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.

O-Wai-Ya-Wa Elementary School was founded after Native American parents in Chicago and Chicago Public School's (CPS) began a collaboration in 1973. It began as an alternative school housed within Goudy Elementary School, now William C. Goudy Technology Academy in the Edgewater and Uptown neighborhoods.  This school was founded within the context of a national interest in Native education through studies in the 1950s and 1960s that provided a survey of what Native student experiences in public school and federally controlled schools across the Unites States. CPS was one of several school systems in cities with a growing Native population that were studied that also included Los Angeles California; Baltimore, Maryland; and St. Paul, Minnesota.  The success of Little Big Horn High School in the city after it was founded in 1971 to support Native students led to enough momentum for the Native American community to create another school or cultural support program. Louis Delgado (Oneida) was a major proponent of O-Wai-Ya-Wa and became its first director. However, the school faced early opposition from the Chicago School Board that saw the school as potentially separating Native students after it received a $50,000 grant. With the support of Goudy Elementary's principal, Tom McDonald, Delgado and other coordinators were able to find space for the school in a former grocery store at 5306 North Winthrop. However, due to federal cuts in funding, O-Wai-Ya-Wa eventually became a support center instead of its own educational institution.  This school, along with Little Big Horn High School and its daycare center, were founded by the Native community to support the needs of its children. The efforts by these parents, educators, and community leaders is still seen in Native organizations that focus on how to support Native children within Chicago.