Creating Community and Maintaining Resistance: Chicago Indigenous Activism in the 1960s and 70s

Abstract

This thesis examines Indigenous resistance in Chicago during the 1960s and 1970s, arguing that Native community-building and strategic rhetoric formed the core of urban Indigenous resistance in this period. While national narratives of Native activism often overlook Chicago, the city's Indigenous community strongly resisted Euro-American colonialism through a variety of methods. This paper narrates the experiences of the communities while considering the unique urban backdrop of Chicago and the broader colonizing context of relocation policy. By analyzing three sites of activism, the 1961 American Indian Chicago Conference in Hyde Park, the American Indian Center in Uptown, and the Chicago Indian Village in Wrigleyville, the thesis traces both continuity and change in Indigenous strategies, demonstrating how community itself functioned as an assertion of sovereignty and survivance while rhetorical approaches shifted from subversive diplomacy in the early 1960s to overt militancy in the 1970s. Centering Indigenous voices, this project challenges Eurocentric historical narratives and positions Chicago as a crucial hub of community, rhetoric, and resistance. These stories demonstrate how Native Chicagoans sustained and transformed Indigenous traditions of diplomacy, survival, and sovereignty.