Susan Kelly Power: 'American Indians in Chicago struggle to preserve identity'
By Dahleen Glanton
Susan Kelly Power was 17 when she boarded a train to Chicago, a place that seemed a world away from the Indian reservation she grew up on in North and South Dakota. In the 70 years since she left her family's home on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, Power has carved out a distinctive place for herself in Chicago's youthful American Indian community. The oldest Native American in Chicago, she is the memory keeper in a community where history is sacred.
From the controversial Battle of Fort Dearborn, which marks its 200th anniversary this week, to Chief Illiniwek, the University of Illinois mascot who was forced into retirement five years ago, activists such as Power have made it their mission to set the historical record straight. While the Battle of Fort Dearborn is considered a pivotal part of the city's history, American Indians living in Chicago have become, for the most part, an invisible population that is struggling.
With few financial resources and no political muscle, the community of about 49,000 American Indians in the Chicago area has struggled to find a voice in a region where they are outnumbered by almost every ethnic group. Once tucked away in Uptown and now scattered throughout the city and suburbs, they could virtually go unnoticed if not for a small but vocal group of elders who refuse to back down from a good fight.
"We want people to know that we still exist. We haven't left this earth yet," said Power, a historian and co-founder of the American Indian Center of Chicago, a social services and cultural facility in Uptown that was once the anchor of the local Native American community. "But we don't want people to look at us with pity in their eyes or romanticize us. Most of the material out there is nonsensical. It's up to us to tell our story."
At 87, Power's longevity in the city is an anomaly among Native Americans whose history in Illinois dates back thousands of years. Though the American Indian population in the city grew 29 percent, to about 27,000, during the past decade, its elderly population has dwindled as older residents retired to the reservations.
Thirty years ago, there were more than 20 American Indian organizations in the city, said Dorene Wiese, president of the American Indian Association of Illinois. Now there are three. Since the recession began, their budgets have been slashed by the city and the federal government, leaving most day-to-day functions to volunteers.
At the same time, community activists said, American Indians have struggled disproportionately with poverty, unemployment and a staggering high school dropout rate. More than 27 percent of American Indians in Chicago have incomes below the poverty level, slightly less than African-Americans but more than other minority groups.
Wiese said the economic condition of American Indians is more dire than the 2010 census indicates, largely because she believes the figures are skewed. The census form allows anyone to identify themselves as American Indian, whether they have official tribal papers or not, she said. Without those who identified themselves as mixed race, the number of American Indians in Chicago would be cut in half, to just over 13,337, the census shows.
East Indians, whites, African-Americans and Hispanics who do not have tribal documentation are identifying themselves as Native American, Wiese said, driving up the economic status of Indians to artificial levels. Meanwhile, an equal number of tribal-recognized Indians, who like many poor people living with multiple families in a residence, were not counted in the census, she said.
"We call them 'box checkers,' the thousands of people who say they are American Indian" but don't have legal status, said Wiese, whose agency provides educational services for children and adults. "It hurts us when the demographics look higher than they are."
For example, Wiese said, the census shows that nearly half of the Native Americans in the United States are homeowners. But in Chicago, where the American Indian population is larger than on most reservations, homelessness is a chronic problem.
Like most social service agencies, the recession has hit the American Indian Center hard. Donations are down, grants are harder to obtain, and public funds are drying up. But Joe Podlasek, executive director, said Mayor Rahm Emanuel is partly to blame. This year, the center was cut from the city's budget.
"Everyone expected a cut in budget, but ours was completely removed," said Podlasek, who has laid off staff and streamlined programs because of funding cuts. "We're not asking for a half-million dollars or even what other agencies get. But you can't just eliminate a race of people."
The American Indian Center received $45,000 from the city last year, said Matt Smith, a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Family & Support Services. Community development block grant funds were denied in 2012 because the center did not meet the city's contract performance measures, he said. The last recorded daily attendance in October 2011 was 19 percent, he said, far short of the required 80 percent attendance needed for funding.
The American Indian Center, founded in 1953, was the first urban American Indian center in the country. At one time it served more than 100 of the 566 federally recognized tribes in the U.S., but as the demographics in Uptown shifted due to gentrification, many low-income Native Americans moved to less expensive neighborhoods such as Pilsen. They also went to Elgin, Aurora, Waukegan, Joliet and other suburbs.
As the economy slowed, the community became more transient, Podlasek said.
"People think we are independently wealthy from the casinos, but programs for tribes do not extend to urban areas," Podlasek said. "Coming from the reservation to a city is a huge change. If they find a job here, they stay. If not, they go back home because they have some support mechanisms there."
With fewer American Indians taking advantage of the services, the center opened its doors to others in the community, offering hot meals, after-school programs, a food pantry and clothes to needy residents.
African-American, white and Hispanic children participate in after-school programs and powwows alongside American Indian children. The only requirement, Podlasek said, is that everything is done in the Native American way. That means the older children mentor the younger ones. And while the center doesn't impose a particular religion, each morning an Indian ritual of burning sage is performed to purify the air and get the day off to a good start.
The exposure has been good for the Native American community, some leaders said, because it has helped to break down stereotypes. Increasingly, they say, young people are embracing their Native American heritage, moving away from the long-held belief that it was better to hide their ancestry and blend in with Hispanics and whites to boost their acceptance in America.
"The Indian Center does a good job of being a focal point for parents who want to include their children in activities of the Native community. They not only get a sense of what it means to be an Indian, they learn what it means to be a Chicago Indian," said John Low, a Chicago American Indian historian who will be an assistant professor at Ohio State University in Newark next fall. "Otherwise, all they know about Indians is the Blackhawks logo and Chief Illiniwek."
The anniversary of the Battle of Fort Dearborn has again focused attention on American Indians, but even that is often controversial. Native Americans and some historians have challenged the traditional story of what happened during the battle that occurred during the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain. What is clear, though, is that Potawatomi Indians, allied with the British, attacked U.S. soldiers as they evacuated Fort Dearborn, leaving dozens of troops, civilians and Indians dead.
Some American Indians and others have raised concerns that only one side of the story is often told, placing Indians entirely in a negative light. Three years ago, the City Council dedicated a park commemorating the battle and named it "Battle of Fort Dearborn Park," declining to use any reference to a "massacre."
Though Chicago had been primarily Potawatomi land since the 1700s, they were among the Indians relocated west of the Mississippi River in the 1830s by the federal government. As a result, there are likely only a few of their direct descendants in the Chicago area, said Low, a member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, located primarily in southwest Michigan and northwest Indiana.
"Chicagoans generally know there is some Indian past here. They can drive along Lake Shore Drive and see the Indian statues and be reminded there used to be Indians here," Low said. "But they are unaware that there is a vibrant community here."
Sharon Okee-Chee Skolnick, 67, a former director of the American Indian Center and a board member who moved to Chicago 40 years ago, said it is important for people to know that while each tribe is different culturally, they are all family.
"We are multicultural, multilingual and very diverse," said Skolnick, a Fort Sill Apache who was adopted from an Indian orphanage in Oklahoma and raised in Arkansas. "There is no such thing as a generic Indian."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-american-indians-20120813,0,4038047.story
American Indian Center of Chicago
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