“Indigenous Chicago,” created through a collaboration between the Newberry Library and several Native community members, leads with the maxim that “Chicago has always been a Native place”—a lesson for Chicago’s non-Native population. 

“Indigenous Chicago”
Through 1/4/25: Tue-Thu 10 AM-7 PM, Fri-Sat 10 AM-5 PM, The Newberry, 60 W. Walton, newberry.org/calendar/indigenous-chicago, free

The exhibition presents five centuries of ongoing Native presence in Chicago. Many of the exhibited materials were created by colonists, but “Indigenous Chicago” reframes these documents to make it clear that the Europeans who arrived in North America were entering an established Native world that was destabilized by colonial violence. Further in, stories of Native people who returned or relocated to Chicago starting in the mid-20th century call attention to the community of mutual aid that continues to affirm Native culture and identity despite centuries of violent displacement. 

These are familiar histories to Indigenous Chicagoans, who have yet to be offered reparations and whose land has yet to be returned. Instead, “Indigenous Chicago” offers an opportunity for acknowledgment by non-Native Chicagoans, raising awareness through an exhibition created with the care of many Native community members. 

The exhibition has raised concern with the Chi-Nations Youth Council (CNYC), who have issued a statement critiquing what they call the misrepresentation of their work, the Newberry’s institutional network, and the exhibition’s monolithic narrative of Native peoples. A label has been rewritten to address some of these concerns, but as the CNYC points out, the Indigenous community of Chicago is larger than any organization that attempts to gatekeep and rewrite its narratives. 

The exhibition and the statement are both a reminder that much remains to be done in combating the white supremacist heteropatriarchy that underpins Chicago, and that those who best understand how to uplift and represent the legacy of Native Chicago communities are those communities themselves.