By the end of this exercise, I can… 

• describe the social context that led to Indigenous peoples being relocated to Chicago
• discuss how Indigenous peoples have supported one another in rebuilding a sense of stability after social upheaval
• evaluate the needs someone might have when relocating to a new place

This exercise could also be paired with teaching about: 

• African American Civil Rights Movement. Connect to Indian Relocation Policy and urban community development (1950s-1980s)

Inquiry

• SS.9-12.IS.5. Gather and evaluate information from multiple primary and secondary sources that reflect the perspectives and experiences of multiple groups, including marginalized groups.

Geography

• SS.9-12.G.10. Analyze how historical events and the diffusion of ideas, technologies and cultural practices have influenced migration patterns and the distribution of the human population.

Civics

• SS.9-12.CV.9. Evaluate public policies in terms of intended and unintended outcomes and related consequences on different communities including the marginalization of multiple groups.

History

• SS.9-12.H.14. Analyze the geographic and cultural forces that have resulted in conflict and cooperation. Identify the cause and effects of imperialism and colonization.

Relocation

After decades of being pushed out of their homelands, Native people in the 20th century increasingly returned to Chicago. This included both people whose communities had been removed from Chicago before the mid-1800s and people from Native nations elsewhere. In the early and mid-1900s, there were few social services for Native people in Chicago. So, community members got together and created the services they needed. This reflects Indigenous values of generosity and care that have shaped Indigenous kinship systems for thousands of years. These services often filled needs the federal government promised to meet but never did. The organizations that Native people created became hubs of social life and political advocacy. Among the many important organizations were:

• The Indian Council Fire (ICF) was founded in 1923. It provided housing, legal help, education, and employment support for Native people in Chicago and the Midwest. 
• The American Indian Center (AIC) opened in 1953. It soon became an important site for community gatherings. From 1964-1972, the AIC ran the Canoe Club and numerous other clubs, which provided important spaces for intertribal community building. The AIC also held (and continues to hold) frequent powwows (you’ll learn more about powwows in the exercise below!). 
• St. Augustine Center provided significant support for Native people who moved to Chicago as part of the U.S. government’s relocation program (see below). It was open from 1961 to 2006. St. Augustine provided supportive services to Native people who lived in the city. It especially served Native people new to Chicago and Native people who had few resources. 

Native people moved to Chicago across the 20th century for a variety of reasons. The largest arrival of Native people at one time resulted from the voluntary relocation program that the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) ran from 1952 to 1972, which the government officially authorized under the 1956 Indian relocation act. The BIA used the program to encourage Native people to leave their reservations and move to cities like Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Seattle. This is called Relocation. The BIA used promotional posters, photographs, and videos to paint a picture of what life could be like in cities. They promised relocatees good housing and employment. These promises weren’t kept. Few relocatees ever saw these benefits. Instead, most Native people who relocated faced discrimination that led to poor housing, unemployment, and poverty. Many felt isolated from their home communities and cultures. 

Native nations have a government-to-government relationship with the United States based in treaties and the trust relationship. This means both Native nations and the US government have made promises that they must keep. The United States has rarely kept its promises to Native people. Relocation policy was another broken promise.

Relocation was part of a long chain of policies to try to get rid of Indigenous cultures and remove Indigenous people from their homelands. For example, in 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act, which divided Indigenous lands into individual plots. “Surplus” lands were given or sold to non-Native people. This resulted in the loss of 90 million acres. 

In the 1950s, the US government tried two new policies to get rid of Native nations and take over Native land. The 1956 Indian relocation act and the 1953 Termination Act both aligned with decades of United States policies to assimilate Native people. Termination proposed that if the federal government thought certain Native nations were “sufficiently assimilated,” then they were no longer their own nations. It ended government-to-government relationships with these tribes, which violated the treaties. Termination ended the sovereign status of many Native nations; some of these have been reinstated, but many are still fighting for their rights to be restored. Among those nations whose sovereign trust status was terminated was the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma–the contemporary descendents of the Illinois Confederation–in 1959. It took Peorias nearly twenty years of hard work to re-secure recognition, and in 1978 the Tribe was reinstated. Relocation attempted to remove Native people – especially young adults – from their communities. It tried to end Native peoples’ sense of identity and belonging to their communities. Many people relocated through the federal program, and many others relocated on their own because of the need for work. Native people came together in their new environments in cities to support one another and build new communities. They retained their cultural identities through urban organizations and by maintaining their connections to their reservations. 

Other organizations have also opened in the decades since relocation. For example, the St. Kateri Center opened in 1982, and the American Indian Association of Illinois opened in 2007. These places and other have provided specific support for education or health (you can learn more about education in Module 5), as well as community gatherings. 

Today, Native organizations in Chicago continue to support the community. They provide social services, educational programming, cultural activities, and political advocacy for people within and beyond the Native community. Many of Chicago Native organizations work together through the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative (CAICC). CAICC is a coalition of organizations in Chicago that serve the Native community. Recently, the advocacy of people in organizations like CAICC has led to changes in state legislation. House Bill 1633 now requires schools to teach Native American history. Senate Bill 1446 now affirms the right for Native American students to wear religious and culturally significant regalia. 

Sources

Fixico, Donald. Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990). 

LaGrande, James B. Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945-75. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005). 

LaPier, Rosalyn R. and David R.M. Beck, City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893-1934. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015). 

Miller, Doug. Indians on the Move: Native American Mobility and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019).

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. 

1. First, let’s focus on the legislation of Relocation. Review the information in the Background section above. If you want, you can read the text of the law itself. 

2. To prepare for the primary sources you’re about to look at, create a chart like the one below (adapted from Nokes, 2022, p. 130):

3. Relocation brought people from dozens of Native nations to the Chicago area in search of work and job training.  Explore the Indigenous Chicago Relocation Map, which shows the many communities from which people came to Chicago and surrounding suburbs.

• • Are you surprised by how far some people traveled to come to Chicago? Why or why not?
  • What trends (if any) do you notice in the map?

4. The federal government’s advertisements for Relocation were full of promises about what Chicago might be like. To get a sense of the ads, watch this promotional film from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Source 1). We suggest watching from 0:00 to 5:18.What do you think the federal government wanted people to believe about relocation?

• • Why might you be skeptical about the federal government’s claims in the video?

5. Listen to this 20-minute WBEZ Chicago story by Kadin Mills, a journalist of Keweenaw Bay Ojibwe descent (Source 2). As you listen, keep track of:

1. • What led to Indigenous people relocating to Chicago? 
   • What experiences did they have once they arrived in Chicago? How does this compare to the government’s video’s promises?
   • How did Indigenous people find each other? And how did they support each other in Chicago? (What did they create?) 

6. Support for relocatees was never enough. People struggled to find adequate housing and consistent work, which made it hard to feed their families. Some moved back home or to other cities in search of work. Urban resource centers soon opened to help meet the community’s needs. Father Peter J. Powell founded the St. Augustine’s Center in 1961 to offer social services to American Indian relocatees in Chicago. It provided casework and supportive services for the city’s Native American community from 1961 to 2006. Take a look at this letter from Father Powell (Source 3, also printed at the end of this document).

• • What does Father Powell’s letter reveal about whether the federal government followed through on the promises that the BIA video represented? 
  • What problems were facing the Chicago Native community in 1962?
  • What did Father Powell see as the Church’s role in supporting the Native community?

7. Many of those that stayed began to create services for health, education, and cultural connection, among other needs. This group (Source 4) photo from the Chicago American Indian Center shows some of the core leaders active in the Chicago Native community just after Relocation. Ben Bearskin (Ho-Chunk), a member of the Chicago Native community, took this photograph around 1960. 

• • What do you notice about this photograph?
  • What might this photograph tell us about how Native people pulled together to create resources for the Chicago Native community in the 1960s?

8. Now, let’s jump ahead three decades to the 1980s. By 1983, this Chicago American Indian community service directory shows a breadth of community services (Source 5). This is now three decades into the development of the contemporary Chicago Native community. 

• • What kinds of services do you notice in the directory?
  • How do these later services connect with or differ from those that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s?
  • What do these sources tell us about the investment of the community in building and maintaining resources?
  • Among the many important community resources that people brought to Chicago were powwows. Look at the two powwow photographs below (Source 6). On the left is Chauncina Whitehorse (Rosebud Lakota) and her granddaughter at a special honor powwow for Lee Whitehorse (Southern Arapaho). On the right is Lana King at the 1985 American Indian Center Annual powwow, where she was Miss Indian Chicago. These photos are from Joe Kazumura and were taken between 1981 and 1985.

Powwows are intertribal social events. They started in the 1920s and 1930s and built on older dance and music traditions from tribes in the Plains. Powwows spread across the country in the 1940s-1960s. By the 1960s, they had a common format with common dance and song styles. They also include specials and songs specific to the local community. 

Powwows helped the Chicago Native community build a sense of shared identity in the 20th century. When urban community members came together, they shared songs, dances, and food. The community programs they created taught children and youth how to dance and make their regalia (dancing clothes). [NOTE: Regalia is a specific type of cultural clothing, it should never be called a “costume” or a “traditional garb.”]  Powwow has long been a form of entertainment as well as a way of teaching cultural values, sharing histories, and building connections within and between communities. As the Chicago American Indian Center notes, “Powwow is the time for American Indian people to meet and join together in dancing and singing, while renewing old friendships and making new ones. Additionally, powwows provide opportunities to renew thoughts of the ‘old ways’ and preserve a rich heritage. Finally, powwows offer a chance for friends and families of all cultures to take part of the experience.” 

Unlike ceremonies, powwows are social events and are often open to the public. Chicago’s American Indian Center has the nation’s oldest intertribal powwow, which has been held each year since 1953! 

• • How do the two photographs above show people coming together across generations?
  • How might they reveal the importance of powwow as a way of gathering in the Chicago Native community?
  • What does the presence of powwow as a community support reveal about the importance of joy and connection in sustaining communities? (For an example of a recent powwow, see Lac du Flambeau artist Michelle Reed’s video of a 2023 jingle dress special at the Chicago American Indian Center).

10. Summing it up! Now that you’ve gone through all of the sources, reflect on what it means for a person or a community to experience dislocation or relocation. Based on what you’ve observed, create a diagram of the needs someone might have when relocating to a new place (things like shelter, food, connection to other people, financial stability, entertainment/arts, healthcare, etc.). Then, using that same diagram or another one, link those needs with the specific ways the Chicago Native community came together to build community during and after Relocation.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is the federal office that oversees federal laws and policies about American Indian and Alaska Native people in the United States. In the 1960s when this film was made, that would have included the relocation of Native people to cities under the Indian relocation act. The BIA is based in Washington D.C. in the Department of the Interior, but there was also a BIA Relocation Office in Chicago in the 1960s and 1970s.  

This 1968 film promoted the BIA’s relocation program. The film came out twelve years after the Indian relocation act of 1956. The film is 20 minutes long, and we recommend viewing the first approximately five minutes. To view the film, click here. 

Source citation: Bureau of Indian Affairs, “Chicago Story,” 1968. Ayer Modern Manuscripts BIA Relocation Collection, Newberry Library.

Kadin Mills is a reporter. He is a descendant of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community of Lake Superior Ojibwe. Mills has a degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He created this 20-minute story for WBEZ Chicago. We suggest you listen to the story in full. To listen to the story, click here. 

Source citation: Mills, Kadin. “Uptown was Once a Vibrant Hub for Chicago’s Native American Community.” May 29, 2024. WBEZ Chicago. wbez.org. 

Father Peter Powell was an Episcopal priest who worked in the Chicago Native community for more than 60 years. In 1961, he moved to Chicago and founded the St. Augustine Center for American Indians, which provided support services to Native people. Many of the people who came to St. Augustine had moved to the city under Relocation. By the time St. Augustine closed in 2006, it had served three generations and over 6,000 Native community members. Father Powell was also a scholar of Plains Indigenous history. He had a long standing relationship with Cheyenne people and focused much of his research on their history. His 1982 book, People of the Sacred Mountain, won the National Book Award in History. 

Excerpt from the Letter from Father Powell to the Right Reverence Gerald Francis Burrill, D.D., Bishop of Chicago and the Right Reverend Daniel Corrigan, D.D., Director of the Home Missions Department, National Council of the Episcopal Church, Re: 1962 Annual Report: Reverend Peter John Powell, Director of Indian Work, Diocese of Chicago, February 13, 1963

Right Reverend Fathers,

In the following pages you will read what we have, by God’s good grace, accomplished during 1962. First, however, we would ask that you consider with us that we would stress in our overall program for 1963.

As a whole, American Indians desire self-sufficiency. In most cases, this is shown in their desire to hold intact and to develop the lands they hold so dear. Even here in Chicago, the majority of our Indian citizens look forward to returning ‘home’ — that is, to the reservations. They say, ‘Father, we want to stay here long enough for our children to get a decent education; then we’re going home.’ Or, ‘We’re just going to stay long enough to make money so we can develop the land we have back home.’ Recently, for instance, the Wisconsin Winnebagoes were finally able to clear title to their former homeland lands in Wisconsin and to incorporate under the Wheeler-Howard Arct (sic). Among the leaders in this move to keep Winnebago lands intact were members of the tribe dwelling here in Chicago. To the urban-dwelling Indians, land and the self-sufficiency of their tribal communities continued to remain infinitely important. Our experience indicates that the identity of city-dwelling Indians with their lands and home communities continues to be strong, even after some years of residency in an urban environment. However, there is also every indication that the number of Indians coming to the city will continue to increase, as it has during the past ten years.

It is important, then, that the Church continue her traditional role of encouraging Indians to be self-sufficient leaders as both Indians and Americans. Bishop Hare began this, as far back as the 1870’s. In the 1960’s, the continual identification of the Church with the cause of Indian self-determination. At St. Augustine’s Center we have been able to assist, in the Church’s name, many hundred Indian families and individuals during 1962. It is obvious that we must continue to do so; for the majority of families and individuals seeking assistance desire it so they can ‘get back on their feet’, until jobs can be obtained and the first pay check arrives. Indians in Chicago want jobs — not Welfare assistance. The Welfare Department figures prove that the number of First Americans obtaining such aid is negligable (sic).

However, there still remains the problem of steady employment. Our national policy in Indian education has vacillated from Administration to Administration — as has been true of other areas of Federal policies affecting the First Americans. Thus, at least 50 percent of our people in Chicago have not been able to obtain sufficient education to enable them to work in the skilled trades. For those coming to the city under the Indian Bureau’s vocational training program, assistance is available in obtaining training in a number of jobs. For the greater number of Indians in this city, however, this federal assistance has not been available. As yet, the Indian Bureau’s vocational training program has not [as] a whole been broadened to include Indians who have come to the city on their own initiative. 

This educational deficiency leads our people in a vicious cycle. As they lack education, they must work in the unskilled trades. The unskilled trades are seriously affected by the job lay-offs occurring between November and March. After they have lost their jobs, in most cases they are ineligable (sic) to receive Welfare assistance, for they do not meet the year’s residency requirement. Most of them do not desire Welfare anyway. Thus, the responsibility for assisting them in their desire for self-sufficiency really falls on the Church’s shoulders. These are the families we see each day at St. Augustine’s Center.

It is obvious, therefore, that one of our major points of emphasis should be on encouraging Indians in this desire to be self-reliant. One way in which we can do this is through the development of a special type of scholarship fund. As time has gone on, scholarships for college studies have become increasingly available through the Tribal Councils and through Church and other private organizations, as well as through the Indian Bureau. In 1950, for instance, approximately 500 Indians were in college. In 1963, it is closer to 5,000.

However, for an Indian who has come to Chicago on his own, and who cannot think in terms of a college education because of age, lack of earlier education, family responsibilities, ect. (sic), a scholarship fund is needed. It would assist the individual in obtaining further training in the skilled trades at one of the vocational schools, training which would enable the individual to work in future employment that would be less affected by the continual lay-offs in the unskilled trades. Such additional education in the skilled areas would be an invaluable aid to encouraging Indian self-sufficiency. It would also guarantee future Indian leadership — both in the city and on the reservation.

With an individual gift of $500 and another individual gift of $100 we have established such a scholarship fund. It is the beginning of what we pray will be a fund adequate to furnish scholarship aid for many Indians who could hold their heads high in caring for their own families and people in the years ahead. We would commend this project to your Excellencys’ special prayers and beg your blessing upon it.

Source citation: Father Peter J. Powell to Right Reverence Gerald Francis Burrill, D.D., Bishop of Chicago and the Right Reverend Daniel Corrigan, D.D., Director of the Home Missions Department, National Council of the Episcopal Church, Re: 1962 Annual Report, February 13, 1963. Father Peter J. Powell Papers, Newberry Library. 

Ben Bearskin (Ho-Chunk) was a Chicago Native community member who lived in Chicago for most of his life. Bearskin was active in the American Indian Center, the Chicago Drum singing group, and the Chicago American Indian Camera Club. As part of his interest in photography, Bearskin was one of 6 photographers featured in a 1985 exhibition at the Newberry Library called Seeing Indian in Chicago. Seeing Indian was a collaboration between the Newberry and Native community members. The project aimed to document Native life in Chicago between the late 1950s to the mid-1980s. The project was part of the larger Chicago American Indian Photography Project, which collected the work of the same 6 photographers.

For a higher resolution image, click here.

NAES College’s Community Board Training Project created this service directory in 1983. NAES College opened in 1974. It was the first Native-controlled college or university in Chicago. You can read more about NAES’s history here.  

You can read the service directory here. We suggest you examine the table of contents and the foreword first. You can then use the remaining pages, which highlight specific organizations, to answer the questions listed in the exercise. 

Source citation: “American Indian Community Service Directory.” (Chicago: Native American Educational Services (NAES) College, 1983). Box 17, Folder 2, Virgil Vogel Papers, Newberry Library. 

Joe Kazumura was a non-Native photographer from California. His family was from Japan, and in World War II, he was forced into a Japanese internment camp. He came to Chicago after being released from the camp in 1946, and became interested in photography after receiving a camera for his birthday in 1959. He lived near the American Indian Center in Chicago and frequently attended events there. Kazumura became close with many of the Center’s staff and volunteers and took photos at many of the Center’s events. 

Source citations: Chauncina Whitehorse and her granddaughter. Photograph by Joe Kazumura, Box 3, Folder 47, Seeing Indian in Chicago Exhibition Records, Newberry Library; Lana King at the 1985 American Indian Center Annual Powwow. Photograph by Joe Kazumura, Box 3, Folder 52, Seeing Indian in Chicago Exhibition Records, Newberry Library.