DePaul’s Land Acknowledgment and Indigenous Peoples’ Day Celebration

I walk to campus on my usual route (the one where I pass Wiggly Field dog park, of course) accompanied by gusts of autumn wind and a backdrop of trees dressed for the season in their best reds, oranges and yellows; summer is but a warm memory as I wrap myself tighter in my black leather jacket. 

I’m on my way to DePaul’s second Annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day Celebration where there will be food, dancing, chanting, drumming and community with some of the Indigenous groups that call Chicago their home. 

“When people perceive Chicago … a lot of people don’t think that there are Indigenous people who live in the city,” says Jane Baron, associate director in the Office of Multicultural Student Success (OMSS) at DePaul. 

Baron is referring to the erasure of Indigenous groups whose land our very own campus is situated on — whose land seamlessly changes in tune with the seasons. Despite Chicago’s name being derived from the Algonquin word “Checagou,” many of the people who inhabit it presently know next to nothing about the communities whose traditions, language, history and ancestors were sacrificed and forgotten to make way for the city we know and love today.

Before the mass genocide and systematic expulsion of  Indigenous communities, the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi Nations, better known as the Council of the Three Fires, flourished off the rich marshlands of the Great Lakes region.

Recognizing their shared Anishinaabe ancestors, these nations – as well as various other Algonquin-speaking nations with whom they shared the land – formed necessary alliances and symbolic kinship relations to maintain intertribal trade and relative peace. 

Beginning in the 16th century, European colonizers forcibly took hold of the Natives’ land, bringing with them ravenous disease. The colonial era that followed resulted in containment and extermination through war, abuse, and contentious efforts at diplomacy. Removal of Indigenous communities became federal law in 1830 with Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, allowing the use of military force to uproot the Indigenous peoples from their land. 

By 1952, Indigenous communities were once again relocated back to the city with the promise of housing and the training necessary to find work. Instead, they were met with poor housing conditions and outdated training, essentially trading rural poverty for urban poverty. Today Chicago is home to one of the largest Native American populations, including 175 different tribes.

I try to keep this history in mind as the revolving doors of the Student Center transport me from the evening chill to the lively happenings inside. With ease, I find the open doors of room 120 where students, staff and dancers have already found their seats in the circle of chairs.

Halau i Ka Pono, Oak Park’s Hawaiian Hula School, opens the night’s performances with their gently swaying hips and passionate chanting. Their dance is a love letter to the earth, each movement a gesture of appreciation and certainty. “It’s always about telling a story,” says founder of Halau i Ka Pono, June Yoshiko Kaililani RyushinTanoue. She rhythmically beats her hand against the ipu, a drum made from gourds. Her soft chanting accompanies the beat to which the dancers match their steps. 

Next, is the fast-paced and unapologetic dance of Azteca Xochitl-Quetzal, whose practices originate from Tenochtitlan in present-day Mexico City. Young kids and adults alike, crowned in feathered headdresses, stomp their shell-embellished ankle cuffs to the rhythm of drums. Their instruments, inspired by elements of nature, coalesce with the lively movements of the dancers as they describe their culture through metaphor. “It’s an educational presentation as opposed to a performance,” says Xochitl-Quetzal’s founder and director, Henry Cervantes. “It’s not a show.”

Cervantes, with the help of his 8-year-old daughter, explain the cultural genocide imposed on their ancestors by European settlers. “They didn’t understand a lot of it,” says his daughter. “They didn’t understand the drums, that’s why they banished it. It was against the law to practice our tradition.” Hence, the imperative need to preserve Mexico’s ancient culture and educate the people whose ancestors contributed to the mass erasure of Indigenous Mexican peoples. 

To close out the evening, is the joyful performance of Ayodele Drum and Dance, a sisterhood of African women seeking to express themselves and cultivate community through intense drumming and soulful dancing. Accompanied by the djembe, dundun and dundun samba drums, the dancers move their bodies fluidly back and forth in response to the beat. “When you hear the music and respond, that’s connection,” says Executive Artistic Director T. “Ayo” Alston, as she urges the audience to join in. 

Omojolade (Omo) Oladipupo, an apprentice performer with Ayodele, mirrors the same sentiments of community connection. “Being that the group is founded by Black women and Black queer women at that, really was the perfect representation I needed … they’re literally my second family.”

DePaul joins the rising number of urban institutions to announce a land acknowledgment, following the Field Museum in 2020, the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019 and Loyola University earlier this year, among others. Noticeably, many of these announcements land on or around Indigenous Peoples’ Day, as if every day were not a cause for acknowledgment, appreciation and action. 

“If you wanna solve something, first you have to acknowledge that there’s a problem,” says Cervantes. 

To look to the next step beyond acknowledgement and education and to address the problem, some Indigenous movements like #LandBack are focused on physically reclaiming what was stolen. Additionally, Chi-Nations Youth Council and other community groups run by and for Indigenous people accept support through direct donation, and mutual aid. 

Indigenous people have been fighting for centuries, to join them in their fight you can visit The Indigenous Anarchist or Indigenous Mutual Aid.

Header illustration by Julia Hester