Played throughout the year is a popular game reserved primarily for women called gwzegé’wen [bowl and dice]. Considered a great honor, only certain women are allowed to host games and possess equipment, a right conferred through a dream. Traditionally, women were responsible for hosting annual dodem [clan] feasts in honor of their bowl and dice set. Gaming equipment includes: (1) …
Laframboise foundation Theresa Laframboise Hardin Watkins Beaubien — Chee Chee — and her family removed to Council Bluffs, Iowa, before making the journey to the Potawatomi reservation in Kansas. Theresa was the daughter of Chief Joseph Laframboise and Therese Peltier. Joseph held a standing as one of the Chicago Chiefs, along with Chief Wabunsee, Chief Thomas “Billy” Caldwell or Sauganash, …
An important victory for the Native alliance during the Northwest Indian War, Harmar’s Campaign attempted to suppress Native attacks on settlers and garrisons in the Ohio Territory. United States General Josiah Harmar engaged in numerous ineffective retaliatory assaults on major tribal villages that amassed overwhelming casualties and defeat.
In 2013, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Kevin K. Washburn joined Citizen Potawatomi Nation Chairman John “Rocky” Barrett to formally approve Tribal leasing regulations meant to spur investment and commercial development on the Nation’s trust lands in central Oklahoma. The regulations gave CPN the authority to decide how it wants to do business …
Higbee-Potawatomi beginnings The Higbee’s Potawatomi roots begin in the 1800s with the marriage of Julia Justine Bertrand and Alva Higbee. Julia’s parents, Madeline and Joseph Bertrand, were successful fur traders and business owners near Lake Michigan. Madeline was the daughter of Daniel Bourassa I and an unknown Potawatomi woman. Her mother was most likely a member of Potawatomi communities in …
Having endured the boarding school years, where children were taken far from their families and placed in schools designed to strip them of their culture, the continuation of Native child adoption by non-Indian families proved one of the direst issues facing tribal communities by the 1970’s. For generations, Indian families lost their children to federal agents, who, at their discretion, …
The Indian Gaming & Regulatory Act was a law passed by Congress attempting to mitigate the growing frustration states had with their inability to tax and regulate sovereign Indian nations’ gaming operations. Beginning in the 1960’s and 1970’s, tribal communities across the United States began operating bingo houses to raise money for their communities. As states also attempted to channel …
In the years after the defeat of the British and their Indian allies in the War of 1812, the nature of the U.S. government’s Indian policy and the goal of treaty-making became increasingly hostile toward Native Americans, opening the door for the removals of the 1830s. The federal government was no longer interested in negotiating treaties that just arranged for …
The Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), known also as the Wheeler-Howard Act for the two United States Senators sponsoring the bill, was the first major effort from the U.S. federal government to allow tribes to govern their own affairs. The IRA provided tribal nations with resources to create a written constitution, halted the allotment process, and authorized funds for use by …
In the years following the disastrous policy of Termination, the United States federal government began shifting its energies towards investing in tribal autonomy as a way of managing Indian affairs. Beginning formally with a 1961 Commission on the Rights, Liberties, and Responsibilities of the American Indian concluding that top-down initiatives lacking cooperation with tribal community members are destined for failure, …