‘Indigenous Chicago’ project shows the city has always been a Native place

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2024

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

November is National Native American Heritage Month, a time to celebrate and recognize the history, culture and contributions of Indigenous people in our country. If you look around Chicago, you see echoes of Native American history in names like Washtenaw, Skokie and Wabash. But Indigenous history is often presented from a settler or non-Native perspective. Today, we get into a project out of the Newberry Library called “Indigenous Chicago.” Through art, education and collaboration, its goal is to change the dominant narratives about Chicago’s history with the overarching message: Chicago is, and always has been, a Native place. It all began a few years ago with conversations within the Native community. “One of the things we heard over and over again was this issue of invisibility,” said Rose Miron, director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies. “Native community members found that there were far too many people who didn’t understand the long history of Chicago as an Indigenous place, but also didn’t realize that there was a large contemporary community here today.” “Indigenous Chicago” is a collaboration between representatives of tribal nations and includes multimedia art, oral histories, public programs, educational curriculum and an exhibition. Curious City’s Erin Allen spoke with curators Miron and Analú María López, the Ayer Librarian and assistant curator of American Indian and Indigenous Studies.

Transcript

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0:31.6	What's up, Chicago? I'm Erin Allen, and this is Curious City.
0:36.6	November is National Native American Heritage Month,
0:40.0	which is meant to be a time to celebrate and recognize the history, culture, and contributions
0:45.3	of indigenous people in our country. And if you look around Chicago, you see plenty of echoes
0:50.9	of Native American history, for instance, in how we name things, Washington
0:54.9	aw, Skokie, Wabash. But as we heard in the last episode, Indigenous history is often presented
1:01.6	from a settler or non-Native perspective. Well, a project out of the Newberry Library called
1:07.8	Indigenous Chicago is working to change that. They're leading with the overarching
1:12.2	message that Chicago is and always has been a native place. The project has become a pretty
1:18.9	comprehensive guide to Chicago's indigenous history. Among other components, it includes public
1:24.9	programs, an educational curriculum, and an exhibition that you can check out at the Newberry Library, which I visited this past summer right after it first opened.
1:34.8	Anilu Maria Lopez, Wachichichiewee, is the Air Librarian and Assistant Curator of American Indian and Indigenous Studies.
1:43.5	And Rose Myron is director of the Darcy McNichael
1:47.0	Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies. Rose told me it all started back around 2019
1:53.7	when the Newberry was getting a lot of requests for land acknowledgments. A land
1:58.9	acknowledgement is a statement that usually an organization, but sometimes an individual
2:05.0	will make that acknowledges the indigenous history of the land that they are on, as well as
	...

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