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.

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.

Little Big Horn High School and preschool program was founded in 1971 due to the efforts of the Chicago Native community to support Native students in ways Chicago Public Schools (CPS) was unable to by itself. The school was also established within the context of national attention to the state of Native American education through national studies including Equality of Educational Opportunity in 1966 and Indian Education: A National Tragedy - A National Challenge in 1969.

Non-Native leadership within CPS led by the general superintendent of schools James R. Redmond sought the Native community's guidance in developing programing for Native students. Education and cultural programing had long been a priority for Native organizations who believed that collaborating with CPS was the best path forward. Leadership within the Chicago Native American community who supported the development of a program that would become Little Big Horn included the program director at the American Indian Center (AIC) William Whitehead (Sioux), Lucille St. Germaine (Ojibwe) Robert Dumont Jr. (Assiniboine), as wells as members of both AIC and the Native American Committee (NAC). After meetings between the AIC, NAC, and CPS officials led to a proposal and funding through an over $200,000 grant in 1971, Little Big Horn began classes in September of that year alongside a preschool program to provide daycare for children too young to attend school.

Little Big Horn was also unique for having primarily Native staff that included both Germaine, Dumont, Kathy Diekmann (Assiniboine), Jon Fastwolf (Sioux-Oneida), Lulu Frazelle (Choctaw), George Longfish (Iroquois), Elmora McClure (Ojibwe), Donnis Mitchell (Mesquakie), and Jackie Two Crow (Mandan). The curriculum prioritized an emphasis on the diversity of Native cultures and a more wholistic account of the history. Students were encouraged to learn not just about the intertribal community of Chicago, but also more about their own Tribal Nations.

In the first year the school was housed within the AIC at its location in Uptown Chicago, but moved to what had been Robert Morris Elementary School on West Barry Avenue due to the need for space and divisions within AIC. Financial difficulties faced by CPS in the 1979-1980 school year and pressure to desegregate Chicago schools led to significant cuts in the school's budget. While the school had previously been able to hire at least five teachers and enrolled seventy to one hundred students every year the 1981-1982 school year only allowed one to be hired full-time and had led to the school's evolution into a support program within Senn High School. This continued until the program shut down in the late eighties.

In its founding Little Big Horn High School joined other schools founded by Native American communities and Tribal Nations to serve the specific needs of children in those communities. It was the result of multiple Native organizations and non-Natives within CPS pursuing every path possible to ensure the success of Native students.

Located on the ninth floor of the old main Post Office, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) office was occupied several times by Native activists who were advocating for more resources and more of a voice within the BIA in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The sit-in on December 26, 1969 was organized by the Native American Committee, a group formed within the American Indian Center to support Red Power activism. The committee occupied the BIA office to support the occupation of Alcatraz Island (1969-1971) by the group Indians of All Tribes and other Native activists. By December, the Alcatraz occupation had entered its second month of what would become a two-year occupation.

Another one of the most publicized sit-ins by Native activists in Chicago occurred on Monday March 23, 1970. This was part of a coordinated mass sit-in campaign that also included five other BIA offices in Denver, Colorado, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sacramento, California, Cleveland, Ohio, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and other Native institutions argued that the BIA needed to assist Natives that lived off of reservations. The protests also critiqued the BIA more broadly, especially policies like the voluntary relocation program and Termination.

This sit-in at the Chicago BIA office resulted in 23 arrests on trespassing charges including Minnie Bacon, Mike Chosa, and Steven Fastwolf. However, like other national-level protests, these sit-ins also brought national attention to issues Native communities faced in cities and on reservations. Native activists sought aid to help with housing, health, job, and food security, which they had been promised through treaties and through the voluntary relocation program. These sit-ins were Native communities' way of exerting their right to aid.

After the Chicago Indian Village (CIV) was forced off its original site across from Wrigley Stadium, its leaders looked to new ways to highlight the issues of housing security for Natives in Chicago. After moving to an apartment building, a former Nike missile base site, and the Fort Sheridan Army Base Mike Chosa (Ojibwe) and other CIV leaders moved to Camp Logan, the National Guard base near Zion, Illinois in early 1972. CIV settled on the base from early January until the end of June.

This occupation began when forty members of CIV moved from the camp they had created near the Fort Sheridan Army base's main gates to two barracks at Camp Logan as a part of an agreement with the Governor of Illinois's Office of Human Resources. The original agreement was that until March 1, 1972 CIV was allowed to stay in the barracks until the National Guard would need the barracks for scheduled training throughout the summer. Chosa agreed to the 15-point memorandum, saying "It was a question of signing the agreement or letting our people freeze to death on the road."

CIV stayed past this original agreement, but a court ruling in mid-April stopped the state's plans for evicting the group. Attorneys hired to represent CIV discussed paths forward with the Illinois attorney general's office, keeping the two barracks for the group. But this did not last, by the end of June the state won an eviction suit against the group.

After being forced out of the camp on June 30 by police, thirty-six people faced charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. These charges were later dismissed against thirty-three of the group. Chosa and other leaders of the group, numbering more than twenty, moved to an apartment building on the North Side of Chicago on Kenmore Avenue to continue to protest housing conditions. CIV continued to be a focus of news stories and members of the organization continued to advocate for the Native community, but by the end of 1972 the group dissolved.

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 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.