Land Acknowledgement

The Design Museum of Chicago is located on the traditional Territories of the Three Fire Peoples, the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodewadmi, though dozens of other Native tribes historically used this area for gathering, healing, and trade.

This land was forcibly purchased after more than two years of open warfare that built on decades of violent encroachment, and after the defeat of a pan-Indian movement to keep settlers out of the Great Lakes region at the Treaty of Chicago in 1821. Today, Illinois is still home to more than 75,000 tribal members, including Ho-Chunk, Miami, Inoka, Menominee, Sac, Fox, and their descendants. Chicagoland, specifically and proudly, hosts one of the largest and most diverse urban Native communities in the U.S.

We recognize that Indigenous peoples — who lived here long before Chicago was a city and are still thriving here to this day — are the rightful and traditional stewards of this land. Operating within this context, we strive to create scholarship and programs that right the historic wrongs of state violence and colonization, and better support the struggles of our Indigenous community members as they continue to fight for sovereignty and self-determination.

For more information about settler colonial history focused on Chicagou/Chicago, visit the Settler Colonial City Project. To see a map of Native lands and learn more about the history of colonialism, Indigenous ways of knowing, and settler-Indigenous relations, visit Native Land.