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Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick
said passage of the three bills will benefit the 35,000 people
of Native American heritage who live in Illinois.
House Bill 3413, sponsored by State Rep. Mark Walker,
D-Arlington Heights, amends the Human Remains Protection Act to
require the Illinois State Museum and other institutions to work
with federally recognized tribes to rebury Native American bones
and artifacts. Many Native American remains were dug up many
years ago by the Department of Transportation during highway and
road construction.
“The remains of thousands of our ancestors have been in the
hands of institutions for centuries,” Rupnick said. As more
remains continue to be discovered, the new protections will
ensure that gravesites will be treated with proper respect.
At Dixon Mounds Museum near Lewiston, a coalition of more than
two dozen tribes with ancestral lands in Illinois, is working
with archeologists to rebury 1,100 remains.
“This new law will bring respect and honor back to our
ancestors,” Rupnick said.
In 1849, Rupnick’s great-grandfather (4 generations removed)
left Illinois when 1,280 acres of Prairie Band Potawatomi land
near the village of Shabbona in southern DeKalb County was
illegally seized by the government and auctioned off.
As a child, Rupnick, like thousands of Native American children
across the country, was taken from his parents and forced to
attend a boarding school for Native American children in Utah.
Indian boarding schools were designed to assimilate native
children into mainstream American culture by forbidding them to
speak their native languages or learn about their history.
A second bill signed by the governor – HB1633, sponsored by
state Rep. Maurice West, D-Rockford, – makes Native American
history part of the standard public school curriculum in
Illinois.
“Many cities, rivers and towns across Illinois have Native
American names, but the history has been wiped out,” Rupnick
said. “Illinois was our homeland for thousands of years. Now
students will learn about our presence,” Rupnick said.
A third bill – SB1446 sponsored by state Sen. Suzy Glowiak
Hilton, D-Western Springs, – protects the rights of Illinois
students to wear accessories that reflect cultural, religious,
or ethnic heritage at graduation ceremonies. Nimkii Curley, a
Native American high school senior, was forced to sit out his
graduation ceremony because he wanted to wear an eagle feather
and beads on his graduation cap.
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