Potawatomi to reclaim tribal land in DeKalb County
[March 25, 2025]
By Peter Hancock
SPRINGFIELD – More than 175 years after their reservation in Illinois
was illegally sold at auction, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation is now
in line to get their land back.
Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation Friday authorizing the Illinois
Department of Natural Resources to hand over to the tribe the ownership
title to Shabbona Lake State Park, a 1,500-acre tract in southern DeKalb
County that largely overlaps the tribe’s original reservation.
“This moment reflects the power of collaboration and the shared desire
to build a future rooted in justice and respect,” Prairie Band
Potawatomi Chairman Joseph ‘Zeke” Rupnick said in a statement. “Illinois
has shown true courage and vision by leading the way in the Land Back
movement, demonstrating that healing and reconciliation are possible.”
Although ownership of the land will revert back to the tribe, visitors
to the park should not notice any difference, at least not for now.
Senate Bill 867, sponsored by Sen. Mark Walker, D-Arlington Heights,
also requires the tribe and DNR to enter into a land management
agreement that will keep the land open for public recreation.
Prairie Band Potawatomi officials have said publicly they have no plans
to develop the property for a casino or any other commercial use. They
also point to a 2005 Illinois statute that requires the governor to seek
legislative approval before entering into a compact authorizing a tribe
to conduct gambling in Illinois.
“This legislation puts Illinois on the right side of history — fostering
a partnership with indigenous communities and returning what was
wrongfully acquired,” Walker said in a statement. “I have worked with
the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation on this bill since 2018, and today we
celebrate this achievement together.”
In a 2024 podcast interview with Capitol News Illinois, Rupnick
described the tribe’s history in the area. He noted that before European
settlement, the Potawatomi people occupied much of the Great Lakes
region. But as settlement occurred, they were gradually pushed into
smaller enclaves.
In the 1829 Treaty of Prairie Du Chien, Prairie Band Chief Shab-eh-nay
was granted two square miles of land, or 1,280 acres, in what is now
DeKalb County that was intended to stay in his family’s possession in
perpetuity. But the following year, President Andrew Jackson signed the
Indian Removal Act, which authorized the president to grant land west of
the Mississippi River to tribes that agreed to give up their lands in
the east.
That led to the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, in which the Potawatomi,
Chippewa and Ottawa tribes ceded 5 million acres in present-day
Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin in exchange for land west of the
Mississippi. Many of the Potawatomi eventually resettled in what is now
northeast Kansas.
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Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick, chairman of the Prairie Band Potawatomi
Nation, testifies before an Illinois House committee on March 12,
2025. Gov. JB Pritzker has signed legislation ceding to the tribe
ownership of the 1,500-acre Shabbona Lake State Park in DeKalb
County. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Peter Hancock)
That treaty, however, did not include the 1,280 acres that had been
granted to Chief Shab-eh-nay, Rupnick said, and Shab-eh-nay continued to
live on that land for several years.
Around 1849, Shab-eh-nay went to visit the rest of the tribe at their
new reservation in Kansas, a trip that would take several weeks on
horseback. Upon his return, Rupnick said, Shab-eh-nay learned that his
land had been declared “abandoned” by the Illinois General Land Office
and sold at public auction.
“That’s when he discovered that people were living in his house,”
Rupnick said. “They actually picked up his house and moved it to another
location and people were living in it. He tried to fight that through
the court systems. They told him that he had abandoned his land, that
the General Land Office had sold all of his land because he abandoned
it, and they allowed the settlers and whoever else to live there.”
The Prairie Band Potawatomi have argued since that time that the land is
still legally theirs because Congress never authorized the sale, and as
recently as 2001, attorneys for the U.S. Department of the Interior
acknowledged the tribe had a legitimate claim to the land.
“The federal government has acknowledged wrongdoing in the sale of the
land,” Walker said in his statement. “With the support of the Illinois
Department of Natural Resources and members of the Prairie Band, this
transfer is not only a common-sense solution, it’s the right thing to
do.”
Until last year, Illinois was one of only a handful of states with no
federally recognized tribal reservations. That changed in April 2024
when the Interior Department placed into trust 130 acres from the
original reservation that the tribe had repurchased, making that
property an official reservation.
After the Shabbona Lake State Park transfer is executed, that land is
expected to be added to the reservation.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government
coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick
Foundation.
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