'Our identity has been frozen in time': How Native American advocates are influencing Springfield

Amid the annual bustle at the Illinois Capitol during the legislative session’s midpoint, a sea of color and singing filled the rotunda on a sunny March day.

Attendees of the 2025 Native American Summit, organized by the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative, were draped in regalia and leading a drum ceremony for the first time in an Illinois that was home to a federally recognized tribe.

And it was happening amid a backdrop of Native American groups working to secure passage of a bill that would ban what they say is offensive imagery in Illinois school mascots.

“Our identity has been frozen in time, and it’s going to stay frozen in time as long as we’re portrayed as mascots and things of the past,” said Matt Beaudet, a citizen of the Montauk Tribe of Indians who was in Springfield to advocate for the bill’s passage.

Andrew Johnson, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and executive director of the Native American Chamber of Commerce of Illinois, explained the importance of attire.

“We will refer to the clothes that we wear – the traditional clothes that we wear – as regalia. It is something that is honored. It has been passed down,” Johnson said. “There are reasons for wearing the particular items that are there. So, we have that term, ‘regalia.’ It's built and has the bedrock of respect and honor.”

How natives are often portrayed as mascots in school logos throughout the state, however, has a more detrimental effect of “costuming,” he said.

“It really is not a sense of honor there,” he said. “It is not a sense of history. In fact, it's a perversion of history to think that these mascots are maintaining any kind of that memory of Native people.”

Johnson and Beaudet are part of a working group convened by state Rep. Maurice West, D-Rockford, that’s at the forefront on Native American issues at the Capitol.

In the past several years, Native American advocacy groups have scored what they call major victories in state government.

The state has agreed to return tribal land in northern Illinois, required schools to teach Native culture, allowed high school students to wear cultural and religious items during graduation, and streamlined the process of repatriation and reburial of Native American remains and artifacts.

This year’s top priority would require K-12 schools to pick new logos and mascots by July 2026 to replace any that have Native American names and imagery by 2030. That measure passed the House 71-40 on April 10 and is awaiting action in the Senate in the session’s final three weeks.

Read more: Native American mascot ban clears the Illinois House, heads to Senate

If it becomes law, it will mark the latest in a series of policy wins for Native groups that have been working at the Capitol for measures they say go a long way toward righting historic wrongs.

The most recent bill to earn the governor’s signature returns stolen land to the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. Gov. JB Pritzker signed that measure nearly a year after the Prairie Band became the state’s first federally recognized tribe in April 2024.

Read more: Prairie Band Potawatomi becomes 1st federally recognized tribe in Illinois

Illinois has a well-documented history as a removal state, meaning Native Americans were forcibly removed multiple times, including through the Trail of Tears. The Prairie Band Potawatomi’s land in DeKalb County was erroneously declared “abandoned” by the U.S. government and sold at auction in 1849 because Chief Shab-eh-nay had temporarily left the land to visit relatives in Kansas.

For decades, the nearly 1,500 acres had been state park land. State Sen. Mark Walker, D-Arlington Heights, helped usher the measure through the legislature before its ultimate passage in January following heated debate and a narrow 63-41 vote in the waning hours of session. Walker also sponsored the measure focusing on repatriation and reburial of Native remains.

Read more: Potawatomi to reclaim tribal land in DeKalb County 

“These two issues, the one about a reservation and the one about Indian burials, came to my attention as two really difficult issues to solve,” Walker said. “And they've been around the state probably 30-40 years.”

The legislative win for the Prairie Band Potawatomi was years in the making, a product of organized lobbying and coordination. Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick, tribal chairman of the Prairie Band and Shab-eh-nay’s descendant, was a mainstay at the Capitol in the lead-up to the passage of the measure.

“This moment reflects the power of collaboration and the shared desire to build a future rooted in justice and respect,” Rupnick said in a statement following Pritzker’s March signing of the bill. “Illinois has shown true courage and vision by leading the way in the Land Back movement, demonstrating that healing and reconciliation are possible.”

Even with the land transfer measure passed, the Prairie Band’s involvement in state policymaking isn’t going away.

“We, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, being the first tribe to have some of our unceded treaty lands reaffirmed here in the state, have tried to be very involved in issues here within the state,” said Raphael Wahwassuck, a council member for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation.

Wahwassuck is also a member of West’s working group and is pushing to secure passage of the mascot ban, among other policy changes.

“I hear counterarguments about how 'oh we're honoring' or 'this is our tradition,' and I just don't empathize with those because there's better ways you can honor an individual or a group of people,” he said of the portrayal of Native Americans as school mascots.

The mascot ban before the Senate is not a new proposal – even for its House sponsor. West, the Rockford Democrat, first tried to pass legislation in 2020 that would ban Native mascots in K-12 schools, but he changed his plans upon a call from Johnson.

While Johnson relayed to West that mascots are an issue, he and other advocates wanted to prioritize something else: requiring schools to teach Native history.

“The posture I have for my working groups is I'm the chauffer,” West said. “When I meet with them, they tell me what they want to do, and I simply share with them if there's a path forward, and if there is a path, we start driving.”

That measure, sponsored by West, was signed into law in 2023, with the requirement taking effect this school year.

Les Begay, a working group member, citizen of the Diné Nation and leader of the Indigenous People’s Day Coalition, said in general, Illinoisans don’t know much about Native Americans. That’s why measures such as the Mascot ban and history requirement are so important, the tribal leaders said.

“There's so many people in Illinois that have been born here that know nothing about Cahokia,” Begay said, referring to a state-managed UNESCO World Heritage site located in St. Clair County.

Cahokia Mounds, in Collinsville, is home to what was the largest pre-Columbian site north of Mexico. The site was abandoned before Europeans arrived on the continent, but at the height of its population in 1250, there were more people living there than in London, England.

Johnson was part of the successful push to pass the Native education measure in 2023, testifying to the importance of teaching Native history.

“This is one of the many examples where the lack of proper education has deprived our citizens of discovering the full extent of the complexity, interrelations and impact of the people who originally inhabited this land and who continue to live here today,” Johnson said at the time.

After Johnson reached out to West, he found people from other Native organizations throughout the state, along with citizens and representatives of federally recognized tribes, who wanted to collaborate.

“I might not be a Native American, but I'm a Black man with my own history, and I am able to empathize with how they are feeling, so that's what, that's what keeps me going,” West said.

For many, the policy pushes are the latest front in decades of advocating for Native culture.

When Begay studied at the University of Kansas in the 1970s, he was exposed to the American Indian Movement, an organization that gained national attention for occupying Alcatraz Island, the Trail of Broken Treaties and providing grassroots support services for Native Americans.

While members of the working group acknowledged the movement “crossed the line a couple times” AIM and the era’s activism had a lasting impact on some.

“The AIM leaders that originally were based out of Minnesota, they came to the university where I was and spoke once, and I just – after that I just wanted to get more involved,” Begay said.

Begay worked on Native issues with people at Haskell Indian Nations University, a Native American college in the same city as the University of Kansas. In 2016, he joined the board of the American Indian Center, one of the largest centers for urban Native Americans in the country.

Since retiring, Begay has had even more time to work on issues he’s passionate about, like advocating to change the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day. Illinois passed a law in 2017 recognizing “Indigenous Peoples Day” as the last Monday in September each year, but it has not replaced Columbus Day on the official calendar of state holidays.

Beaudet, a lawyer, volunteered with the Native American Rights Fund in the 2000s, helping tribes and Native Americans with legal cases.

He said the issue of Native mascots is something that crops up for him every so often, like at Lane Tech College Prep where he sat on the school’s council and successfully helped advocate to get rid of their mascot, the “Indians.”

He also shared a personal example of the negative effects of Native imagery in Illinois school mascots. Beaudet was exposed to stereotypical depictions of Natives when he attended Archbishop Weber High School in Chicago, the home of the “Red Horde.” Beaudet said showing up for away games in high school brought racism with it.

“When we showed up, it was ‘massacre the horde,’” Beaudet said. “They would have a Native mannequin hanging from the stands or being dragged, supposedly dead, across the field. So, it always brings up a moral, I guess to use the word, visceral response.”

Johnson, who worked for the American Indian Center from 2011-2015 as chief financial officer then eventually its executive director, moved to Illinois from California in the mid-1990s.

“Joining the American Indian Center and hearing what's going on in other places really, really piqued my concern with what students were exposed to, what they had to endure, and really cemented my efforts to try to do something about this,” Johnson said regarding the mascot ban.

He said Native issues have come a long way in Illinois.

“I have seen a difference over the last 10 to 12 years, where it was people saying 'I didn't even know there were any Natives in Illinois itself,' and saying that with all degree of seriousness related to it,” Johnson said.

Now, Johnson said, legislative moves are showing how much progress is being made.

While the mascot ban is still unsettled, working group members are already individually considering legislation for next session, though there is no consensus yet at a group level.

Marne Smiley, a citizen of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe and a working group member, said she provides data and insight to the group as a reference about other Native Americans’ priorities. The data is collected through her role at the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative, or CAICC, which has organized the annual Native American Summit since 2023.

According to one survey from CAICC, there are three issues Native people generally care about most: children, youth and families; mental health; and access to affordable housing.

Johnson said housing and codifying the Indian Child Welfare Act are two things he’ll likely be pushing for in the next legislative session.

The Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA, is a federal law that says Native families are the preferred placement for where Native children removed from their homes are placed. So, children would preferably be moved in with a family in their tribe or to an extended family member instead of putting the child in the foster care system.

Johnson said he’s interested in codifying ICWA in Illinois statute in case of changes to federal law.

A 2023 study from Children and Youth Services Review about the effectiveness of ICWA touched on how Native American children were “overrepresented in the foster care system.” A 16-state survey in 1978, the same year that ICWA became law, showed 85% of Native children in foster care were placed in non-Native homes.

Under another federal law, the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, tribal nations like the Prairie Band Potawatomi work closely with places like the Illinois State Museum and universities to return or reinter human remains.

Begay said he’s interested in strengthening protections under NAGPRA on a state level.

Beyond NAGPRA, other Native interests could be advanced at the federal level as well.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin reintroduced legislation April 29 that would require the National Park Service to study Cahokia Mounds to determine whether it should become a National Park, a designation he’s been trying to secure for Cahokia for years.

Lori Belknap is the state’s site director at Cahokia, after having worked there for 18 years, first joining as a student and volunteer then eventually working her way up.

“So many people I've spoken to over the years, in all those different capacities, have said ‘I didn't even know this was here,’” Belknap said. “You know, they heard about it on TV or they came when they were a kid for a field trip, just a lot of different information.”

Belknap said the site has recently averaged about 200,000 visitors per year, even despite funding challenges and the fact that the visitor’s center has been closed for mechanical updates.

“I know it's a sacred site to the Native culture, and we're just trying to do the best we can to honor that and be good stewards of the site, for the right now,” Belknap said.

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.

This article is part of the Healing Illinois 2025 Reporting Project, “Healing Through Narrative Change: Untold Stories,” made possible by a grant from Healing Illinois, an initiative of the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Field Foundation of Illinois that seeks to advance racial healing through storytelling and community collaborations. 

After a recent central Illinois case that gained national media attention, prompting almost-daily protests, this project sought to engage diverse rural communities with information that brings neighbors together and moves us forward.

Managed by Press Forward Springfield, this project enlisted 3 Downstate Illinois media outlets to produce impactful news coverage on the disparities and tensions within and among the region's diverse communities while maintaining editorial independence.