn’t know how to find food, shelter, or medicine here, or how to navigate politics between Native nations. But Native people did. They had developed rich knowledge of this place for generations. Native peoples’ generosity in sharing resources and knowledge allowed Europeans to survive here. 

Native nations hold deep histories that testify to these relationships and connections to place. Unfortunately, settler history has not always believed Indigenous people. This is because of a racist belief that Indigenous people were primitive. Europeans believed that Indigenous people were not capable of having a complex history in the way Europeans did. 

In this module, we’ll look at some of the kinds of sources that demonstrate that Chicago is Indigenous place. These include Indigenous narratives of their own histories, colonial sources that we’ll read against the grain, and maps from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous mapmakers. Indigenous histories show us an honest and holistic sense of a place’s past(s), present(s), and future(s). 

Chicago continues to be a Native place. It has one of the largest urban intertribal communities in the United States today. This community includes both Indigenous people who have returned to their homelands after Removal and other Indigenous people whose families have come here both on their own and through federal programs like Relocation. The community now represents thousands of people from dozens of Native nations across North America, as well as Indigenous people who have moved here from other parts of the world.

Let’s start by thinking about how Native artists name Chicago as a Native place. 

Note to teachers: we suggest conducting this exercise as a Jigsaw!

1. View or read one or more of these recent media stories. As you read, consider: What claims do the Indigenous people in these articles make about their historical and ongoing connections to the lands and waters of Chicago?

• • • Source 1: “A Public Art Project Tackles Unceded Land in Chicago,” Belt Magazine, November 2021: https://beltmag.com/public-art-unceded-land-chicago/ 
      • • You can connect this with artist JeeYeun Lee’s photo essay in the About Place Journal! https://aboutplacejournal.org/article/whose-lakefront/ 
    • Source 2: Chicago Public Library one-hour virtual panel, “Whose Lakefront?”, October 2021: https://www.chipublib.org/blogs/post/whose-lakefront-chicagos-unceded-native-land/
    • Source 3: “Native in the Arts Spotlight: Visual Artist Andrea Carlson Talks About Her Chicago ‘You Are on Potawatomi Land’ Mural,” Native News Online, July 2021: https://nativenewsonline.net/arts-entertainment/native-in-the-arts-spotlight-visual-artist-andrea-carlson-talks-about-her-chicago-you-are-on-potawatomi-land-mural

2. Now that you’ve read one or more of the sources:

• • Which Native nations do the sources say have close ties to Chicago?
  • What legal battles do the sources bring up to show Chicago is a Native place?
  • How are these artists and historians using artwork and history to talk about land, dispossession, and Indigenous presence?

3. In recent years, #landback has become an increasingly visible and vibrant movement to return stewardship of Indigenous lands and waters to Indigenous people. 

• • According to National Geographic, Indigenous people currently protect 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity within their lands. How might the #landback movement connect with fighting climate change
  • Within the first hundred years of its existence, the United States seized over 1.5 billion acres of land from Indigenous peoples. You can see a visual of that land loss here. How might #landback be a way of addressing past injustices
  • Chicago has one of the largest urban intertribal communities in the United States today. Indigenous people are impacted by the city’s policies, just like you. Who has a seat at the table for the decision making that shapes how cities grow and change? How might #landback be a way of making sure Indigenous people also have a say in the futures of their homelands?

The story is available in full here.

Kerry Cardoza is a Chicago-based journalist who writes about art, culture, politics, and power. She has a Master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. Cardoza is the art editor at Newcity and the punk columnist at Bandcamp Daily.

Source citation: Cardoza, Kerry. “A Public Art Project Tackles Unceded Land in Chicago.” November 26, 2021, BELT Magazine. 

A Public Art Project Tackles Unceded Land in Chicago

November 26, 2021

‘Whose Lakefront’ marks the Indigenous history of the Lake Michigan coast

By Kerry Cardoza

For many Chicagoans, the lakefront is the city’s crown jewel. It features an eighteen-mile pedestrian trail and more than two dozen public beaches, not to mention scenic and recreational sites like Promontory Point, Navy Pier, the Museum Campus, and Grant Park. Other than being points of civic pride, these places all have another thing in common: they sit on unceded Native land. The area was originally inhabited by the Council of the Three Fires—the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi—as well as the Menominee, Meskwaki, Sauk, Miami, Wea, Piankashaw, Kickapoo, Illinois, Winnebago/Ho’Chunk, Otoe, Missouria, and Iowas.

Chicago-based artist JeeYeun Lee sought to draw attention to the history of this land with her public art project Whose Lakefront. A central component was an October 2 procession led by Native people, who drew a line of red sand along Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. The street demarcates where the original border of the Chicago lakefront used to be, before city leaders began expanding the city’s footprint by adding in lakefill, much of it debris from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Lee was inspired to make work about the unceded land after reading Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians & the City of Chicago, a book by Ohio State University professor John Low (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi). She said one of the most striking stories in the book was about a 1914 lawsuit filed by the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians against the City of Chicago and other landowners. In the suit, the Pokagon asserted that they were legally entitled to the shorefront. In a series of treaties signed between 1795 and 1833, the Potawatomi and other neighboring tribes, such as the Ottawa and the Chippewa, had been forced to sign away much of the land that makes up Illinois and other areas in the Midwest. But since 1833, the lakefront had been expanded. As the heavily-researched Whose Lakefront website points out, none of these treaties deal explicitly with the bed of Lake Michigan.

The website excerpts Chicago Tribune articles on the Potawatomi’s land reclamation efforts, dating back to 1900. Low points out that Simon Pokagon, the son of Leopold Pokagon, who founded the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, fought to claim this land in the 1890’s. This history shows that the calls for land back span well over a century. “This land back thing, and the activism about Native rights, is not a new phenomenon,” Low said. “My elders were doing it back in 1914 when they were suing for the Chicago lakefront. We’ve always been active. We’ve always resisted as much as we could. And we took that case to the U.S. Supreme Court, so that’s about as resistant as you can get within the parameters of the law.”

Low notes that most Pokagon tribal members were also included in the suit, including his great-grandmother. The judge dismissed the claim, which was appealed and eventually came before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1917, the court ruled against the Potawatomi, stating they had “abandoned” the land. The ruling did not seem to take into account laws like the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced Indians to cede their land east of the Mississippi River and instead move west. Nor did it consider the 1838 forcible removal of Potawatomi from areas throughout the Midwest to present-day Kansas, a journey of more than six hundred miles. The brutal removal, now referred to as the Potawatomi Trail of Death, led to the deaths of dozens of Potawatomi.

“It was very illuminating, to learn all of these stories that I had never been exposed to. Chicago has one of the largest urban Indian communities in the country, but if you’re not connected to it, there’s really no visibility at all,” Lee said. “This idea of the lawsuit about this very concrete piece of land, really caught my imagination.”

Lee had incorporated walking into her art practice before, as an MFA student in Detroit and then later in Chicago, with a project that included five walks of twenty miles each, investigating and witnessing “the histories of settler colonialism, racial segregation, and class exploitation that shape the Chicago region.” “I like both the literal and the figurative pace of walking as a way to be in a place, but that isn’t completely still,” Lee told me. “So there’s still time to notice what’s in a place and try to both feel and see what’s there.” She has also long been interested in using her artwork to understand her “position as an immigrant from a formerly colonized country, here now because of U.S. imperialism.” (Lee is from Korea, and moved to the U.S. as a child.)

With Whose Lakefront, Lee said, the idea was about marking the land. Lee worked with a committee, made up primarily of local Native people, to plan the project over more than two years. She attended different Native-led events around the city, talking about the project and making connections, and eventually putting together a planning committee. “I had a really good feeling about this project,” says Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez Pueblo/Korean), who joined the planning committee early on. “This was around the time where a lot of other non-Native businesses and organizations were trying to craft their own land acknowledgments. This felt like a really great opportunity to take that land acknowledgement further.”

Madolyn Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi), who was also on the planning committee, appreciated how Lee made “sure that it was Potawatomi people whose voices were being centered throughout the entire thing.” Fellow committee member Aaron Golding (Seneca Nation, Beaver clan) commends Lee for the participatory planning process. “For a non-Native person to want to do work with Natives about Native issues and with community, JeeYeun just did it in this really genuine way that invited everyone into the conversation and let the scope and scale and vision of her initial idea shift and shape based on the ideas and participation of the people in the committee,” he said.

The long planning process was due to the pandemic—the procession was originally supposed to happen in 2020. But the delay allowed more time to notify all the businesses along the 1.5-mile route, which was required, and to build relationships. (Despite the extra time, the city  didn’t provide the necessary permit until the day before the event.)

On the day of the event–October 2–participants gathered in a plaza downtown starting at around 11:30 a.m. People attended from across the Midwest and, in some instances, across the country; though the lawsuit was filed by the Potawatomi, the question of land ownership is one that affects all Native people. Small groups of people made their way to the site, many dressed in ribbon skirts, ribbon shirts, and other traditional dress. For Wesaw, that public display was itself profoundly meaningful. “My mother’s generation, my grandmother’s generation, they would have been sent to jail for that,” she told me. “It was really empowering to be able to do that so boldly, and so unapologetically, for the ancestors who couldn’t do those things.”

About fifty of the participants were Native students in town for the annual Big 10 Native Student Gathering, which was taking place at Northwestern University. Kadin Mills (Ojibwe), a Northwestern student who was part of the contingent, noted that though several people seemed visibly uncomfortable to see so many Native youth together, the experience was powerful. “The visibility was really nice,” he told me. “It was amazing to be able to participate in something much bigger than myself, much bigger…than everyone else that was there, because it’s been something that our ancestors have been fighting for. And now we’re fighting for it too.”

The procession took close to two hours to complete. Lee says she was glad it was a durational performance, because it gave her time to realize that the project was finally happening. “I really enjoyed the process of disrupting the comfort and status quo way of thinking about what downtown Chicago is and who it’s for,” she said.

Lois Biggs (White Earth Ojibwe/Oklahoma Cherokee) was present at the procession, and also appreciated the slow pace, which was so different from the way you typically move through downtown Chicago. “When you’re walking with hundreds of people and putting down these lines of sand and talking to people who are asking questions about it, and kind of moving together, getting to know each other, stopping for traffic, you’re moving at this really slow pace,” she said. “You just notice so much more, and you’re able to really feel in your body and feel as a group. Just to be present on the land and to really feel the history of it all. And feel the sadness there. But then also that shared joy that comes from this moment of reclamation.”

 The procession came to a close at Pioneer Court, so-called because it is believed to be the site of the former homestead of Jean-Baptiste Point du Sable, the first non-Native settler of Chicago. Across from us, on the other side of the Chicago River, was a massive painting by Grand Portage Ojibwe artist Andrea Carlson that read, “You Are on Potawatomi Land.”

Now, Pioneer Court is home to an Apple store. Folks gathered on tiered seating outside of it to hear closing remarks written by John Low and to witness a Potawatomi water ceremony, led by Billie Warren, from the Pokagon Band. “That was really impactful just to be in that space,” Kadin Mills said. “It’s a weekend in Chicago in fall, it’s still warm, and there are tons of tourists and people out. Having that visible space where we’re singing and doing ceremony in public in Chicago was something I’ve never experienced before.”

Wesaw agrees that raising awareness is one of the most important components of the project. “A lot of people aren’t really familiar with Potawatomi history,” she said. Today there is a sizable population of Pokagon Potawatomi in and around Dowagiac, Michigan, near land that Leopold Pokagon purchased in the 1830’s. [At the time of this article, there were] no federally recognized tribes in Illinois; the Pokagon didn’t gain federal recognition until 1994. Wesaw highlights the importance of telling stories about Indigenous triumphs and how they have overcome adversity, noting that Native Americans were only granted religious freedom in the 1970’s. “We’ve only recently been in a place where we can openly be Native without fear of persecution, and because of all that persecution, a lot of things were lost,” she said. “What you’re seeing right now, this is the first and second wave of people who are coming back to revitalize our culture in a really meaningful way.”

“One thing I was really hoping for in this project,” Lee said, “was that by having it in public space, that there would be more people encountering it than if it were in a gallery or in a book. And even if they didn’t completely understand the context or the meaning of it, it would shift something in their experience of this place. I think art is really important for that.” She is interested in seeing what other projects might stem from this one. “I feel like one question for me coming out of this is: How do you go from marking unceded land to actual land back, and is there an artistic or creative way to push the issue even further?”

Low believes Whose Lakefront was successful in helping to uncover this “hidden history of Chicago,” which he also discusses in Imprints. “They always talk about truth and reconciliation,” he says. “Well, truth is education, so we can’t get to reconciliation until you know the truth. We have to have an acknowledged understanding among the majority of people of what happened to the Indians. We didn’t give up the land freely or voluntarily. The land was taken from us, and we haven’t forgotten. We’re still here, and we haven’t forgotten.” ■

This story is part of the Indigenous Rust Belt project, supported by Ohio Humanities.

Kerry Cardoza is a Chicago-based journalist who writes about art, culture, politics, and power. She is the art editor at Newcity and the punk columnist at Bandcamp Daily. Cover image by Peter Fitzpatrick.

Source citation: Lee, JeeYeun, John Low, Madolyn Wesaw, and Debra Yepa-Pappan, “Whose Lakefront.” Chicago Public Library Panel, October 2021. 

Whose Lakefront: Chicago’s Unceded Native Land

October 26, 2021

Learn about the history and occupation of Indigenous land by marking the presence of unceded territory in the heart of Chicago’s downtown. The “Whose Lakefront” project is based on a 1914 lawsuit brought by the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians against Chicago for land along the lakefront.

Members of the Pokagon Band, based in Michigan, along with a Native resident of Chicago and non-Native ally, will discuss this history and contemporary Native sovereignty as highlighted through a recent public art project marking this unceded territory in the heart of Chicago’s downtown. Panelists include JeeYeun Lee, John Low (Pokagon Band Potawatomi), Madolyn Wesaw (Pokagon Band Potawatomi), and Debra Yepa-Pappan (Jemez Pueblo/Korean). This program is co-sponsored by CPL’s Native American Heritage Committee.

View the recorded one-hour panel here.

The article is available in full here.

Monica Whitepigeon (also known as Monica Rickert-Bolter) is a Prairie Band Potawatomi, Black, and German artist and journalist based in Chicago. She is a co-founder of the Center for Native Futures in Chicago.

Source citation: Monica Whitepigeon, “Native in the Arts Spotlight: Visual Artist Andrea Carlson Talks About Her Chicago ‘You Are on Potawatomi Land’ Mural.” Native News Online, July 2021, nativenewsonline.net. 

Native in the Arts Spotlight: Visual Artist Andrea Carlson Talks About Her Chicago “You Are on Potawatomi Land” Mural

BY MONICA WHITEPIGEON  JULY 15, 2021

CHICAGO —The “Windy City” is undergoing a cultural reckoning, especially within the public art scene, and Native people are making their presence known. Just below the city’s ever-changing skyline is its RiverWalk that caters to tourists by offering architectural boat tours and restaurants/bars along the southside of the Chicago River. Above the ticket stands is a mural with an eloquent reminder, “Bodéwadmikik ėthë yéyék/You are on Potawatomi Land.”

The multilingual mural was created by local Ojibwe artist Andrea Carlson. It was installed this past June and will be on display for at least the next two years. The project was designated before Chicago’s recently established monuments committee, which was created in response to last year’s protests against the Columbus statues and aims to rectify monuments throughout the city. Carlson is not on the committee but recognizes the need for transformative change and utilizes her paintings/drawings to reference cultural narratives in resistance to institutional authorities.

In a recent interview with Native News Online, Carlson explained her perspective and take on this project.

What is the official name of the project? What are the dimensions? What material did you use? How did you create it?

The piece is called “You are on Potawatomi Land” and its overall dimensions across all five banners are 15’ high by 266’ long. The original artworks are five oil paintings on canvas. These paintings were scanned with a large format scanner and the digital files were blown up to accommodate the incredibly large format of the banners. The text was digitally added. The images were then printed on a mesh that allows the wind and air to flow through it. 

I got a lot of help.

What are you hoping people will take away from your mural?

The phrase “Bodéwadmikik ėthë yéyék” (You all are on Potawatomi land) is a simple statement of truth in a sea of settler fantasies in that particular area of Chicago. Within a block of the banners is an image of a dead Native man on DuSable Bridge, there is a Blackhawks merchandise store, the former site of Fort Dearborn, and many people in Chicago don’t know this, but the man-made lakeshore is unceded. So, the audience takeaway should be a simple moment of truth in a harmful and antagonistic area of the city. 

Tell me how the project came to be and why you’re so passionate about Potawatomi representation in the city.

I’m Ojibwe, and I moved from Minneapolis, which is Dakota country, to Chicago about five years ago. I was thrilled to finally be on Anishinaabe/Nishnabek land, but it didn’t take me long to learn that the Potawatomi were removed and exiled from Chicago. That historic removal takes on new forms to this day. The location of the Zhegagoynak (Chicago) is in the very heart of Potawatomi’s traditional territory. Although Ojibwe and Potawatomi people are ethnically related and we hold each other close, I don’t want to prioritize my sense of belonging. I don’t want to participate in the prolonged displacement [of] Potawatomi people.

I must confess, it took me a while to get, as you say, “passionate about Potawatomi representation” in Chicago. When I was thinking of texts for the banners, my first thought was for it to say, “Former Shoreline” because, indeed, that area of the river was a shoreline before the settler, man-made land was extended into the lake. I also considered “You are on Stolen Land” but that seems to be focused on the past, centering the settler act of stealing land. Bodéwadmikik ėthë yéyék (you are on Potawatomi land) seems more hopeful, and it is a statement of perpetual belonging for the Potawatomi people. I want you to see it and feel seen, not erased. “You are on Stolen Land” doesn’t give me that same sense. “You are on Anishinaabe Land” was also considered, because I was hoping that the word “Anishinaabe” would provide me with cover from Native nations who like to see ourselves mentioned. When I asked Kyle Malott (Pokagon Potawatomi) to translate the English to Potawatomi for me, he changed Anishinaabe to Potawatomi, and I thought about it for a second, and thought, “Yes, he is right.” That specific land where the banners fly was contested, and it was the Potawatomi who came back and fought for it. 

Without getting into too much legal talk, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi sued the city claiming that the man-made lakefront violated the treaties and was not part of the original agreements. The Supreme Court of the United States—big shocker—ruled against them in Williams v. City of Chicago, 242 U.S. 434 (1917) claiming that the Potawatomi “abandoned” the land. The Trail of Death, which is the name given generally to the removal of Potawatomi happened before the shoreline was built out, but we must remember that Native removal isn’t a singular event of removal, but rather, a prolonged exile. SCOTUS’s decision over Potawatomi belonging and Chicago’s lakefront is incredibly hostile. If anyone wanted to read into this decision, I strongly recommend reading John Low’s book Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago (2016). John Low’s book and friendship was a big inspiration for this banner piece. 

Another reason I chose those words for the banner piece is the current #LandBack movement. This movement of rematriating the land means that we as Native people must start thinking of these historic cases. The Pokagon Band came back for the land. They had used their resources to sue and made a case for the lakefront on behalf of all Potawatomi people. I wanted my piece to bow to those Potawatomi ancestors whose hearts were broken with that decision. I want to make sure that Potawatomi people know that they are home when they see this work. 

This area has historical significance as the former site of Fort Dearborn and the bridge commemorates it with a statue of white settlers and a dead Native man. What do you think would be a better way to permanently (or not) signify the history?

There are images of violence towards Native people all over that area of the Chicago River. These images normalize anti-Indigenous violence. It is a harmful place, but it could be a place of healing. I would love to see Native-made art all over the city. I worked with Lydia Ross at the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) for You are on Potawatomi Land. We had started working on it prior to the pandemic, well before the Columbus statue was removed in Grant Park. 

If I were to make recommendations, I think that a formal and ongoing program where Potawatomi and other Native artists are supported by the city is needed. Foundations and other institutions that are highly visible need to adopt the language of supporting “Chicago based and displaced artists” that recognizes that Potawatomi people and their artists will always have belonging here. 

The city erases us, but artists can draw us back in. To your other question: I don’t know if artworks need to be permanent, as long as we are always present. You are on Potawatomi Land will be up for years, but it will eventually come down. I would be thrilled if the next artist to make a banner project in that location was Potawatomi. 

You’ve done a lot of social justice work in Minnesota and at institutions in different states. What’s your experience been like in Chicago/Illinois?

It is weird because I find myself clinging to a small group of artists here (including Monica Whitepigeon). We are in the process of starting up the Center for Native Futures, a Native artist-run art space in downtown Chicago. The city is so big that I think that we are like ants on the surface of water clinging to each other to stay afloat. We are aiding each other’s wellbeing and survival, unlike crabs in the bucket, which Chicago has plenty of. 

I could speak at length about institutional abuse, specifically about museums. They are not so different from city to city. They all read from the same colonial playbook, and their healing processes are also looking very similar. Some things are incredibly disheartening about Illinois. I am on the Illinois State Museum board, and there are seven thousand ancestors in the collection, but that will change soon.

That **** mascot! The Blackhawks team reaches into its pockets to make it seem like they are different from other Native mascots. They try their hardest to make it seem like Native people approve of it. The Columbus Day Parade in downtown Chicago is a white supremacy march. No Indigenous Peoples Day here. We get nothing here. We have a lot of work to do in Chicago. 

What are some other projects you’re currently working on?

I’m working on a large painting right now called Cast a Shadow. It is full of references to Native memory work and memorial practices, and it has a sculptural component. Effigy poles will be installed in Infront of the painting and obscure it. I am also working on a painting about a fantasy I have about Michigan returning Isle Royale to Grand Portage Ojibwe people. I’m also researching materials for two major commissions, but I’m not allowed to talk about those yet. 

What’s your advice to others who want to see more accurate Native/Indigenous representations of their tribes in cities?

Listen to Native people. Go to our presentations, our exhibitions, and read our books. Antagonize the settler mentality that lives in your head — I must do that too. Question institutions that don’t acknowledge the Indigenous land that they are built upon. If you live in Chicago, pay attention to your alderman and their views towards things like the initiative for replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. Stop Line 3, give the movement money to bail out Water Protectors. Help us with these things so we can focus our time on our robust survival, our joy, and our healing. We can tell our own stories. Take a class in American Indian and Indigenous Studies. I could go all day.