Photo Source: https://eaes.uic.edu/about/land-acknowledgement/

The Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative (CAICC) land acknowledgment reads: “Chicago is the traditional homeland of the Council of the Three Fires: The Odawa, Ojibwe and Potawatomi Nations. Many other Tribes like the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac and Fox also called this area home. Located at the intersection of several great waterways, the land naturally became a site of travel and healing for many Tribes. American Indians continue to call this area home and now Chicago is home to the sixth-largest Urban American Indian community that still practices their heritage, traditions and care for the land and waterways. Today, Chicago continues to be a place that calls many people from diverse backgrounds to live and gather here. Despite the many changes the city has experienced, our American Indian community sees the importance of the land and this place that has always been a city home to many diverse backgrounds and perspectives.”

In our review of other land acknowledgments, we also want to share that the Zhigaagong (‘Zhi-Gaa-Goo’), now referred to as ‘Chicago,’ exists on the unceded, ancestral homeland of the Council of Three Fires: the Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe), Odawak (Odawa), and Bodéwadmik (Potawatomi). More than a dozen other Nations also have longstanding ties to this region, including the Kiash Matchitiwuk (Menominee); Jiwere (Otoe), Nutachi (Missouria), and Baxoje (Iowas); Hoocąk (Winnebago/Ho-Chunk); Meshkwahkîha (Meskwaki); Asâkîwaki (Sauk); Myaamiaki (Miami), Waayaahtanwaki (Wea), and Peeyankihšiaki (Piankashaw); Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo); and Inoka (Illini Confederacy). Long before colonization and settler arrival, these communities created sophisticated trade, transportation, and agriculture networks, forming a strong foundation upon which Chicago would later develop into a major metropolis. Despite centuries of forced removal, erasure, and oppression, Chicago today remains home to one of the largest urban Native populations in the United States, representing over 150 Indigenous Nations from across North America.

We do acknowledge critiques of land acknowledgments as performative gestures that can portray colonialism as a relic of the past, neglecting ongoing colonization and contemporary harm to Indigenous peoples. As the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) prepares to gather in Chicago, we ask our members to consider how our presence on this unceded territory and the ways in which social sciences, as products of Western epistemologies, have historically perpetuated colonization, Indigenous erasure, and the extraction of Indigenous knowledge without reciprocity.