Friday Feature: Potawatomi Presentation
UU Society of Geneva
Upcoming Friday Feature: Potawatomi Presentation
Geneva Unitarian church presentation focuses on new Potawatomi Reservation
The public is invited to a special Friday Features program on the past, present and future of the Potawatomi people in the Fox Valley and DeKalb County region. The free presentation will be held on Friday, October 25 at 7:00 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva, 110 S. Second St. in downtown Geneva.
Lynn Steele of the church’s Social Justice team will offer an overview of the history of the Potawatomi in the area, concentrating on Chief Shabbona and his band in DeKalb County, and explain why the land they purchased in 2006 was recognized as the Prairie Band Potawatomi Reservation this last April—the first Native American reservation in Illinois in 175 years..
While working on a land acknowledgment statement for the church, Steele was surprised to find that the prairie Potawatomi people he knew while growing up in Kansas were descendants of the indigenous people who were in the Fox Valley before white settlers arrived.
The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation has been in the news this past year because the federal government has acknowledged that the land reserved for Chief Shabbona in two separate treaties had been illegally auctioned to white settlers in 1849. That year, Chief Shabbona had left his home to visit the friends and relatives in Missouri and Kansas. When he returned he found that his dwellings had been removed and the land had been sold.
“It is important that we understand the history of the Potawatomi here in order to know why there is now a reservation back in Illinois after the indigenous people were removed following the Black Hawk War,” Steele said. “Revisiting this history will help us welcome the return of a Native American presence in our state. It will also help in understanding the legislation pending at the state and federal level to restore the reservation to one closely resembling the original protected land that was illegally sold.”