By: Diane Benjamin
I attended the Normal Township Board Meeting on July 21. I didn’t notice this until I left:
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The Pride flag must be permanent. Lowering the flag to honor Sen Lindsey Graham was from July 16-July 18. Maybe the Supervisor Krystle Able can explain why the Township’s still is.
I’ve got a lot more from this meeting but it won’t be today. Start here with the reading of the Land Acknowledgement. Before you blame Krystle for telling Township residents they are oppressors, this goes back to 2022 when different Democrats ran the Township. Isn’t it fun to pretend Indians were just peaceful people who never owned slaves and fought wars with other Indians before WHITE people wrecked everything?
The Bloomington Public Library has a land acknowledgement statement as well.
https://www.bloomingtonlibrary.org/land-acknowledgement
A few weeks ago, I reviewed it and was startled to see it said the lands the library was built upon were “unceeded lands”, meaning the indian tribes never agreed to give them to the federal government. I did some basic research, and found this to be grossly inaccurate, discovering that literally every single tribe they listed on their page and every single tribe that had some vague claims (living or hunting rights) to central Illinois had in fact legally CEDED the land to the federal government, selling it for new land in the west and a large sum of silver and goods. When faced with the evidence, library director said she would look into it, and I just checked and they have updated the language and removed “unceeded land”. They frankly did a complete rewrite, and added this funny little tidbit at the end that the land acknowledgement is “a living document” (because historical facts change, I guess?).
I wonder if Krystle’s land acknowledgement makes similar false claims.
Anyways, this is what I wrote to them:
I was reviewing your “Land Acknowledgement” webpage in the footer of the BPL website, and I had a few questions about the historical sources used to originate the facts claimed in the statement. Particularly of interest to me are the source materials the Library used to substantiate the claims that the lands upon which Bloomington Library was built are the “unceded” lands of the Kickapoo, Peoria, Kaskaskia, Oglala Sioux, and Miami Nations. Based on a preliminary internet search, I was able ascertain historical records which clearly demonstrate that during the early 19th century, the United States Federal government signed and ratified at least one legal treaty with each of these listed tribes to officially cede the lands including Central Illinois to the United States, often in exchange for monetary payment and new land given to these tribes west of the Mississippi River. I have included website URLs that directly link to the texts and maps of these treaties.
Kickapoo Tribe Treaty of Cession, 1819: https://treaties.okstate.edu/treaties/treaty-with-the-kickapoo-1819-0182
Map of Kickapoo Tribe Treaty of Cession, 1819: https://digitreaties.org/treaties/cession/110/
Peoria Tribe Treaty of Cession, 1818, https://treaties.okstate.edu/treaties/treaty-with-the-peoria-etc-1818-0165
Miami Tribe Treaty of Cession, part of the larger “Treaty of Vincennes”, 1803/1804, https://discoverindianahistory.org/items/show/674
Kaskaskia Tribe Treaty of Cession, part of “The Treaty of Vincennes”, 1803, https://treaties.okstate.edu/treaties/treaty-with-the-kaskaskia-1803-0067
Additionally, based on my research, the Oglala Sioux (Lakota) never claimed or held any ancestral homeland or hunting rights to the any lands east of the Mississippi, especially not in Illinois, so I am confused why they are listed at all on the Land Acknowledgement statement for Bloomington Public Library. Until the middle of the nineteenth century the Sioux of the West (Lakota) owned or occupied an imperial domain which included within its borders the western parts of North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, northwestern Kansas, northeastern Colorado, and the eastern parts of Wyoming and Montana. Source: https://history.nebraska.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/doc_publications_NH1941OglalaBrule.pdf
I also understand that as with any treaty between two Nations( the federal and the tribes), there are minority factions that may disapprove or disagree with the treaties, and that historical fact is certainly evident by the protests and violent conflict that sometimes was instigated by dissatisfied portions of certain tribes who objected to the treaty signed by their own chiefs and warriors. But for the BPL statement to claim the land was “unceded” appears to not be supported by the historical records of the various ratified treaties whereby every tribe with a claim to Central Illinois did in fact cede the land upon which BPL was eventually built to the United States.
Watch the video and let me know