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.

The center moved to this Wilson Avenue location after Verna Ewen bequeathed money for the building's purchase after her death. In its first year (under Leroy Wesaw as director) the address was sometimes given as 4605 N Paulina Street.

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.

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 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.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

The historic Green Mill Lounge located in Uptown Chicago has a legacy connected to its place in the city during Prohibition, its ties to Al Capone and his associates, and performances by stars of the Jazz Age. But this history also has ties to the Native community in the city. Its poetry slam nights attracted writers and performers from around the city, including Native writers and poets. E. Donald Two-Rivers (Ojibwe) became involved in these poetry nights as he became involved with institutions in the Native community and the poetry scene in Chicago.

The Green Mill also held weekly poetry slams that were sponsored by the Red Path Theatre, founded in part by Two-Rivers in the 1990s. Two-Rivers also held a book release party at the Green Mill for his first book A Dozen Cold Ones in 1992, and remained connected to the establishment through his work with Red Path Theatre Company and the lounge's long-term ties to artists in Chicago.

My Place was a bar and restaurant in Uptown owned and operated by Willi and Daedee Mudd, intended to provide a gathering space for Native people who came to Chicago before and through the voluntary relocation program. It was described as a “place of gathering, carry outs, and pool tables” and was among many Native organizations promoted as an “American Indian owned and operated business” in Chicago and the larger metropolitan area. It is one of many examples of Native folks creating and taking part in the larger Chicago community throughout and after relocation.

The Native American Committee (NAC) first formed in 1969 within the American Indian Center to support activism connected to and within the Red Power Movement in Native American communities throughout the United States and Chicago. One of their first actions that received attention from non-Native media was a sit-in at the Bureau of Indian Affairs Chicago Field Office on March 24, 1970 in solidarity with the second Occupation of Alcatraz by the Indians of All-Tribes and to protest Chicago-specific issues including housing, education, and jobs. 

Members of NAC formally separated the organization from the American Indian Center after disagreements on leadership and the direction of the Center after the death of its director Robert Rietz in 1972. After this separation, NAC dedicated itself to focusing on improving the quality and cultural grounding of Native education in Chicago through the establishment of three different Native education institutions. These included Little Bighorn High School (LBHS), O-Wai-Ya-Wa Elmentary School, and the Native American Educational Services (NAES) College in 1974. 

NAC leadership also extended the services they provided to the community through a newsletter called the Red Letter,  but the grounding of NAC came from a coalition of younger and older generations of Native community members that prioritized educational programming. The legacy of NAC is still felt today through the impact of NAES College and the rich archives it has left in the care of the University of Illinois in Chicago and the American Indian Association of Illinois.

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.

The American Indian Church, also known as the Chicago Indian Bible Church, was founded in the early 1960's as a place for Native people in the city to worship. Although the church faced issues in retaining membership and having a permanent location, it was still linked to other Native led institutions in the city. Board members for Native organizations, including American Indian Center (AIC) board member Roger Harper, attended the church and served on its board of trustees. The church also met at the AIC in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1964 the church's choir was featured in a segment of "Wonderful World" on WKTV on Channel 2, a local Chicago station. The choir performed alongside representatives of the American Indian Center to highlight the presence of Native Americans in the city.

Serving as the first Native American reverend for the church in his tenure that began in 1972, Duane Begay (Navajo/Chippewa) sought to expand the outreach the church had already been doing. Having attended the church when it began in the 1960s, Begay believed there was a need for Native ministers, later graduating from Moody Bible Institute in the late 1960s and earning a master's degree in education. Begay also served as an instructor at Moody Bible Institute, teaching about the Native community in the city while also advocating for more resources to assist them.

The church, in its core goals, was another Native institution that saw mutual aid as essential to the Native community in the Chicago. In addition to gathering community members together, it also published a newsletter, The Chieftan, that helped publicized community events.

Little Big Horn High School and preschool program was founded in 1971 to support Native students in ways Chicago Public Schools (CPS) could not. The school was also established within the context of national attention on the state as a result of the reports 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 (Oceti Sakowin), 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 from the organizations drafted a proposal and received 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 (Oceti Sakowin-Oneida), Lulu Frazelle (Choctaw), George Longfish (Haudenosaunee), Elmora McClure (Ojibwe), Donnis Mitchell (Meskwaki), and Jackie Two Crow (Mandan). The curriculum prioritized an emphasis on the diversity of Native cultures and a more wholistic account of 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, but it 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 teacher to be hired full-time and 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.