Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation returns to ask DeKalb County government for aid to reclaim land

SYCAMORE – Days after Indigenous People’s Day and Christopher Columbus Day, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation sought the DeKalb County government’s aid this week in a long-standing pursuit to reclaim nearby land.

Joseph Rupnick, chairman for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, appealed to the County Board this week during its committee of the whole meeting. He said the nation’s Chief Shab-eh-nay, Rupnick’s fourth great-grandfather, was given land near Shabbona by U.S. Congress 170 years ago.

Since the mid 1800s, he said the nation has been “working to try and get the federal government to recognize that that’s still a reservation and that we still have claim to that land.”

“We’re asking this body here to tell us one way or another whether they support our claim or whether they deny it,” Rupnick said. “We’re hoping that you’re supportive of this to help correct this historical wrong that has been done to our people 150, 170 years ago.”

In response, DeKalb County Board Chairman John Frieders said the issue soon will be addressed with the full County Board, adding it is “one of the top priorities of the County Board.”

“We’re going to support this moving forward,” Frieders said.

DeKalb County Board member Terri Mann Lamb wished the Potawatomi representatives a happy belated Indigenous People’s Day before giving her comments on the matter. As “a sister Native American” from the Munsee tribe in New Jersey, Mann Lamb said she “understands this fight.”

“I also personally believe that all this land belongs to us – I’m not going to lie, that’s how I feel,” Mann Lamb said. “And so when I’m reading this, I actually feel a little anger about this and concerned, because when you look at all of what you’ve given, how can anything be denied?”

Robert Odawi Porter, lawyer for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, said the Potawatomi people in northern Illinois were forced out of their homelands in the early 1830s by the federal government, because of the Indian Removal Policy. However, the Treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1829 reserved 1,280 acres for Chief Shab-eh-nay.

Porter said the U.S. General Land Office later illegally sold Chief Shab-eh-nay’s land in 1849 at a public auction while the chief was visiting relatives in Kansas. The land title was then passed to non-Native Americans.

Since 1849, several individuals, the state of Illinois, the DeKalb County government and corporate entities assumed ownership of the reservation, Porter said. Only the U.S. Congress can extinguish the Native American land title under the Federal Non-Intercourse Act, however.

Porter said the main objective is for the Potawatomi people to get their land back. The nation went before the County Board this week to determine whether the government would support its appeal to the federal government. He said the nation also is asking for “a real small portion of damages.”

“If you go back and look at lost rent and you multiply out whatever land value it is today times 170 years, you can probably come up with a figure on your own about what damages should be owed to us,” Porter said. “We’re looking at basically covering the cost of what we’ve got into this with legal fees and everything else that we’ve had to amass.”

Porter said individual owners, state and county government continue to occupy the land that once belonged to the chief.

“And that’s our proposal to the senators – that all individuals within the reservation, the county and the state are held harmless for what was fundamentally the misconduct of the United States,” Porter said.

The reclamation efforts have been pursued by the nation for years.

In 2015, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation approached the County Board in 2015 for its blessing to open a Class 2 casino, which would include only bingo, in Shabbona.

In an email Friday, Rupnick said the request made during the Wednesday meeting is not related to the previous effort to open the proposed casino.

“Before we consider any economic development, we have to correct the land issue,” Rupnick said.

Porter said U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth, all of Illinois, have been reviewing the proposed federal legislation that would return the land to the Potawatomi people for about two years.

Mann Lamb told Porter and Rupnick she wanted to know how long it has been under review “so it can move forward and become what it should be.”

“Your rightful land,” Mann Lamb said.