Returning and Remaining
Though the Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Odawa, Ojibwe) were removed from Chicago in the 1830s (and other communities were forced to leave the area earlier), Native people continued to return, remain, and travel through Chicago throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Some, like Potawatomi gigdownenes (treaty representatives) Shab-eh-nay and Chechepinquay (Alexander Robinson) stayed on land that had been reserved for them in treaties, traveling between these lands and their communities further west. Shab-eh-nay’s land was illegally sold (but recently reclaimed in part), while Robinson remained in Chicago until his death in 1872.
Others visited Chicago for short periods of time. Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) King David La’amea Kalākaua visited Chicago in 1878 as part of a months-long tour of the United States, and many Native people traveled to Chicago for the 1893 and 1933 World’s Fairs. Some Native people were brought to the fairs as part of anthropology exhibitions that cast Native communities as backwards and savage, while others came to work at the fairs or sell artwork. Potawatomi leader Simon Pokagon distributed his pamphlet, The Red Man’s Greeting, which was a scathin critique of colonialism, on the fairgrounds.
Some, like Awaansapia, or James Strack (Myaamia) decided to stay in Chicago after the 1893 World’s Fair with their families, while others were encouraged to move to cities like Chicago after attending Indian boarding schools. Those who lived in Chicago in the early 20th century found that there were few resources to support Native people and cultivate community, so they founded organizations like the Indian Council Fire, which helped Native people with legal, education, housing, and employment matters.
Later in the 20th century, the population of Native people in Chicago skyrocketed as more than 5,000 people moved to the city as part of a voluntary relocation program run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). This program aimed to assimilate Native people by separating Native people from their communities, and the BIA circulated propaganda materials on reservations that promised good jobs and spacious housing in Chicagoland. When Native people arrived however, they found these to be empty promises.
In the absence of support from the federal government, Native community members came together to create intertribal and intergenerational spaces that fostered mutual aid and new urban Indigenous identities. Many of the organizations that were founded in this period were based in the Uptown neighborhood, and many like the Chicago American Indian Center and the St. Augustine Center for American Indians provided direct support services. Others like the American Indian Church circulated newsletters to share local events and resources. The American Indian Center also began hosting pow wows after its founding in 1953, an annual event that still occurs to this day.
In 2020, the American Indian Center held its 67th annual powwow in a virtual format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Comprised of footage from previous powwows, the video above was used to promote and introduce the virtual gathering. (Video courtesy of Dancing Pony Productions)
These organizations also fostered collective resistance and protest in the wake of the BIA’s broken promises. The Native American Committee formed within the American Indian Center to support the national efforts of the Red Power Movement. They led several occupations of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Chicago Office and an encampment outside of Wrigley Field. Another activist group, the Chicago Indian Village, formed as a result of the Wrigley Field protest. They went on to stage protests at more than a dozen locations across Chicagoland, including Marina City and Belmont Harbor.
However, activism in Chicago was not limited to occupations and encampments. Native community members also worked to create better education for their children and improved representations of Native people. In the 1970s, the Native American Committee founded three schools specifically for Native students: O-Wai-Ya-Wa Elementary, Little Bighorn High School, and Native American Educational Services (NAES) College. In the same decade, Métis activist and writer D’Arcy McNickle helped to found a Center for American Indian and Indigenous Research at the Newberry Library with the goal of improving education about and representations of Native people, and community members and students helped establish the Native American Support Program (NASP) at the University of Illinois Chicago. The program continues to serve Native college students and is the oldest program of its kind in the state.