A proposed statement acknowledging the pre-colonial Native American tribes who inhabited the land within Riverside’s village borders has been tabled after it drew criticism for being vague about the violent history of westward expansion in the United States.
Riverside trustees unanimously agreed to defer a vote of approval for the statement on Oct. 2, though Trustee Joseph Fitzgerald was absent. The item could return to the board for possible acceptance at a future meeting, though it was not on the agenda at trustees’ Oct. 16 meeting.
The proposed statement reads, “We sincerely acknowledge the Native Peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather. We hope to honor their legacy by living in harmony with and protecting green spaces, the river, and the beneficial flora and fauna therein,” according to documents from the meeting.
Cathy Maloney, a member of the village’s historical commission, created the acknowledgment and presented it to the board, alongside two pages of more detailed explanation, after researching the history of Native American tribes — including the Ojibwe, Ottawa and Potawatomi nations of the Three Fires Confederacy, several nations of the Illinois Confederation, and other groups — that lived in and moved through the area for thousands of years before European settlers colonized and ethnically cleansed it.
“A lot of times, we, and myself, for sure, tend to think of only the Olmsted period, which is, of course, what we’re landmarked for, but there were thousands of years before then, where other peoples were here in Riverside, so it’s important to acknowledge that,” Maloney told trustees. “A number of commissioners worked on researching it; I simply compiled and put the thing together.”
She said the commission’s goal was to create a relatively simple statement capturing the essence of the area’s history, which she described as “in flux” due to ongoing academic study, while the longer notes with cited sources could go on Riverside’s website for those who wish to learn the nitty-gritty.
Maloney said Jasmine Gurneau, the director of Native American and Indigenous affairs at Northwestern University, described her own office’s land acknowledgment as an “evergreen” living document.
Gurneau and other area experts “suggest[ed] being thoughtful about how and when you use the statement so that it doesn’t become rote, so that it becomes something that you can really live by,” Maloney said.
The wording of the proposed statement has two parts, she added.
“There’s the actual acknowledgment that we know that we didn’t just arrive on this land, and it was ours to start with, and Frederick Law Olmsted created a whole world that was never here before, but also a commitment to do something about it,” Maloney said. “I think this commitment is consistent with what we do and how our various commissions are set up to honor the green space and to honor that to which we’ve been entrusted.”
While Trustee Cristin Evans said she found the statement “beautiful” and Trustee Aberdeen Marsh-Ozga described it and the underlying research as “thoughtful and thorough” and successful at honoring the “transient” nature of the area’s pre-colonial Native American population, Trustee Elizabeth Kos moved to table the board’s vote for approval.
“I feel very strongly that an important component of any land acknowledgment is the reconciliatory nature of it: the acknowledgment that this land belonged to somebody prior to European people coming into the area, and that the purpose of a land acknowledgment is to say that that land was taken from them, and the Native peoples were removed from the land,” Kos said. “There were people living here prior to Olmsted, prior to European settlement, prior to other people coming from all over. We need to acknowledge the fact that they were forced off their land where they were living.”
Trustee Alex Gallegos seconded the motion, and Evans and Trustee Jill Mateo voiced their support for Kos’s explanation.
Before the five present trustees all voted in favor of tabling the discussion, Village President Doug Pollock said he would ask them each to submit possible edits before it would return for further consideration.
“It’s obvious that everybody’s in agreement with the spirit of this. It’s more a question of what exactly we want to say, and given that, I think we should table it,” he said. “It’s not a thing we can figure out discussing at a board meeting.”
