How do shifting political boundaries impact human relationships with lands, waters, and each other?

By the end of this hook, I can… 

• begin to describe Indigenous relationships with water
• infer how European and American changes to the landscape impacted lands, waters, and people
• anticipate how the changes to the river connect with changes in human politics

This exercise directly relates to:

• Native American societies before European contact (pre-1673)

This exercise could also be paired with teaching about: 

• Innovations in technology, agriculture, and business (1800-1840)

History

• SS.9-12.H.3. Evaluate the methods used to promote change and the effects and outcomes of these methods on diverse groups of people.
• 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. 
• SS.9-12.H.11. Analyze primary and secondary historical sources from multiple vantage points and perspectives to identify and explain dominant narratives and counternarratives of historical events.

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.  

Indigenous peoples from across North America have had relationships with the lands and waters of and surrounding Chicago for millenia. Their stories of creation, trade, and migration link Indigenous peoples to Chicago for thousands of years before Europeans arrived here.  In fact, some of these stories are so old we just say they’re since time immemorial – before human memory! 

For Indigenous people, the lands and waters are not just resources to be taken. Instead, Indigenous people have always learned from and worked with the land. They have created new forms of technology, architecture, transportation, arts, medicines, and agriculture that benefited both people and the plants and animals of the area. They have observed the lands and waters for instructions about how to live sustainably and in good relationships with each other. 

Since colonization, many historical events have reshaped human relationships with the lands and waters of Chicago. Europeans thought of the land as a set of natural resources to be used and taken away. Their view of the land was more about property than relationship. 

Let’s start by thinking about human relationships with water. 

1. Think about your own relationships with the bodies of water (rivers, lakes, oceans, etc.) that are meaningful to you. 

• • How do those waters, whether from a tap, at the lake, in a river, or in the ocean, take care of you and the people you love?
  • What do we offer the water in return?
  • What might the rights and desires of the water be?

2. Now, check out Source 1 (also included further down in the accordion): Potawatomi artist Jason Wesaw’s art piece Mbish Waboyan, or healing blanket (in the Potawatomi language, the name is pronounced mbeesh wah·boh·yahn). The purple and blue blanket is about 40” wide and 60” tall. It is made of muslin and flannel fabric that Wesaw dyed and sewed by hand. Wesaw attached 59 clay and copper cones to the fabric with ribbon. 

For Potawatomi people, copper is closely connected with water, healing, and prayer. The ribbons and cones on Wesaw’s blanket are like the ribbons and cones that decorate women’s jingle dresses. The jingle dance is a healing dance. The dance started after an Ojibwe father whose daughter was very sick received the steps in a dream. The dance healed his daughter, and jingle dancers today are still responsible for healing sickness.

• What do you notice about the blanket? 
• What do you think Wesaw wanted to represent?

3. Let’s read Wesaw’s comments as he created the blanket. 

As he thought about Potawatomi relationships with water, Wesaw wrote: 

The rivers and lakes offer us “metaphors for our cultural continuity and the timelessness of our traditional and ceremonial Neshnabé teachings. Outside the confines of our own mind, we are part of a continuum of people that stretches from the Creator’s first breath and into Seven Generations from now. The water, like our history and culture, shifts and turns continuously, maintaining its relevancy in the modern-day. Nothing is lost and the Water can teach us what we don’t remember. Like a blanket that our Grandmother covers us with to stay warm and safe, the rivers and lakes remind us of the profound and simple life ways of our ancestors.”

As he reflected on the lands and waters around Chicago, Wesaw wrote: 

“The Land itself has undergone drastic changes, some of them irreversible. The sacred sites and early paths of my ancestors, trampled under streets and skyscrapers, hold barely a whisper or song to be heard of our existence in this hallowed gem of a city. Perhaps a plaque, mural, or gaudy statue, left in our place as a hint to visitors of a civilization that ‘once was’. The Land, though diminished and abused, possesses a physicality and presence for which I Love. But, it is the Water, the beautiful and ever-flowing Nibe [“water” in Potawatomi, pronounced nee·bee], that Loves and nourishes us. With all of its twists and turns, the shores cut and filled with slag, and the flow shifted and polluted, she still Loves us. She still remembers us. It is the water that connects, effortlessly, the past and future of who we are as human beings.”

• How does Wesaw describe Potawatomi relationships with their lands and waters?
• How have the city’s changes to the landscape of Chicago impacted Potawatomi access to their homelands?

4. Now, notice this 1830 map of the Chicago River (Source 2, also located later in the accordion), showing the original route of the river with a large sandbar and the channel that was cut to change the river’s route in 1828. 

• What do you notice about the river’s flow relative to Lake Michigan?
• How is this different from how you know the river today?
• How might the engineers’ changes to the river have impacted the river and the plants, fish, animals, birds, and insects that rely on it as their homes and food sources?

5. Despite the changes to the river since colonization, Indigenous relationships with the lands and waters of Chicago continue today. These relationships stretch generations back into the past and will stretch generations into the future. Now that you’ve thought about Wesaw’s artwork and considered the changes to the river:

• What does Wesaw’s blanket symbolize about Indigenous relationships with the waters in the Chicago area?
• What might the rivers and lakes of Chicago reveal about human history? 
• How might Wesaw’s art be a form of advocacy for the water?

6. Look back at our main question (How do shifting political boundaries impact human relationships with lands, waters, and each other?). What have you learned so far that you want to remember?

Reminder: All political history happens relative to the lands and waters on which it occurs. As we move ahead in this module, access to lands and waters for navigation, food, medicine, housing, military defense, and government will be central to the questions we’ll ask together. Let’s go!

Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi) is a multimedia artist whose work includes ceramics, textiles, and works on paper. Wesaw’s work has been featured in galleries across the Great Lakes, such as the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts, where this piece was displayed in 2019. 

Source citation: Wesaw, Jason. Mbish Waboyan, 2019. 

A higher resolution version of the image is available here, and a version of the map with the text printed is available here.

A Civil Agent is someone who works for the federal, state, or local government, and civil engineers help plan and oversee the construction and maintenance of infrastructure projects (like buildings and roadways). Given Harrison’s and Howard’s connection to civil engineering, we can assume that they likely worked for the state and created this map as part of their duties.