Founded in the 1970s, the Native American Support Program (NASP) at the University of Illinois Chicago supports the success of Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and Native Pacific Islander students academically and culturally. This support comes from the program’s origin and administrators from within the Chicago Native community who have had first-hand experience with the issues Native students face while attending college.

Our next stop is 411 N La Salle, the site of the Chicago American Indian Center from its founding in 1953 to 1963, when it moved to a new location. Today, the American Indian Center continues to offer community programming from its location in Albany Park. The center was initially founded during a time of great change for the Chicago Native community. Native people had been moving to and from Chicago since forced removal in the 1830s, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs's voluntary relocation program (1952-1972) meant that there was a significant increase in Chicago's Native population. In response to this change, a group of organizations including the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the Chicago Citizens’ Advisory Board, the American Indian Club, the Indian Council Fire, and the American Friends Service Committee began meeting in July of 1953 with the intention of creating connections between Native Americans moving to the city and the city itself. These meetings and the work of Native people already in the city led to the creation of the All-Tribes American Indian Center, which opened its doors here in late 1953.  At this location, the American Indian Center began hosting annual powwows and formed clubs to facilitate community building in a growing intertribal Chicago Native community. The Canoe Club, the Photography Club, an all Native Boy Scout troop, a day camp, educational services, and job assistance were a few of the many clubs or programs developed in the first decade of the Center. Over the past seventy years, the Center, its leadership, and the Chicago Native community have worked to uphold the legacy of the institution to serve the community and sustain the Center’s mission. It remains one of the oldest American Indian centers in the country.  Proceed south on La Salle Avenue about .2 miles across the LaSalle bridge to the southeast corner. Look back across the bridge to locate the Merchandise Mart building.

The home of Archange (Potawatomi) and Antoine Ouilmette was one of many French and Native households in early Chicago. French and American men frequently married Native women as a way of integrating themselves into existing kinship networks, and Native women expanded the connections of their own kin through these marriages. Archange was the daughter of Marianne (Potawatomi) and François Chevalier and the granddaughter of Potawatomi leader Naunongee, which meant she was connected to one of the most notable Indigenous and fur trade families in the western Great Lakes. Though we don’t know very much about the Ouilmette home other than that it neighbored the Kinzie house, we can make educated assumptions about Archange based on what we know about other relationships between French men and Native women. Archange likely served as a translator for her husband Antoine, instructed him on Native protocols, and was his way of integrating into existing Indigenous kinship networks. Many believe Archange was instrumental in helping settlers navigate the constantly fluctuating portage between the Chicago and Des Plaines River. Though the business of leading people through the portage was in her husband’s name, she would have carried that knowledge of the land from generations of Potawatomi people who lived around and used the portage before her. We also know that Archange helped several of the wives of officers at Fort Dearborn through pregnancies and deliveries, and that she personally helped survivors of the Battle of Fort Dearborn to survive in her house by disguising them as Native women. She and her husband worked directly with Indian Agent Alexander Wolcott to acquire support for the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. In the 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien, she and her children were given a plot of land on the Northern border of the city that includes parts of the present-day cities Evanston and Wilmette. The Village of Wilmette is named after her family.

The Tunica-Biloxi Chicago Branch Office is a satellite office for the Tunica- Biloxi Nation of Louisiana. In Chicago, it serves as a gathering place for both Tunica-Biloxi tribal members, as well as the broader Native community in Chicago. The office hosts both educational and cultural gatherings about a variety of subjects, including beading, language, and cooking. Members of the Tunica-Biloxi Nation have been living in Chicago for more than 100 years, even though their an ancestral lands, reservation, and governmental operations are located in Marksville, Louisiana. Tribal members in Chicago began trying to establish a satellite office in Chicago in the 1990s, but it was not until 2019 that the branch office was officially opened.

The Newberry Library is a cultural institution whose collections and exhibitions offer a portal to more than six centuries of human history. Among its many collections, the Newberry is home to the Edward E. Ayer American Indian and Indigenous Studies Collection, which includes thousands of print and manuscript materials related to American Indian and Indigenous people. The collection includes content on Indigenous people in North and South America from pole to pole, coast to coast, and beyond into the Pacific. In 1972, Métis author and activist D'Arcy McNickle helped found the Center for the History of the American Indian at the library, which aimed to promote the research of Native American history, increase access to the collection for Native communities, and revise the ways Native peoples had been misrepresented in these histories. The center was later renamed the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, and has provided training to graduate students and presented public programming and project, often in collaboration with the Chicago Native community. Several of its current projects aim toward expanding the accessibility of its collections to tribal communities and collaborating with the Native communities to align with Native perspectives, knowledge systems, and cultural practices. Merge this text with the above: Initially founded in 1972 as the Center for the History of the American Indian, the D’Arcy McMickle Center was established to promote the research of Native American history and revise the ways Native peoples have been misrepresented in these histories. Located within the Newberry Library in Chicago it is named after Salish Kootenai activist, writer, and its first director D’Arcy McNickle. Since its founding the Center has provided training in American Indian and Indigenous Studies to students and presented public programming for the Chicago Native community. Several of its current projects aim toward expanding the accessibility of its collections to tribal communities and collaborating with the Native communities to align with Native perspectives, knowledge systems, and cultural practices.

Listed in the Chicago American Indian Service Directory as one of the "American Indian Owned and Operated Businesses in the Chicago and Metropolitan Areas" the Chicago Indian Artist's Guild had Sharon Skolnick (Fort Sill Apache) as its proprietor. In the 1970’s it had a gallery on the fourth floor of the American Indian Center on Wilson. Skolnick also founded the Okee-Chee Wild Horse Gallery in Andersonville to continue to highlight the work of Native artists within Chicago.

Prior to Jean Baptiste Point du Sable’s arrival in Chicago sometime in the 1780s, Native people long used what is now called Chicago as a hub for trade. DuSable, likely born before 1750 in what is now the nation of Haiti, was a newcomer in this established Native world. In order to join that existing trade network, he had to integrate himself into existing relational networks (often called kinship) and build trust with Native people. To do so, he married Kitihawa, a Potawatomi woman who would become essential in his ability to safely and successfully trade and travel through the region.  It is likely that Kitihawa would have instructed him about Indigenous protocols for trade. She also probably served as a translator and language instructor for his conversations with other traders (which would mostly have been conducted in Neshnabémwen, the language of the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa people).  Together, they built a home and trading post here in 1789, making the mouth of the Chicago River an even more valuable trading site that rivaled those on the St. Joseph River and at Kekionga (near present-day Fort Wayne, IN). In 1800, the house was acquired by John Kinzie, a fur trader of Scots-Irish descent born in Quebec City, and by 1831, it included as many as five rooms, a front green space, and a small farm in the back with a dairy, bake-house, lodging-house, and stables. Though the Northwest Ordinance outlawed slavery, the Kinzies kept enslaved people in bondage on the property. When the War of 1812 made the Chicago trading post untenable, the Kinzies abandoned it. Another Potawatomi woman, Archange Ouillemette, lived next door and managed the farm and property before the Kinzies returned after the war.  There is a duplicate point for this site on the Downtown Walking Tour

By the 1893 World’s Fair, Sitting Bull (Lakota) was a national celebrity. He had defeated Custer's forces in the Battle of Little Bighorn. He was then forced to go on tour with Bill Cody's Wild West Shows where he was paid fifty dollars a week as a performer. He was murdered by police in a raid three years before the World's Fair, but this building purporting to be his “cabin” was an attempt to profit from his image.

The “Big Chief” steel and fiberglass statue stands at 30 feet tall (current world’s tallest "cigar store Indian") where Mead Ave. meets the Southwest highway in Oak Lawn. Depicting a Native American man with a headdress, the figure is shown with one arm raised covering his eyes from the sun and the other holding a bundle of sticks (possibly tobacco). Created by Wisconsin based company Creative Display, it was first bought for $14,000 by the now closed Cooke County Tobacco Warehouse. Like other so-called “Cigar Store Indians,” this iconography has been used nationally as advertisement for tobacco since the 17th century in England. Sometimes referred to as their much smaller renditions, “Virginie Men,” these tabletop statues were displayed in Eastern U.S. states to advertise tobacco sales but have since been enlarged and displayed outside of businesses for the same purpose.  Since the closure of the Cook County Tobacco Warehouse in 1998, Cardinal Liquor Barn Inc. purchased the statue for $10,000. Jim Shirazi, Cardinal Liquor’s owner, has since spent over $30,000 relocating, cleaning, and restoring the statue. In 2015, Shirazi had the statue repainted, reportedly adding greater detail to the headdress plumage, retouching the buckskin traditional clothing and changing the blue sash to green. Another report remarks that since its relocation the repairs had fixed areas on the statue where it had been “pierced by arrows” while sitting on top of the Tobacco Warehouse.  Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.

Native peoples from around the United States came to the 1933 World's Fair to perform. Many came as a part of the official American Indian Villages, but the Seminole Village was a privately operated exhibit on the Midway. It was created entirely for entertainment (a popular attraction was the alligator wrestling) and had very little information about Native people's daily life.

Mark Beaubien built a tavern on the South Side of the river across from Wolf Point. A canoe fairy attached by rope connected the tavern to the houses across the river making it Chicago’s first bridge. He later named it the Sauganash Hotel after Sauganash (Billy Caldwell) a significant Potawatomi leader who helped negotiate the 1829, 1832, and 1833 treaties. Caldwell was born to a Mohawk mother and British father, but was integrated into Potawatomi kinship networks through marriage. He was a skilled negotiator who could successfully work with both Native and American leaders, and he aimed to arrange fair payment and new land for his people in the face of forced removal from the Chicago region. He was given a plot of land in the 1829 treaty on the northwest side of the city that now makes up the Edgebrook and Sauganash neighborhoods, the latter of which bears his name. However, when forced removal came in 1835, he led his people west.

The Chicago Centennial celebration continued much of the excitement of the 1893 World's Fair, held ten years earlier. Unlike the Anthropology exhibits at the World’s Fair, Native people organized their own involvement in the centennial. Forty Potawatomi people from Michigan, forty Ho Chunk people from Wisconsin and Nebraska, Odawa people from Northern Michigan, twenty-five Sauk and Meskwaki people, twenty Menominee people from Northern Wisconsin, and fifty Ojibwe people all gathered to live in Lincoln Park for the festivities. They included prominent figures such as Charles Pokagon, Andrew Blackbird, and Chief Lone Star. All were solicited by T. R. Roddy, the contractor for the American Indian Village on the Midway at the 1893 World’s Fair. The Indigenous people built bark and brush mat lodges in which they stayed during the centennial. At the encampment, Native people gave la crosse, rowing, and house building demonstrations. They staged an attack on a newly constructed replica of the Fort Dearborn block house–an event that never actually happened since the 1812 Battle of Fort Dearborn occurred along the shoreline south of the fort. Unlike at either of the World’s Fairs, the centennial demonstrations were led entirely by Native people. They included speeches by tribal leaders, interpretation, and explanation.

Chicago is, and has always been a Native place. However, many traditional tours of the city continue to erase, or misrepresent Indigenous history. This walking tour takes users across more than five centuries of Native history, connecting Indigenous people to some of Chicago's most famous landmarks, and recentering Native people and perspectives where they have been erased or marginalized. The tour is approximately 2 miles and will take about 1.5 hours to complete. It begins at the southeast corner of DuSable Bridge and ends at the "Defense" relief sculpture, on the southwest corner of DuSable Bridge.

The California Indian Manpower Consortium, Inc. (CIMC) was founded in 1978 to promote the social welfare, economic development, and educational needs of Native communities in California. Although the nonprofit is based in California, it has created a consortium of tribal nations, tribal communities, and organizations across the United States. As the only field office outside of California, the Chicago office is able to cater to the needs of the Chicago community. CIMC provides job training, educational training, job search or placement, leadership programs, and counseling or career planning.

Based in Itasca, Illinois, Visionary Ventures NFP advocates and promotes accessible and affordable housing to combat the longstanding issue of homelessness that Native communities have faced in Chicagoland. With these goals, Visionary Ventures builds on the well-established activism in the Native American community of Chicago to call for and provide affordable housing for Chicago’s Native population. Visionary Ventures also promotes general economic development and services to the Native American community with a focus on those who have been underserved by other organizations.

Mainstream narratives of Chicago’s founding have primarily featured European and American settlers. But stories of René-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle, Jacques Marquette, and Louis Jolliet as visionary adventurers and John Kinzie and Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable as founding settlers have concealed a much more complicated reality. In fact, Indigenous people lived on the land now called Chicago a long time before Europeans set foot here, and many remain here today. Indigenous people used this area for seasonal and more permanent village sites, to gather food sources like wild rice and wild onions (or ramps), and to travel to other parts of the larger Great Lakes and Mississippi River networks. The first European settlers entered into an already existing network of trade and familial relationships created before their arrival. How does this change the way we understand the founding of Chicago as a city? This City Story re-centers Indigenous people to encourage a re-thinking of the familiar “founding” myths. It casts aside unnecessary superlatives like “first” settlers and “last” Native peoples in order to understand the more complicated origins of Chicago. Sources  Alfred Theodore Andreas, History of Chicago: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time (Chicago: A. T. Andreas, 1884) Ann Durkin Keating, Rising up from Indian Country: The Battle of Fort Dearborn and the Birth of Chicago (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2012) Juliette Kinzie, Wau-Bun, the “Early Day” in the North-West (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1856)  Jean M. O'Brien, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010)  Terry Straus, ed., Indians of the Chicago Area (Chicago, Ill: NAES College, 1990).

Chicago hosted two World’s Fairs, the 1893 “World’s Columbian Exposition” and the 1933 “Century of Progress International Exposition.” These fairs had a lasting impact on the way the city sees itself in the world. Two of the four stars on the Chicago flag, a ubiquitous symbol of city pride in the twenty-first century, represent the two fairs. Popular books, movies, and board games about the fairs abound. Native people had a complex relationship with the World’s Fairs. The events created an opportunity for Native people from around the country to assert their identity on the world’s stage. They created employment opportunities in a new cash economy at the turn of the century and allowed Native people to send money back to their communities. The World’s Fairs were also a powerful reemergence of Indigenous people in Chicago after their forced removal from the region. While many Native people lived in and visited Chicago during the nineteenth century, the 1893 fair was the first mass gathering of Indigenous people since leaders gathered in 1833 to negotiate the theft of millions acres of their land. However, commissioners of both World’s Fairs refused to grant Native people the opportunity to tell their own story. In fact, they often worked against them. For both fairs, the authorities in charge of recruiting Indigenous people were anthropologists who saw Native people solely as part of the past. They did not view their cultures as equal to those of the other nations of the world. As you will see in the following City Story, Native people were dehumanized by fair organizers, but you will also see the ways in which Native people defied that image. Sources: Rosalyn R. LaPier and David Beck, City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893-1934 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015). David Beck, Unfair Labor?: American Indians and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019). Abigail Markwyn, “‘I Would Like to Have This Tribe Represented’: Native Performance and Craft at Chicago’s 1933 Century of Progress Exposition,” American Indian Quarterly 44, no. 3 (Summer 2020): 329–61. Lisa Cushing Davis, “Hegemony and Resistance at the World’s Columbian Exposition: Simon Pokagon and The Red Man’s Rebuke,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) 108, no. 1 (2015): 32–53.

After its incorporation into the city of Chicago in the 1880s Uptown worked to compete with downtown, leading to the construction of well-known landmarks such as the Uptown Theatre, the Aragon Ballroom, and the Green Mill Lounge. The Great Depression led to a once thriving area with luxury housing to be broken down into smaller apartments that could be cheaply rented. This was the Uptown that White Appalachians, African Americans, and Native Americans encountered when federal policies or economic necessity drove them to migrate to the neighborhood from across the country from the 1950’s through the 1970’s. Native people that moved to Chicago were motivated by economic necessity or pushed by federal policies created by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) seeking to assimilate them into American society. These policies included the voluntary relocation program (1952-1972) followed by the relocation Act of 1956, other job placement programs, and decades of other assimilation policies. Chicago was chosen by the BIA as one of five original relocation sites for relocation due to the high volume of factory work and other jobs, along with it being an urban setting that was seen as being in opposition to Native reservations. But Chicago had already been chosen by Native people. It had been a site of Native villages prior to the establishment of the city, and those who remained in spite of removals or moved to the city did not always see it as being in opposition to their home communities. This Chicago Native community that existed prior to relocation founded the Indian Council Fire, the American Indian Club, and worked with other groups to create the foundations of the institutions that would follow. This Native community was scattered throughout the city, not concentrated in one neighborhood. In its first nine years the voluntary relocation program relocated almost 5,000 Native peoples to Chicago. The need for housing for the mass number of people, and the low paying jobs many were forced to take meant that many were forced into cheap housing around the city, with Uptown becoming the neighborhood with the largest population of Natives. Native people also came together to support one another when the BIA failed to provide the housing, jobs, and support that it had promised. In opposition to the efforts to assimilate Native people, relocation resulted in the creation of a new, intertribal community in which people supported one another through mutual aid. Sources:  Ann Durkin Keating, ed. Chicago’s Neighborhoods and Suburbs: A Historical Guide. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008: 286).  James B. LaGrand. Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945-75. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002).  John J. Laukaitis. Community Self-Determination: American Indian Education in Chicago, 1952-1996. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015).  Douglas K. Miller. Indians on the Move: Native American Mobility and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019).  Chicago American Indian Oral History Project Records - Native Voices in the City manuscript, Newberry Library.

The American Indian Health Services of Chicago (AIHS), began as a non-profit in 1974 and has continued to be a pillar of the Chicago Native community. It is “dedicated to providing quality culturally competent healthcare to the American Indian and Alaska Native community and other underserved populations.” AIHS offers services including gatherings focusing on mental health, its Senior Socials, counseling services, and general community outreach. These range from their Diabetes Talking Circle, Wellbriety Meetings, a storytelling series, Men’s Talking Circle, and their powwows.  AIHS’s existence and a continued need for their services within the community also show a larger issue that impacts Native American communities: access to quality and knowledgeable healthcare. For Native people who participated in the Bureau of Indian Affairs's voluntary relocation program in the mid-twentieth century and struggled to find consistent work or support from the BIA, affordable healthcare or health insurance was difficult to find without community support. The lack of culturally competent care outside of AIHS and community based efforts had been and continues to be a struggle for Native peoples, especially Native women in cities.   The founding of AIHS followed the same mission as earlier organizations, to provide whatever the Chicago Native community needed. After fifty years of serving the community, AIHS continues to adapt to and serve all Natives of Chicago.

The Institute for Native American Development (INAD) was founded in 1979 after Truman College received a $27,920 grant from the Illinois State Board of Education's Department of Adult, Vocational, and Technical Education. Michael Limas (Diné) proposed the grant and acted as INAD's first director. Under Limas's leadership and INAD's mostly Native staff, the previously low enrollment of Native students in the Chicago City College system gradually rose.  INAD focused on the specific circumstances each student faced to attend college, and organized from this approach within the typical structures of a college. Despite facing budget cuts that limited the extent of support they could offer, the program focused on academic counseling, financial aid, and job placement. By the time INAD was shut down and merged with other services to help students of all backgrounds in 2002, it had enabled almost 2,300 Native people to attend Truman College.

In 1833, representatives from the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa nations were called to Chicago to negotiate additional land cessions in the Midwest. In the 18th and 19th centuries, land cessions from Indigenous nations were made through treaties (legal agreements) with the U.S. federal government. These treaties were often negotiated at established meeting places like Chicago and are not necessarily named for the land that is being ceded.Such is the case for the 1833 Treaty of Chicago which ceded land tracts in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin and orchestrated the forced removal of Neshnabé people from 8 million acres of land in what are now the states of Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.  The US was not at war with the Neshnabé people, but they took advantage of the outrage over the Black Hawk War to force a treaty with them, passing a law that allowed commissioners to purchase all the remaining land held by Neshnabé people in the lower Lake Michigan area. In September of 1833, hundreds of Neshnabé people arrived in Chicago to negotiate the cession of land. They built massive encampments around Fort Dearborn and lived there the month before finally meeting with US Commissioners on September 21 for negotiations across the river from the fort.  The treaty was signed on September 26, and it began another migration into the city. Knowing that Neshnabé leaders would soon be receiving their treaty payments, hundreds of American traders from the midwest descended on the city to collect on supposed debts they claimed from Native people. These creditors made up $175,000 of the almost $1,000,000 listed in the treaty. In the cash-poor economy of the Midwest, these payments were a massive influx of federal dollars into the region.  Over the next decade, Neshnabé people were removed from the 8 million acres of land in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan in a fragmented and abusive way over the course of nearly a dozen different removals. At least 5 of these removals began at or crossed through the Chicagoland area. You can explore these routes further in the project’s Removal Map.

In 2019 Santiago X (or X) was commissioned by the Chicago Public Art Group and The American Indian Center of Chicago to pay homage to the original inhabitants of Illinois. X is an Indigenous futurist artist and a citizen of the Coushatta of Louisiana and CHarmoru from the island of Guam. Pokto Cinto is the Koasati (language of the Coushatta) translation of Serpent Twin. The effigy mound is made in collaboration with various artisans and community members such as Nilay Mistry (landscape artist) and honors the ancestral practice of mound building by using soil from various tribal lands. Located in Schiller Woods, Pokto Cinto marks the Des Plaines River on one end of Irving Park road and is bookended by a forthcoming Coiled Serpent mound in Horner Park.  Pokto Cinto and Coiled Serpent Mound are the two ends of the forthcoming Northwest Portage Walking Museum which aims to show the connection between Indigenous cultures in Chicago and the land which surrounds it.  Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.

When Fort Dearborn was built in 1803, it was a military outpost in a landscape still occupied and controlled by Native people. The fort sat across the Chicago River from the fur trading post and was built within only six square miles of land that had been ceded in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. All other land surrounding those six miles was still owned by Native people until future treaty cessions in 1816. In the decade after the fort was built, Neshnabé people living in the area began to increasingly see it as a threat to their land and lifeways. These groups contested the Treaty of Greenville and argued that no representatives from Chicago were present at the treaty signing, and they grew increasingly frustrated with white settlers who had begun to farm the land and disrupt the environment that Native people had long maintained. These tensions erupted in the Battle of Fort Dearborn. After the battle, Fort Dearborn was raided for what supplies had not been destroyed and the building was burned to the ground. The Neshnabé people who lived and traded in the area continued to do so with some non-Native relatives. Beyond the mouth of the river, the labor of the Potawatomi, Odawa Sauk, Ho-Chunk, Myaamia, and Kickapoo people made the fur industry in the city immensely profitable. When the Americans returned to Chicago in 1816 and rebuilt Fort Dearborn, they once again entered an already thriving market.

The Grand Council Fire of American Indians, later called the Indian Council Fire (ICF), was founded in 1923 by both Native American and non-Native American participants. From 1923 to 1953, the ICF assisted the Chicago Native American community with legal, education, housing, and employment matters. ICF was the first major Native American organization in Chicago and the Midwest. Many of its Native American members had been members of the Society of American Indians and other national multi-tribal organizations. During the administration of Mayor William Hale (“Big Bill”) Thompson in the late 1920s, the Indian Council Fire challenged the city of Chicago to include more accurate Native American history in school textbooks. Leter in the 20th century, they also advocated for accurate representations of Native people in public history spaces, such as having a historical monument erected at Alexander Robinson's cemetery.  ICF held monthly meetings that combined entertainment and socializing from October to May each year. The organization also provided events for both its non-Native American and Native American members. Programs included the Indian Players Little Theater group, a young women’s chorus, and a Native American boys’ basketball team. ICF also published a quarterly newsletter, Amerindian (1952), edited by ICF secretary Marion Gridley. This newsletter espoused an assimilationist philosophy and emphasized the importance of higher education for Native Americans. It appealed to those who modeled themselves after Carlos Montezuma—or at least his focus on gradual, voluntary assimilation—but the organization seemed out of touch and somewhat condescending to many of the Native Americans who began to trickle into Chicago during the 1940s. Nationally recognized Native Americans such as Charles Eastman, Reverend Philip Gordon, and Gertrude Bonnin regularly spoke at the monthly meetings.  In addition to providing modest social services and community youth programs, the ICF focused a great deal of attention on participating in the annual Chicago Indian Day celebration held every September since its adoption in 1919. In 1953, however, the ICF redrafted its bylaws and decided to shut down its social service program in favor of focusing solely on the Annual Indian Achievement Award, which it continued to sponsor well into the 1990s.  In 1965 the Indian Council Fire was dissolved for failure to file the 1964 annual report and pay the required fee. Although quickly reinstated, there were conflicts within the organization and previous members regarding the merger of the Indian Council Fire organization with two organizations (Indian Council Fire Publications Inc. and Indian Achievement award) started by previous ICF president, Marion E. Gridley. These conflicts are well recorded within the correspondence and position paper written by the Board of Directors of the ICF at the time.

The first non-Native settlers in the Chicago region were primarily explorers aligned with the Jesuits, a religious order within the Catholic Church. The order was founded in 1540 and sought to evangelize and “save the souls” of non-Christians around the world through the establishment of missions. In the Great Lakes, the Jesuits who traveled throughout the region were primarily French. Jesuit expeditions throughout the region were ordered and approved by the Catholic Church, which was closely tied to the French government. The primary purpose of Jesuit expeditions was to establish missions and evangelize Native people, but that did not stop them from noticing the land’s natural resources and its potential for settlement, trade, and exploitation. The most famous Jesuit missionaries associated with Chicago are Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet, who traveled up the Illinois River and through the Chicago portage in 1673. Marquette returned to and camped at Chicago again in 1674 after becoming ill. The vast majority of our written records from the late 17th century come from Jesuit materials, These accounts must be read with a careful eye, but they can also provide rich information about Native cultures and peoples. For example, this passage describes how Native people Marquette had previously encountered brought him food and supplies during his illness, including corn, pumpkins, meat, blueberries, and beaver skins, all of which were essential to his survival.

The Chicago American Indian Center was created in 1953, at a time of great change for the Chicago Native community. Native peoples had been moving to and from Chicago since forced removal in the 1830s, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs's voluntary relocation program (1952-1972) meant that there was a significant increase in Chicago's Native population. In response to this change, a group of organizations including the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the Chicago Citizens’ Advisory Board, the American Indian Club, the Indian Council Fire, and the American Friends Service Committee began meeting in July of 1953 with the intention of creating connections between Native Americans moving to the city and the city itself. These meetings and the work of Native people already in the city led to the creation of the All-Tribes American Indian Center, which opened its doors in a rented space on LaSalle Drive in late 1953.  At the LaSalle location the American Indian Center began hosting annual powwows and formed clubs to facilitate community building in a growing intertribal Chicago Native community. The Canoe Club, the Photography Club, an all Native Boy Scout troop, a day camp, educational services, and job assistance were a few of the many clubs or programs developed in the first decade of the Center. Leaders within the American Indian Center and the Chicago Native community including Ben Bearskin, Frank Fastwolf, Tom Greenwood, Dorothy Holstein, Robinson Johnson, Willard LaMere, and many others participated in the planning for the famed Chicago American Indian Conference in July 1961 at the University of Chicago. The conference drew Native activists from across country to Chicago and resulted in drafting The Declaration of Indian Purpose, a document outlining the needs and priorities of Native communities that was delivered to President Kennedy.  In 1963, the center moved to North Broadway for several years, before moving to Uptown on West Wilson Avenue in 1967. Here the Center continued to host annual powwows, hold gatherings, develop programs, and participate in activism that asserted the presence of Native peoples in the city. In 2017, the American Indian Center moved out of Uptown and into its current location in Albany Park.   Over the past seventy years, the Center, its leadership, and the Chicago Native community have worked to uphold the legacy of the institution to serve the community and sustain the Center’s mission. It remains one of the oldest American Indian centers in the country.

St. Augustine’s Center for American Indians was founded by Father Peter John Powell in 1961 after he began assisting Native people who had moved to Chicago through the Bureau of Indian Affairs's Voluntary Urban Relocation program (1952-1972). Powell started providing this assistance out of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church on Chicago’s West Side in the mid-1950s, and prior to this, he had been involved with the American Indian Center as both a supporter and member of the board of directors.  St. Augustine’s began as a series of assistance programs and in its first few years handled over 10,000 cases that included grocery, employment, lodging, clothing, and general assistance for Native families or individuals. It also provided tutoring and cultural programs. After Father Powell resigned from the position of Director of St. Augustine’s in 1971, the position was taken up by members of the Chicago Native community. Board members and directors included Matthew Pilcher (Ho-Chunk), Amy Skenandore (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican), Elmira McClure (Ojibwe), and Arlene R. Williams (Oneida). Under Amy Skenandore (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican), Bo-Sho-Ne-Gee Drop-In Center was founded under the umbrella of service provided by St. Augustine's to assist community members struggling with addiction and food security. St. Augustine’s also continued to assist people in receiving healthcare and sponsored community events like baby showers. St. Augustine’s continued to serve the Chicago Native community until 2006. When it closed, it had served over 6,000 Native families.

The American Indian Gift Store was among the businesses promoted as “American Indian owned and operated” in the 1982 Chicago American Indian Community Service Directory. Owned by Chee Joe Spencer, a silversmith, it was also listed in the Native American business section in the Chicago Tribune in 1990, demonstrating some acknowledgement of the importance of representation or the continued presence of a Native-owned businesses.

Commissioned in 1963, this untitled sculpture by Picasso has become a famous Chicago landmark. However, it is also the site of an encampment for Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa) people during the 1832 Black Hawk War. During the summer of 1832, Sauk leader Black Hawk and his community of mostly women and children returned to their ancestral homeland in northern Illinois from Iowa Indian Territory. Having faced severe oppression and the destruction of their crops in Iowa, Black Hawk and his followers returned home to plant corn. Neshnabé people were split over whether to support Black Hawk’s defiance of U.S. removal orders. Some housed and sheltered his people; others saw him as a threat to their already tenuous relationship with the Americans, and worried that an alliance with him would lead to their forced removal without compensation. Over the course of the summer, the fear and resentment already present among settlers since the War of 1812 built to a fever pitch. The State of Illinois formed a militia to hunt Black Hawk joined by settlers like Abraham Lincoln. In the end, General Winfield Scott brought American troops from Virginia to hunt Black Hawk. His troops pursued the band and routed them back to the Mississippi River where they were massacred while trying to flee. This conflict has come to be known as the Black Hawk War. During the months of conflict, Neshnabé people and settlers alike fled to Chicago in fear of being caught up in the war. Others were ordered to leave their homes and go to the refugee camp to avoid being identified as “hostile Indians” and killed. Many of these refugees camped as close as possible to Fort Dearborn as they waited for the US military to arrive. When Winfield Scott’s troops arrived in July, they brought cholera to Chicago for the first time, a water-born disease that would kill thousands of Chicagoans over the course of the 1800s. The refugees camping outside of Fort Dearborn faced danger from both war and disease. Though the events of the Black Hawk War occurred outside Chicago, the war had a significant impact on the subsequent removal of Neshnabé people and the founding of Chicago. American leaders used the violence of the war as justification for why all Native people must be removed and threatened that if Neshnabé people did not negotiate treaties for removal, they could face violence. In the wake of the recent massacre of Black Hawk’s community, Native leaders knew these threats to be sincere.  Proceed one block south on Dearborn, then turn left and go one block east on Madison, stopping at the corner of Madison and State (.2 miles).

The Battle of Fort Dearborn did not occur at the fort, but on the shores of Lake Michigan, on August 15, 1812. It ended in the death of more than fifty American soldiers, women, and children and fifteen Potawatomi fighters. The violence is often included in stories of Chicago’s founding, but rarely do these narratives include the larger context of which the battle was one part. In June of 1812, Shawnee leader Tecumseh was coordinating an intertribal resistance movement against American invasion, and he and his allies laid out a plan to attack several American forts later that summer: Fort Madison in present-day Iowa, Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison in present-day Indiana, and Fort Dearborn at Chicago. The attacks would be coordinated through wampum belts, small beads made from shells that were strung together to record histories and communicate messages. However, as Tecumseh and his allies made plans, war broke out between the Americans and the British. In the midst of this colonial conflict, many Native leaders, including Tecumseh and Chicago Potawatomi leader Main Poc, chose to ally with the British, hoping that the defeat of the Americans would stop the increasing flood of white settlers into Native lands. Knowing this, the commander of Fort Dearborn, Captain Nathan Heald, organized a meeting with Potawatomi leaders on August 15, 1812 to negotiate the American surrender of the fort and secure their safe passage to Fort Wayne (in modern-day Indiana). They came to an agreement, but the US forces instantly went back on their word and destroyed the supplies they had agreed to distribute to the Potawatomi. The night before the battle, a wampum belt was delivered to Potawatomi leader Mad Sturgeon signaling war should begin. Since those at Fort Dearborn had been ordered to evacuate the next day, it was an ideal time to attack the American garrison and the betrayal by Heald had further angered Potawatomi leadership.On the morning of the evacuation from the fort, Potawatomi fighters, along with Kickapoo, Sauk, and Ho-Chunk allies, attacked the convoy of American soldiers, civilians, and their Myaamia allies who were leaving the fort. Until very recently, Chicagoans have mistakenly called the events that followed a massacre, but most historians now call it the Battle of Fort Dearborn, in part because of its place within the larger War of 1812 and Tecumseh’s resistance movement.

The Chicago Indian Village (CIV) was formed in 1970 after Carol Warrington, a Menominee mother, was evicted from her apartment with her six children on May 5, 1970 after she refused to pay her rent until her landlord improved the apartment's living conditions. Members of the Native American Committee (NAC) decided to support Warrington and stage a larger protest on the poor housing conditions Native people were facing around the city. After they borrowed a large teepee used by the American Indian Center for powwows, they set up a protest between North Seminary and West Waveland Avenue next to Wrigley Stadium and in view of Warrington's building. Others in the Chicago Native community joined in solidarity, bringing tents and joining the demonstration.  About a month into the protest, Mike Chosa (Ojibwe) split from NAC to form his own organization, the Chicago Indian Village (CIV), with Warrington, his sister Betty Jack (Ojibwe), and others. Chosa became the center of media coverage on CIV along with Warrington, facing praise and criticism for the approaches the organization took. Some members of the NAC and AIC began to critique the continued protest, but to Chosa and those that stayed, they had found a way to draw direct attention to housing issues. This split demonstrated the different ways people within the Chicago Native community believed was the best path forward for Native activism. It was also a reflection of a national debate among Native activists and showed the diversity of issues Native communities faced.  At the original CIV site, members of the village and its cycle of supporters witnessed a wedding, numerous community gatherings, and the presence of police and reporters. CIV went on to hold twelve separate rallies and occupations across Chicago and its suburbs between 1970 and 1972. They advocated for affordable housing, as well as educational and employment opportunities for Native people living in Chicago.

Founded by Donald 'Eddy' Two-Rivers and Beverly Moeser in the early 1990s, the Red Path Theatre Company originated within the Institute of Native American Development at Truman College. It wrote, produced, and performed plays in Truman College’s theater and in theaters through the Midwest. It was the only Native American owned theater company in Chicago throughout the 1990s, and sponsored Native art and cultural events such as the First Nations Annual Film and Video Festival. They promoted Chicago as a place Native art was created and appreciated.

When Amundson-Mayfair City College was moved to Uptown in 1973 and renamed Harry S. Truman college, it displaced Native American and other families as housing was demolished to construct the college. However, after opening its doors to students in 1976, administrators worked to connect with the diverse community in Uptown and worked with Native People to create space in the college, supporting Natives who wanted to attend the school through initiatives like the Institute of Native American Development and the Red Path Theatre. Today Truman College still serves the Uptown community. 

This monument is one of several dedicated to Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, the first non-Native settler to traverse the Chicago portage in 1673. However he and his party, which included French explorer Louis Jolliet, were guided every step of the way by Native people. Jolliet and Marquette drew maps based on the expertise provided by Odawa people at the Jesuit Mission of St. Ignace on the upper peninsula of Michigan. They were then led by Myaamia guides as they traveled to the Mississippi River via the difficult Wisconsin and Fox River portage. On their way back, Kaskaskia guides led them through the Chicago portage to Lake Michigan. The entire journey would have been impossible without the extensive knowledge of the Native people who had used the portage for generations. In spite of this support, monuments across the city show Marquette leading the journey, while Native guides crouch behind him or turn to the side, in submissive positions. This is one of several depictions of Marquette throughout Chicago, each of which perpetuates a false narrative of the subservience of Native people.  Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.

Native American Educational Services, Inc. was founded in 1974 by the Native American Committee (NAC), an activist group that focused its efforts towards assisting Native people in Chicago with education. NAES was the first Native-controlled private college to offer a four-year degree, and it partnered with Antioch College to be able to offer an accredited baccalaureate program that still allowed Native community members to retain control over the school’s admissions, policies, and coursework. As a part of its growth NAES opened study sites for its students on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, Fort Peck Reservation, Santo Domingo Reservation, Menominee Reservation, and in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. NAES’s model combined coursework with work in community in order to prepare students to work for Native organizations and positively impact Native people, and graduates of the college were and continue to be leaders in the Chicago Native community and within their tribal nations.  After losing accreditation in 2005, NAES College became affiliated with Eastern Illinois University to support Native American students who sought higher education. After this collaboration ended, the organization adapted to its current form as Native American Educational Services, Inc. and continues to promote community-based education while collaborating with the American Indian Association of Illinois.

This statue of French explorer and fur trader Robert Cavelier de La Salle was created by artist Count Jacques de la Liang and commissioned by Lambert Tree in 1889. Originally casted in bronze in Belgium and transported to Chicago, this statue commemorates La Salle as he "claims" what is now known as Louisiana in 1682 and searched for the mouth of the Mississippi River. Although unable to reach where the Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico, he extended French claims into Texas, enabling the later US claim following the Louisiana Purchase.  Lambert Tree, apart from commissioning another Chicago monument, Cyrus Dallin’s “A Signal of Peace,” also created artist studios hoping to retain visiting artists from the Chicago’s World Fair.  Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.

Established in Schaumburg, Illinois in 2005, the Trickster Cultural Center features contemporary Native American art and works to provide space for Native artists to show their work along with educating people on the impact of Native American art. Named for the trickster archetype in Native American traditions that teaches life lessons and other truths, the Trickster Cultural Center positions itself in this legacy of the trickster by creating an environment to educate others about the present-day Native communities. Alongside other Native driven and founded institutions in and around Chicago, the Trickster Cultural Center supports community efforts to provide culturally focused education for Native youth through summer and cultural camps.  The organization has also led the National Gathering of American Indian Veterans in Wheaton, Illinois since 2015, and this has led to a shift in its original mission statement to now promote the legacy of Native veterans alongside contemporary Native art.

Archeological maps of Chicago, as well as oral stories from Native communities, tell us that Chicago was home to both permanent village sites and more seasonal camps for centuries before the arrival of Europeans. Though the Thompson Center is more often recognized for its unique post-modernist design and rotunda, it is also the site of one of these many seasonal camps.  These camps were used for "seasonal rounds," annual patterns of coming to a particular place at a particular time. Indigenous people developed these cycles based on the growth cycles of plants and the migrations of animals. Many Indigenous people lived this way before colonization because it was a sustainable way of life. These seasons followed a predictable pattern for planting, hunting, fishing, and harvesting. Moving this way allowed for communities to regularly renew their connections to each other. In Chicago, some examples of seasonal activities include: Collecting sap from maple trees to make sugar and syrup and harvesting plants like ramps in the Spring; fishing and tending to vegetables like corn, beans, and squash in the Summer; hunting migrating birds like ducks and geese and harvesting wild rice in marshes and small lakes in the Fall, and hunting muskrats, otters, and beavers in marshes, as well as deer in forested areas in the Winter.  Because of how close this camp is to the river, we can guess it may have been a spring camp used for harvesting ramps, or a summer fishing camp. Ramps, which are a type of wild onion, are where Chicago gets its name. Several Native place names for Chicago have meanings related to this plant, including Zhegagoynak (Potawatomi) “place of wild onions” and Šikaakonki (Myaamia and Illinois) "wild leek place." Others have names related to strong smells, such as Gųųšge honąk(Ho-Chunk) "skunk run" and Sekākoh (Menominee) "place of skunks." If you've ever walked into a patch of ramps you will understand the reason these words are related - the smell of these spring onions is known to be overwhelming.  Proceed east on Randolph for one block, then turn right on Dearborn, proceeding for one block before stopping in front of the Picasso statue in front of the Richard Daley Center (.3 miles).

The Saint Kateri Center of Chicago, named for Native American Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (Mohawk and Algonquin), traces its beginnings to the Anawim Center in Uptown in 1982. Chicago Native American elders, Peggy Des Jarlait (Arikara), Irene Big Eagle (Odawa), Inez Marie Running Bear Dennison (Rosebud Sioux), and others who practiced Catholicism believed that there was a need for a place for Catholic Native people. They requested support from Dominican nuns to establish a center for Catholic Native people to practice their religion while also learning about Native American religious practices. The Archdiocese of Chicago began to sponsor the center in 1987, and after moving to Saint Benedict's Parish in 2010, the Anawim Center became the Saint Kateri Center.

Harvard Anthropologist Frederic Putnam was in charge of the official narrative of Indigenous America at the 1893 World's Fair. He used the Anthropology Building and the American Indian Village (different from the one on the Midway) to describe Native peoples' lives as entirely in the past. This was directly contradicted by the dozens of Native people working at his exhibits and other places in the park. The American Indian Village included sixteen Kwak-waka’wakw people from the Northwest Coast sponsored by Canada, nine Penobscot people from Maine, fifteen Haudenosaunee people in longhouses sponsored by New York, and five Diné people from Colorado. The Native people in the American Indian Village had very different experiences from each other. Some were paid decently and made money selling goods. Others, like the Diné people, were unpaid by their host state, Colorado, and were taken advantage of by the agents who brought them to Chicago.

In the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis, the Odawak, Ojibweg, and Potawatomi ceded a twenty mile wide strip on the western boundary of Lake Michigan, ten miles north and ten miles south of the Chicago River as well as a strip of land extending to the Fox River. This treaty established the Indian Boundary Line, an invisible line that Indigenous people had to move their villages north of; but they still retained the right to hunt and fish on the ceded land. The Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi people who negotiated this treaty were hungry and in dire need of supplies due to the War of 1812 and decreasing amounts of game in the region. They agreed to this treaty in exchange for commitments from settlers to provide $1000 worth of much-needed goods annually for twelve years. In 1937, the city established this plaque at the intersection of Rogers Ave and Clark St. to commemorate the treaty.  Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.

Here, in what is known as Pioneer Court, we can see two sites related to the importance of Native women in early Chicago. First, we have this bust depicting Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a fur trader who was of African and Haitian descent and came to Chicago in the 1780s. Du Sable was married to Kitihawa, a Potawatomi woman, and their relationship is an important example of early kinship between Black and Native communities. Together, they established a trading post at this site.  Another French fur trader, Antoine Ouilmette, and his Potawatomi wife Archange lived nearby, at approximately the site of Tribune Tower, just north of where you stand. Antoine led a business of leading people through the Chicago portage, but it's likely that Archange was actually the one who carried the knowledge of the fluctuating waterway and helped, or taught her husband how to, lead people through it. Archange was from a powerful Native-French family, the Chevaliers. Her father was also a French fur trader, and her sisters, Catherine and Suzanne, also married white fur traders. Archange and Antoine lived in Chicago for several decades. They helped protect several white fur trading families in the aftermath of the Battle of Fort Dearborn and were influential in the negotiation of the 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien. This treaty reserved land for Archange and her family in what are now the townships of Evanston and Wilmette, and the city Wilmette is named for her family.  These two households give us examples of the many relationships between Native women and non-Native fur traders, who had to establish and maintain relationships with the Native peoples who controlled these lands in order to safely travel through them and be successful traders. Ojibwe scholar Michael Witgen describes this process clearly: Settlers who were new to the region either became ndenwémagen (relatives in the Potawatomi language) or myeg yegwan (foreigners). In order to be successful in the fur trade, they had to become relatives. But Native women like Archange and Kitihawa were not passive participants in these marriages. Instead, they were extending the long-practiced value of incorporating newcomers into their communities. They introduced their fur trading husbands to the people they would need to know to do business. They managed the businesses locally while their husbands traded across the Great Lakes region for long periods of time. They translated across various Native languages, and educated their husbands on protocols for greetings, gift exchange, and communication.  Proceed north to the corner of Hubbard and Michigan Avenue, then turn left on Hubbard and walk 3 blocks west to the corner of Hubbard and State (a total of .3 miles). From this intersection, locate Marina City (often known as the "corn cob" towers), walking south along State if needed. Please note, there are stairs along Hubbard Ave. Alternatively, you can walk back to the south side of the river and take one of the ramps down to the Chicago Riverwalk, then proceed west along the path. You can view marina city from this side of the river.

Looking northwest across the bridge we can see Merchandise Mart, a well known commercial building, typically known for its Art Deco design and the fact that it was built by Marshall Field & Co and owned by the Kennedy family for a number of years. However, what many don't know is that it was also the site of a Wea Summer Village and a Jesuit Mission from 1696 to 1702. The village, which included Wea people (who were part of the larger Myaamia group at that time), as well as Kaskaskia and Peoria people, pre-dated the Jesuit mission. Jesuits hoping to convert Native people knew that they had to integrate into existing Native communities to have any hope of success, and Native people had long-standing practices of welcoming newcomers into their villages. Today, Peoria, Kaskaskia, and Wea people are recognized within the Peoria Nation of Oklahoma, and Myaamia people are recognized as the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. Both of these communities continue to use a dictionary that was created at this mission for language revitalization efforts.  Several centuries later, after Merchandise Mart was built, it also served as the home of the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) (today called the Bureau of Indian Affairs) from 1942 to 1947. During this time, delegates from the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Nation, the Fort Belknap Nation, the Rosebud Sioux Nation, the Uintah and Ouray Nation, the Osage Nation, and the Blackfeet Nation all visited the OIA in Chicago. Though the OIA moved back to Washington D.C. in 1947, the voluntary relocation program that designated Chicago as a relocation city and brought thousands of Native people here was founded just five years later in 1952.  Proceed south two blocks on La Salle, then turn left on Randolph, stopping at the corner of Randolph and Clark in front of the Thompson Center.

"The Pioneers" is one of four relief sculptures on each corner of the DuSable bridge. Depicting non-Native settlers who are guided by an angel, it represents the "manifest destiny" mindset that was popular in the 19th century and used to justify settler colonialism. Manifest destiny is the idea that land in the United States was “destined” for the United States’ use and had been set aside for white settlers by God. Under this mindset, Native people did not deserve the land they had because they were not Christian.  Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.

While it initially began meeting within the American Indian Center as a club, the Menominee Social Club of Chicago developed as Menominee individuals and families needed support after moving to the city on their own or through the twentieth century voluntary relocation program by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). In 1994, the Menominee community in Chicago reached out to the tribal government to ask for support, and in 1996 the Menominee Nation Tribal Council recognized the Menominee Community Center of Chicago as a distinct but important part of the Menominee Nation. After this recognition, the Community Center was designated as a non-profit tribal program. The efforts by both those on the reservation and the urban Menominee community members in the creation of the center demonstrates the continued connections between Menominee peoples and the lands and family they have on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show was a performance that romanticized the American West and traveled across the United States and Europe between 1883 and 1913. Performers from Pine Ridge (Lakota) traveled the world with the Wild West Shows and were paid well, but the shows dehumanized Native people, depicting them as violent. Bill Cody, the show's founder, tried to have the show included in the 1893 World's Fair. While Cody was eventually able to secure a location just outside of the fairgrounds, he ultimately failed to have the show officially included in the fair because of protests by Native people and anthropologists alike. Activist Henry Standing Bear (Lakota), who had toured with Buffalo Bill, petitioned the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs asking that Bill Cody’s show not be welcomed on the fairgrounds.

Shab-eh-nay was Odawa and was born in what is now known as Michigan. He traveled to what is now Illinois with two Odawa spiritual leaders when he was young, and during his time there, married the daughter of Potawatomi leader Spotka, who lived in a large village on the Illinois River. After Spotka died, Shab-eh-nay became a village leader.  As Shawnee leader Tecumseh worked to unite Native people against increasing American encroachment on Native lands in the first decade of the 19th century, Shab-eh-nay was very influenced by his messages. He welcomed Tecumseh into his village and accompanied him in his travels to other Odawa, Potawatomi, Sauk, and Ho-Chunk villages.  In spite of his alliance with Tecumseh, Shab-eh-nay protected the white Kinzie family after the Battle of Fort Dearborn, alongside Black Partridge, Che-che-pin-quay (Alexander Robinson), Sauganash (Billy Caldwell), and Waubansee. The Kinzies had been living according to Native protocols and kinship with Native communities at Chicago, unlike other settlers who were invading Native territories.   Shab-eh-nay signed the Treaties of St. Louis (1816), Prairie du Chien (1829), and Chicago (1833) in order to protect his village. Like Chechepinquay (Alexander Robinson), Shab-eh-nay stayed on land that had been reserved for him in treaties, traveling between these lands and his community further west. However, Shab-eh-nay’s land was illegally sold.  In 2024, part of Shab-eh-nay's reservation was placed into trust for Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. It is the only federally recognized Tribal Nation in Illinois. This village is one of many across what is now northeastern IL. For a full map of village sites in the Chicagoland area, please visit our Village Site Map.

A full-scale replica of Fort Dearborn was constructed for the 1933 World's Fair. The fort’s blockhouse and barracks were built on the fair's Midway, overlooking Lake Michigan at the end of 26th Street. Fort Dearborn was used as a symbol of the colonial era of Chicago during the 1903 Chicago Centennial Celebration where the first Fort Dearborn replica was constructed. Native actors, along with white actors portraying colonial soldiers and pioneers, were hired for the Fort Dearborn exhibit. While that dynamic reified an adversarial image of Native people, it created a space where local Native people could tell stories directly to fair visitors. Some of the only Indigenous people who lived in Chicago to work at the fair were hired for the Fort Dearborn exhibit. They posed for photos and worked as guides at Fort Dearborn–sharing stories of Indigenous history. To learn more about the role of Fort Dearborn in Chicago’s Indigenous history, see the “Re-Thinking Chicago’s Founding City Story.”

The Chicago Theatre is a historic building, and its large marquee has become an icon of Chicago. However, the theater also sits on the site of one of the camps that Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa) people created during the negotiations of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. That year, Neshnabé representatives were called to Chicago to negotiate additional land cessions in the Midwest. They built massive encampments around Fort Dearborn and lived there the month before finally meeting with US Commissioners on September 21 for negotiations across the river from the fort.  In the 18th and 19th centuries, land cessions from Indigenous nations were made through treaties (legal agreements) with the U.S. federal government. These treaties were often negotiated at established meeting places like Chicago and are not necessarily named for the land that is being ceded. Such is the case for the 1833 Treaty of Chicago which ceded land tracts in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin and orchestrated the forced removal of Neshnabé people from 8 million acres of land in what are now the states of Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.  The treaty was signed on September 26, and it began another migration into the city. Knowing that Neshnabé leaders would soon be receiving their treaty payments, hundreds of American traders from the midwest descended on the city to collect on supposed debts they claimed from Native people. These creditors made up $175,000 of the annuities listed in the treaty, equivalent to about $6.5 million dollars in 2024. In the cash-poor economy of the Midwest, these payments were a massive influx of federal dollars into the region.  Over the next decade, Neshnabé people were removed from the 8 million acres of land in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan in a fragmented and abusive way over the course of nearly a dozen different removals. At least 5 of these removals began at or crossed through the Chicagoland area.  Proceed north, turning right on Lake Street for one block, then turning left onto Wabash and proceeding north one block. When you reach East Wacker, turn right, and make your way back to the southwest corner of DuSable bridge for the final stop on this walking tour (.4 miles).

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) American Indian Education Program provides support for Native American students and their families within the CPS district. Services it provides include after-school tutoring, cultural programming, workshops for students and parents, and programming geared toward students finishing their education within the CPS system or continuing to college. The program is overseen by the Citywide American Indian Education Council (CAIEC), and they monitor the program while also serving as intermediaries between the Native American community and CPS.