The Agency House is where the US government engaged with Native people, especially regarding past treaties. This is where the Native signers of past treaties such as the 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien collected annuity payments for land ceded. Chicago’s first Indian Agent, Charles Jouett, moved his family into the Agency House in 1805. The Jouett family employed a Pottawatomi woman, Nokenoqua, as a housekeeper and held at least one enslaved person in bondage there. Alexander Wolcott was appointed as Indian Agent in 1817. It is believed that Wolcott worked with Antoine Ouilmette to recruit Alexander Robinson to negotiate the three treaties in 1829, 1832, and 1833 that lead to the removal of Anishinaabe and the official founding of Chicago as an American city.

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.

Navy Pier originally opened in 1916 as Municipal Pier before a renaming in 1927, serving as a shipping and recreation facility for the city. The Navy Pier ballroom was the site of numerous annual powwows hosted by the American Indian Center that featured dancers from throughout the city. Photographs of powwow participants at Navy Pier for these powwows were featured in the book Chicago's 50 Years of Powwows (2004) sponsored by the American Indian Center, who worked with Newberry staff. While many photographs of powwows across Chicago exist, most of the photographs in the Newberry collection were taken by Chicago community members Dan Battiste, Ben Bearskin, Joe Kazumura, Peter Weil, and Leroy Wesaw. Powwows were held at Navy Pier in 1973, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1987. Navy Pier has continued to be an occasional site for powwows, arts shows, and gatherings for Native Americans. One of the most recent powwows held at Navy Pier was in 2011 for the 58th American Indian Center Powwow. Today Navy Pier remains a historic site for not only the city of Chicago, but also to the Native American community.

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.

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. These stained glass images in the Baptistry of the Queen of All Saints Cathedral retell a story of colonial expansion and assimilation. Looking across the room you can see Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America, the baptism of Chief Sauganash (Billy Caldwell) and his family by Father Badin, the settlement of Fort Dearborn, and lastly, the signing of the Treaty of 1833 (although it is labeled as 1835) which orchestrated the removal of Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Odawa) people from Illinois.

On August 18th, 1835, roughly 5,000 Potawatomi converged at the Agency House to receive their final annuity payment from the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. At the conclusion of this meeting, the Potawatomi began singing and drumming, and approximately 800 began to dance as a procession formed.  With their hair done in a roached style and “decorated with a profusion of hawk’s and eagle’s feathers, some strung together so as to extend nearly to the ground,” Potawatomi mourners began dancing with their weapons in-hand as myriad more beat drums, sticks, and other hollow objects together. Judge John Dean Caton, a resident of Chicago at the time of the procession, recounted before an audience 35 years later at the Chicago Historical Society. As Caton writes, “\[f]oreheads, cheeks, and noses were covered with curved stripes of red vermilion, which were edged with black points… \[they were] principally armed with tomahawks and clubs… \[and] were led (sic) by what answered for a band of music…”  From the Council House they marched west, dancing as they moved along the Chicago riverfront “stopping in front of every house they passed,” before crossing the North Branch of the river. After crossing the bridge, the procession made its way south before again crossing the South Branch on the Corduroy Bridge (located roughly at the site of the present-day Lake street bridge). As they crossed, the procession halted in front of the Sauganash Hotel as its patrons stared in awe. The processioners continued to dance, and from the hotel windows, Caton stated that he and the other patrons could see the entirety of the procession as it snaked across the South Branch back up to the North Branch bridge. Caton and other onlookers misinterpreted this procession as a “war dance,” but in fact, it was a mourning procession that served as a visible act of defiance against Chicago’s alleged “founders.” It illustrates that Neshnabé people did not willingly cede the land on Lake Michigan’s shores. It was taken from them, and they protested their loss.

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).

Native peoples from around the United States came to work at the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition, or World's Fair. Most came as performers, but many artisans came to sell artworks and other items. Craftspeople earned $1.00 a day. This trading post was one of the places where art created by Native peoples was sold. The fair Committee on Arts and Crafts created a special Indian Arts and Crafts Board to regulate the sale of Native art. While the Indian Arts and Crafts Board was formed to provide opportunities for Native peoples to make a living at the fair, fair organizers at the 1933 fair were similarly constricting and paternalistic towards Indigenous people as they were at the 1893 fair. Likewise, the Indian Arts and Crafts Board wouldn’t allow Indigenous people to sell items that included factory-made beads because they wanted to maintain the narrative that Indigenous people were not modern.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Native American Educational Services (NAES) College was founded by the Native American Committee (NAC) in 1973 to continue their mission of increasing accessible education for the Chicago Native American community. NAES College began as Native American Educational Service (NAES) with the initial founding of the school being grounded in providing Native students with a system of higher education, supporting community members in earning their G.E.D., and promoted traditional academic knowledge combined with tribal knowledge. After the opening of the Chicago campus NAES College expanded to study sites in Minneapolis Saint-Paul, the Menominee Reservation, Fort Peck, Leech Lake, Northern Cheyenne, and Santo Domingo. After issues with a federal grant, NAES administrators partnered with Antioch College to keep the institution going in some form to support Native students who sought higher education. Today NAES College has been reconfigured as Native American Educational Services, Inc. Its library and archives were split between the University of Chicago and the American Indian Association of Illinois (IAIA). In its current form, the organization continues to advocate for Native students through a partnership with AIAI and its president Dr. Dorene Wiese in stewarding the stories of its alumni, faculty, and administrators.

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 Caroline and Ora Smith Foundation, housed in Chicago, supports opportunities for Native American girls and women in grade school to graduate programs in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Founded by Mary Smith (Cherokee) and named after her mother and grandmother, the organization's overall mission is to facilitate a larger number of Native American women in STEM fields. Although it is based in Chicago and working with its first cohort in Chicago and Milwaukee, the Foundation is working to offer community and culturally specific programming to Native women across the United States.

Native peoples from around the United States came to work at the 1933 World's Fair. Many lived and worked in the American Indian Village where they worked as performers. Performers were paid as much as $1.75 per day with children also working for $0.40 per day. The "Winnebago Village" (Ho Chunk) included at least seventy-five Ho Chunk people from Wisconsin. Many had performed before and after at the Wisconsin Dells where performance of Native identity became an ongoing attraction. By 1933, performance of Native identity had become popular outside of the World's Fair in vaudeville and at tourist sites. Performers like Chief Eagle Feather (Cherokee) promoted themselves by creating a perception of authenticity in their work that was popular among audiences.

The Gichigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum in Chicago was founded in 1977 after John and Betty Seabury Mitchell donated their collection of Native American artifacts to Kendall College before the museum became its own institution in 2006. It's original name was the Green Bay Trading Co, and until 2024, it was known as the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian. This collection contained objects from tribal nations across North America, leading the initial mission of the museum to focus on the history and diversity of all tribes to match the expansive the collection.  After consulting with Native community members in Chicago and throughout the Great Lakes, the museum adjusted this mission to focus more on the histories of Chicago’s Native community and Tribal Nations in the Great Lakes Region of the United States and Canada. It's 2024 renaming reflects this new focus, and the Gichigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum continues to work alongside other organizations to highlight Native representation in literature, music, and art in its exhibits and projects.

The portage between the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers served as an important piece of infrastructure for Native peoples long before European settlers arrived in the region. The portage was often called “Mud Lake” because of the way it fluctuated between marsh and dry land over the changing seasons. Called the Portage des Chenes, or “Portage of the Oaks,” by the French, it was one of two portages that connected the Mississippi River watershed to Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes via the Illinois River (the other portage was between the Des Plaines River and the Calumet River). These portages allowed Native people to travel and trade throughout the region for millennia. Louis Jolliet and Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, the first European settlers to traverse the Indigenous portage in 1673, 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, the monuments at the site today (one of which is pictured here) show Marquette leading the journey, while the Native guide crouches behind him, in a submissive position. This is one of several depictions of Marquette and Jolliet throughout Chicago, each of which perpetuates a false narrative of the subservience of Native people.

This exhibit, named a racial epithet during the 1893 World's Fair, became known for the treatment of the Inuit performers and their successful protest of their conditions. Promoter P.M. Daniels forced them to perform in warm clothing on hot days. When some protested, they were locked in and confined. Locals petitioned the courts successfully to have the Inuit people liberated from the camp for being held against their will, but they still needed a clandestine escape at night with the help of a Moravian Minister. After escaping, some ended up staging their own exhibit on Stony Island Blvd. outside of the fair.

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.

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.

The Chicago American Indian Center was founded in 1953, but has existed in several locations across its history. At each place, it has worked to promote community across Native people living in Chicago, advocate for the welfare of Native people in the city, and sustain and educate others about Native cultural and artistic traditions.

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.

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 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.

Originally known as the American Indian Charter Convention, what is now known at the Chicago American Indian Conference of 1961 was a planned convention scheduled from June 13 through June 20 to put forth recommendations to the federal government on federal Indian policy. The idea of the convention came from a culmination of Native American leaders within already existing Native organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), leaders of tribal nations, and non-Native individuals with a vested interest in the efforts of self-determination and the recognition of sovereignty of tribal nations.  One non-Native who became a major proponent of the Conference and its main coordinator was Dr. Sol Tax, an anthropology professor at the University of Chicago who had a history of involvement with Native peoples through the NCAI and the Chicago Native community. Based on his experience and relationship with community members, Tax approached leaders of the Chicago Native community and organizations within Chicago to gauge their interest in hosting this national meeting. Members of this initial meeting who became crucial members of the Indian Advisory Committee during the planning process included Benjamin Bearskin (Ho-Chunk/Oceti Sakowin), Irene Dixon, Frank Fastwolf, Willard LaMere, Rose Stevens, D'Arcy McNickle (Metis), and non-Native Father Peter J. Powell.  Prior to the national conference, dozens of regional conferences took place to discuss regional issues within Native communities in preparation for the larger gathering. The Conference was finally held at and funded by the University of Chicago after months of meetings and communication between representatives of tribal nations, members of Native communities, and organizations that fought for the protection of rights for Native people and Native nations.  The final draft of theDeclaration of Indian Purpose was the result of this conference, and it addressed the contemporary issues impacting Native peoples. These issues included a call to revoke the federal policy of termination and assure water rights, land rights, healthcare, education, and a reorganization of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).  Along with this Declaration, which was presented to President John F. Kennedy, another result of this conference was the emergence of another intertribal organization. The National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), now known as the Native Professional Advancement Center, grew from a coalition of younger Natives who attended the conference who were frustrated with the approaches of some tribal leaders.  Although there was not another conference, the Chicago conference of 1961 demonstrated that Native individuals and tribal leaders could and would come together to advocate for issues that impacted all Natives.

This mural, titled "Indians Cede the Land" is one of hundreds of WPA murals across Chicagoland, many of which depict Native people. WPA (The Works Progress Administration) murals were a part of the New Deal program under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Murals like this allow passerby to quickly take in the story and narrative which they display. Typically showing the development of the U.S. from early interactions with Indigenous peoples, western expansion, and modern industry, these murals include Native people but strip them of all information which would make them significant to U.S. or Indigenous history. Rather than capture the complicated history of Indigenous-settler interactions and the transformation of Native land, this mural reduces it to an easily digestible story of progress. By commemorating Indigenous peoples as only located in the past or at a particular point wherein they encountered European settlers, the murals erase Indigenous peoples, or position conquest and removal as a necessary developmental step in the unfolding of U.S. history.  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.

As seen in this relief sculpture, French explorer Louis Jolliet and Jesuit priest Father Jacques Marquette, are often credited with discovering Chicago in 1673. However, Native people had been living at and traveling through Chicago for centuries before their arrival. Likewise, their journey through the Chicago portage, a critical link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed, was made possible with the assistance of Native guides. 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. It was Native people they encountered near the convergence of the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers who told them about the Chicago portage, and Kaskaskia people (of the larger Illinois Confederation) that led them safely through the portage.  Despite their significant reliance on Indigenous knowledge and assistance, the legacy of Jolliet and Marquette often overshadows the leadership and contributions of Native people. In representations like this one, Marquette and Jolliet are centered and appear to be leading, while Native people cower behind or below them in subservient positions.  Proceed north a short distance to the bust of Jean Baptiste Point du Sable in Pioneer Court.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

The Bo-Sho-Nee-Gee Drop-In Center was created by St. Augustine’s Center for American Indians in 1973 to expand on the services they could provide to the Native community. Administrators, case workers, and other leadership within St. Augustine’s saw the need for a program to help individuals struggling with alcoholism and addiction. Bo-Sho-Nee-Gee began as a program to combat one issue within the community, but it soon expanded to provide other services including meals and counseling. Its efforts towards food security for community members also included students from the Institute of Native American Development (INAD) who received assistance while attending Truman College.

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.

On Monday June 14, 1971, a number of Native people involved in or affiliated with the organization Chicago Indian Village (CIV) broke into an abandoned United States Army missile site in Belmont Harbor. The occupation was one of several during this period by CIV, who took up the strategy of occupying abandoned federal sites, a tactic used by Native activists across the country during the Red Power era. The site included 12-acres on the lakefront that had recently been closed by the Department of Defense as part of the process to turn the land over to the Chicago Park District. Mike Chosa (Ojibwe) led CIV alongside Carol Warrington (Menominee). Chosa used media attention from the occupation to call for housing and education for Native youth, requesting 200 public housing units, space for educating hundreds of Native children, a cultural center, and more access to jobs. As a result of the occupation, Chosa reached an agreement the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Office of Economic Opportunity for 132 units of public housing in Uptown that would be opened for Native families. Another part of the agreement designated Camp Seager, a Methodist Youth Camp near Naperville, Illinois as a temporary housing site that CIV did eventually occupy. But to some in CIV this was not enough. The group was ultimately removed from the site to a church, after altercations between police and protestors results in the arrest of twelve Native activists.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

This monument was commissioned by previous fur trader, eventual lumber magnate, and Chicago real estate investor, Martin L. Ryerson, who employed John J. Boyle to create “The Alarm.” Originally commissioned under the name “The Indian Family,” the monument is dedicated to the Odawa, one of several Indigenous peoples whose homelands include Chicago. The statue’s pedestal also holds a relief panel on each side, titled, “The Peace Pipe,” “The Corn Dance,” “Forestry,” and “The Hunt." Ryerson, sought to memorialize his relationship with the Odawa, but the representation ultimately cements Native people in time. Moreover, the monument was commissioned in the same period that violence against Native people was still ongoing in the West and Native children were being sent to Indian boarding schools. The creation of representations like these allowed settlers to romanticize Native people and think of them as entirely historical, while ignoring the ongoing atrocities against them.  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.

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.

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.

Our tour begins at the site where the "You Are On Potawatomi Land" banner was displayed from 2021 to 2024. We have intentionally started this tour with the present, to emphasize that although Native people were forcibly removed from this place, the many tribes who still consider Chicago to be part of their ancestral homelands, still maintain connections to this place. These include the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa, the many tribes within the Illinois Confederation, and the Myaamia, Ho-Chunk, Sauk, Meskwaki, Menominee, Kickapoo, and Mascouten. This mural, created by Ojibwe artist Andrea Carlson in 2021, highlights these ongoing connections.  Land in Chicago was ceded through four treaties, but the land on which we stand and over which this mural stood did not exist when those treaties we're signed. In fact, the majority of the land east of Michigan avenue did not exist when those treaties were signed, and thus remains unceded. Originally, the Chicago River curved sharply, forming a protective sandbar ideal for canoes and wildlife. But after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the land was extended into the lake, creating new territory that was not covered by the treaties. In 1917, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi sued for this land, though the Supreme Court ruled against them. A more recent victory occurred in April 2024 when the Prairie Band of Potawatomi reclaimed 130 acres of land in DeKalb County that was illegally sold, marking a significant moment in the ongoing struggle for land justice. The Prairie Band of Potawatomi is the first federally-recognized tribal nation in Illinois.  Proceed north about .1 miles across the DuSable bridge to the northeast corner, where you will see the Discoverers relief. On you way across, notice the other plaque dedicated to Marquette and Joliet.

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.

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 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.

This beautiful bricolage mosaic mural was created in 2009 by Cynthia Weiss, Tracy Van Duinen, and Todd Osborne after being commissioned by 48th Ward Alderman Mary Ann Smith. Prior to its construction, Weiss, Duinen and Todd facilitated community discussions with various Native community members and organizations in Chicago to discuss how they want to be represented. These discussions spanned across two years before the current design was solidified. The location of the mural was also selected deliberately for how roads like Rodgers, Broadway, and even the general area around the mural’s location, were all former Native trails.  The mural is intended to represent the past and current Native American community in Chicago, but deliberately avoided generalizing “Indian culture.” The imagery on the mural seeks to connect generations of the Indigenous community by incorporating figures from traditional culture alongside ‘gaps’ in the mural in which mirror fragments allow the viewer to reflect how they too occupy a part within this greater art piece and community.   The mural’s name was inspired by Ojibwe artist E. Donald “Eddy” Two-Rivers’ poem “Indian Land Dancing.” Learn more about E. Donald Two-Rivers here.  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.