LandBack: Illinois

The U.S. sold this tribe’s land illegally. It’s now the latest Native group to get its home back

Harvest Public Media | By Héctor Alejandro Arzate and Peter Medlin | June 16, 2025 

Peter Medlin / Harvest Public Media

Raphael Wahwassuck, a member of the Prairie Band Potawatomie’s tribal council and a direct descendant of Chief Shab-eh-nay, said he looks forward to having more youth in the community connect to their land. "A lot of times all you hear is negative stories or stories of defeat," he said. "But now they have something that they can refer to in a positive aspect and show that, yes, good things can happen if you have people that are sincere and want to recognize and understand how we can correct these things."

The United States government promised the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation about 1,280 acres of Illinois reservation in an 1829 treaty. Instead, the U.S sold all of it illegally to white settlers. The Prairie Band is now the latest tribe in the Midwest and Great Plains to get some of their ancestral home back.

MORE:  https://www.kcur.org/news/2025-06-16/the-u-s-sold-this-tribes-land-illegally-its-now-the-latest-native-group-to-get-its-home-back 

Our identity has been frozen in time

by Bridgette Fox and Jerry Nowicki, Capitol News Illinois May 12, 2025  

This article is part of the Healing Illinois 2025 Reporting Project, “Healing Through Narrative Change: Untold Stories,” made possible by a grant from Healing Illinois, an initiative of the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Field Foundation of Illinois that seeks to advance racial healing through storytelling and community collaborations.

IMAGE:  The Red Horde logo for the former Archbishop Weber High School in Chicago.

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capitolnewsillinois.com /news/our-identity-has-been-frozen-in-time-how-native-american-advocates-are-influencing-springfield/

 

SPRINGFIELD — Amid the annual bustle at the Illinois Capitol during the legislative session’s midpoint, a sea of color and singing filled the rotunda on a sunny March day.

Attendees of the 2025 Native American Summit, organized by the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative, were draped in regalia and leading a drum ceremony for the first time in an Illinois that was home to a federally recognized tribe.

And it was happening amid a backdrop of Native American groups working to secure passage of a bill that would ban what they say is offensive imagery in Illinois school mascots.

“Our identity has been frozen in time, and it’s going to stay frozen in time as long as we’re portrayed as mascots and things of the past,” said Matt Beaudet, a citizen of the Montauk Tribe of Indians who was in Springfield to advocate for the bill’s passage.

Andrew Johnson, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and executive director of the Native American Chamber of Commerce of Illinois, explained the importance of attire.

“We will refer to the clothes that we wear – the traditional clothes that we wear – as regalia.  It is something that is honored.  It has been passed down,” Johnson said. “There are reasons for wearing the particular items that are there.  So, we have that term, ‘regalia.’  It’s built and has the bedrock of respect and honor.”

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How natives are often portrayed as mascots in school logos throughout the state, however, has a more detrimental effect of “costuming,” he said.

“It really is not a sense of honor there,” he said. “It is not a sense of history. In fact, it’s a perversion of history to think that these mascots are maintaining any kind of that memory of Native people.”

Johnson and Beaudet are part of a working group convened by state Rep. Maurice West, D-Rockford, that’s at the forefront on Native American issues at the Capitol.

In the past several years, Native American advocacy groups have scored what they call major victories in state government.

The state has agreed to return tribal land in northern Illinois, required schools to teach Native culture, allowed high school students to wear cultural and religious items during graduation, and streamlined the process of repatriation and reburial of Native American remains and artifacts.

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Dozens of Illinois schools could be forced to change mascots that feature Native American imagery or names because of a bill awaiting action in the Senate. From left to right, top to bottom: Logos for the Stockton Blackhawks, Calumet Indians, Altamont Indians, Bremen Braves, Deer Creek Chiefs, Mt. Zion Braves, Annawan Braves, Marengo Indians. (Capitol News Illinois illustration)

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