People in the Southland can enjoy a new gathering space to celebrate art, nature and history.
About 100 residents, environmentalists, historians, artists and others dedicated the “Prairie Boat” installation Saturday at Beaubien Woods Forest Preserve on Chicago’s southern border.
“We’re extremely excited about the gathering space because it’s a very strong connector between communities, the native landscape and the river,” said Laura Barghusen of Openlands, an organization that works to protect natural areas.
“Prairie Boat” inspires the imagination and pleases the eye with intricate wood carvings, sturdy stone work and thoughtful nods to human ancestors. The exhibit is shaped like a boat and invites young children to learn about heritage as they play.
“I was out here the other day taking some photos and there was a family seated here picnicking, flying a kite,” said Laura Milkert of the Field Museum. “I just thought to myself, seeing people drawn to this particular place and this beautiful spot, It’s working. It’s starting, and this is part of a new beginning and activation of this space.”
Beaubien Woods, near the Bishop Ford Freeway’s 130th Street interchange, is an attractive destination for residents of Blue Island, Burnham, Calumet City, Dolton, Riverdale, Robbins and other south suburbs. The 300-acre park is among the finest gems in the Forest Preserves of Cook County’s vast system.
“This preserve has quiet wood oak lands, wetlands, prairie, access to the Little Calumet River and Flatfoot Lake,” said Arnold Randall, the forest preserve district’s executive director. “You can see coyote, deer, Baltimore orioles, and even bald eagles, which is awesome.”
The “Prairie Boat” installation showcases the Calumet region’s importance as a link in the Underground Railroad. Thousands of Southern Blacks fleeing to Canada via Detroit to escape slavery in the years before the Civil War passed through the region with help from abolitionists like George Dolton, Jan and Aagje Ton and the Osterhoudt family.
Before that chapter in the Calumet region’s history, Native Americans inhabited the area for thousands of years. The Calumet region stretches from Chicago’s South Side and across northern Indiana to the Michigan border.
“Our particular connection to the Calumet region goes all the way back to the opening of the museum,” said Mario Longoni, lead environmental social scientist at the Keller Science Action Center at the Field Museum.
The Field Museum and other organizations are working to have Congress designate the Calumet region as a National Heritage Area that recognizes lived-in places where natural, cultural, historic and recreational resources intersect.
“Beaubien Woods is a key place in the hopefully soon to be designated National Heritage Area that we call the Calumet region,” Longoni said.
Community members and organizations have worked together in recent years to make the region more accessible to visitors and showcase people who made a difference throughout history.
A stretch of the Little Calumet River between Beaubien Woods and Robbins has been designated the African American Heritage Water Trail. The village of Robbins was home to an airfield where some of the Tuskegee Airmen learned to fly, and “Prairie Boat” includes portraits depicting the heroic aviators.
Beaubien Woods borders the historic Altgeld Gardens public housing development, where an activist discovered residents lived in the center of a circle of industrial pollution on Chicago’s Southeast Side.
“Miss Hazel Johnson started in the late 1970s, and in the 1980s was dubbed by her peers across the country as the mother of the environmental justice movement,” Longoni said. “She helped to get environmental justice addressed at the national level.”
More recently, the forest preserve district has worked to restore natural areas at Beaubien Woods by removing invasive buckthorn, Randall said. Roads have been repaved, and later this month workers will begin a $2 million project to make a canoe, kayak and boat launch area accessible to people with disabilities.
“The work will include reconstruction of the fishing boardwalk, river edge seating, a new program shelter and interpretive signs about the cultural history of this site,” Randall said. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources funded the work, Randall said.
Imani Village is another partner organization involved in the “Prairie Boat” installation and Beaubien Woods improvements. Imani Village is a social enterprise designed to serve residents of Pullman and nearby neighborhoods. The enterprise involves constructing new sustainable housing, developing youth educational programs, a community health center, recreational facilities and urban farming.
Imani Village is an initiative of Trinity United Church of Christ. Church member Jannie Coleman recited a poem, “When I See You,” that was written for the occasion.
“When I see you, oh slave ancestor of mine, I see you picking cotton,” Coleman recited. “I can hear your heart’s cry, a cry to be free.”
Generations later, descendants of slaves live in the Calumet region and honor their ancestors.
“So today I am a product of your heart’s cry,” Coleman recited. “A result of your fright, your flight and your dreams.”
Ted Slowik is a columnist for the Daily Southtown.