Indigenous Chicago Present and Future
Today, Native people continue to live and thrive in Chicago. The city is home to dozens of Native organizations and businesses and the Native community includes individuals from more than one hundred tribal nations. Tribal nations who were removed from this land have also never relinquished their connections to this place.
Many of the Native organizations in the city are part of the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative (CAICC), a delegation of organizations that serve Chicago’s Native community. CAICC was founded to provide a unified voice in a city where Native perspectives are often ignored and invisible. Among the organization’s greatest accomplishments include: hosting an annual Education Conference that brings together leaders in Native education from across the nation; holding two Native American Summits in 2022 and 2024 at the state capitol to call attention to community priorities; and assisting in the passage of two state bills: HB1633, which mandates the teaching of Native history in K-12 classrooms, and SB1446, which ensures that Native students are allowed to wear culturally significant regalia at graduation ceremonies. Through these efforts, they work to not only support the needs of current community members, but also those of future generations.
Chicago is also a vibrant place for Native artist, writers, and poets. These individuals use different mediums to express their identities, make commentary on issues impacting the Native community, and articulate their connections to the land. For example, Oneida and Diné artist Camille “Katahtu’ntha” Bille created regalia that is representative of both her connections to her home community in Wisconsin, and her current home in Chicago.
Others like Potawatomi artist Jason Wesaw create pieces that speak to relations with the land and waters of Chicago specifically. Wesaw created three teaching blankets for Indigenous Chicago that speak to the ongoing connections that removed Potawatomi people have to the waterways in Chicago. CAICC maintains a directory of Native artists across the Chicagoland area.
Others are working with the land directly to revitalize Indigenous gardening and traditional lifeways. The American Indian Center and Trickster Cultural Center have all maintained Indigenous gardens, while others like Little Shell Cree Professor Eli Suzukovich (Northwestern University) are leading and teaching others about maple tapping to create sugar and syrup. Educational activism in Chicago continues as well. Today, the American Indian Education Program within CPS and the American Indian Association of Illinois both hold after school programs for Native children, and programs like the Indigenous STEAM and Learning in Places host additional programming for Native students and their families.
A section of the Indigenous Chicago Treaty Map
Native nations who were removed also continue to fight for the lands that were illegally taken here. Significant sections of Chicago, including much of the Chicago lakeshore, remain unceded, meaning they were not sold in treaties. In 1914, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi sued the city of Chicago for the lakefront, but was unsuccessful. However, they continue to maintain their claims to this land. More recently, the Prairie Band of Potawatomi, reclaimed land just outside Chicago in DeKalb County, making them the first and only federally-recognized tribal nation in Illinois. The land is a portion of a plat that was reserved for Potawatomi leader Shab-eh-nay as part of the 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien, but was then sold illegally.
The future for Native people in Chicago is bright. For those who live in the city, there is an abundance of programs and events that continue to build intergenerational bonds, support the education of Native students, and improve representations of Native people, all of which will strengthen and support future generations. Chicago continues to be a place where Native people from across the country gather to discuss important topics for the futures of their communities, like language revitalization, and tribal nations who were removed from this place retain their connections to this land, while continuing to return to this place and expand their impact here. While much of this project explores the past, its community-articulated goals have always been future-facing. We aim to end the invisibility of Native people and histories in Chicago and make it clear that Chicago has always been, and will always be, a Native place.