Just prior to President Joe Biden’s recent visit to Chicago, I received a phone call from the White House graciously inviting me to meet the president, citing the progress our Native tribe has helped achieve in Illinois this year.
It is true Illinois made tremendous strides this year in its work to repair the centuries-long injustices that started with colonizers doing everything they could to extinguish our people and the origins of this land on which the United States of America was constructed.
The General Assembly unanimously passed a measure allowing Illinois to create a protected cemetery on state lands for the burial of repatriated Native American remains and materials. Illinois possesses the remains of thousands of Native people — some dug up by the Department of Transportation during highway construction and unceremoniously housed in desk drawers — but that’s set to change as the state is on track to return 1,100 of the 7,000 Native American remains the state holds. This legislation, if signed into law by the governor, would bring respect to our ancestors the way they should’ve been respected centuries ago.
The legislature also overwhelmingly passed a bill that would expand Illinois public school curriculum to include Native history and another that would require schools to permit students to celebrate their cultural or religious identity during graduation ceremonies, including by wearing traditional Native regalia.
This progress shows that Illinois is living up to the words Gov. J.B. Pritzker so eloquently stated in his commencement speech last month at Northwestern University:
“When we see someone who doesn’t look like us or sound like us or act like us or love like us or live like us, the first thought that crosses almost everyone’s brain is rooted in either fear or judgment — or both,” Pritzker said. “In order to be kind, we have to shut down that animal instinct and force our brain to travel a different pathway. Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being.”
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But all of this work, while extremely important, does not address a central problem that remains and must be rectified to achieve true justice for Native people in Illinois.
Illinois remains one of only 15 states without a federally recognized tribe. Visitors to Illinois can enjoy the beauty of Cahokia Mounds in southern Illinois and explore Dickson Mounds in central Illinois. In DeKalb, you can walk 1,280 acres of reservation land that was illegally auctioned off to build a state park and houses. But you can’t find a single federally recognized tribe here anymore.
That’s partly because in the 1830s, when Chief Shab-eh-nay — my great grandfather four generations removed — traveled from his home reservation near the village of Shabbona in DeKalb County, the U.S. government illegally auctioned off more than 1,280 acres of his land that was rightfully and legally ours, as affirmed by multiple federal treaties and rulings.
But despite our land being illegally taken from us, we’re still here, living and contributing to life in Illinois, while practicing our traditions and serving our country. Our reservation land may not yet be back in the hands of our tribe, but we have the truth and increasing acknowledgment that our cause is just.
For almost two centuries, Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation has worked tirelessly to get our land back. In 2001, the U.S. Department of the Interior confirmed the history and legal status of the Shab-eh-nay Reservation as federally recognized Indian Country because the U.S. government never received the required congressional approval to auction off land that rightfully belonged to Chief Shab-eh-nay.
Now there’s finally a pathway for us to reclaim our land without disturbing the homeowners whose houses sit on our reservation. Bipartisan-supported legislation sponsored by Chicago-area U.S. Reps. Jesús “Chuy” García and Lauren Underwood would help Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation reclaim the bulk of its 1,280 acres near our original reservation in DeKalb.
These leaders are joining their colleagues from other states and reaching across the aisle to secure bipartisan support with the courage to undo historic wrongs.
When I met the president recently, I told him I look forward to the day Congress passes the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Shab-eh-nay Band Reservation Settlement Act of 2023 and he signs it into law. So that there can once again be a federally recognized tribe welcomed in Illinois.
For me, when the governor delivered his commencement address, his words called back to the start of this country: “When someone’s path through this world is marked with acts of cruelty, they have failed the first test of an advanced society.”
Until the government returns land to Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation that is rightfully and legally ours, we continue to live among the aftermath of cruelty in a broken society. Returning our land will be an important step toward the recognition we deserve as a people and as citizens of Illinois.
Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick is chairman of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and an Army veteran.
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