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When Potawatomi Chief Shab-eh-nay left his home in present-day DeKalb County to visit family in Kansas, he returned just weeks later to seized lands. The U.S. government had illegally auctioned off the 1,280-acre reservation.
“They said he abandoned his land and sold it,” said Joseph Rupnick, the chairman of Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation.
The generational trauma of the past 175 years weighed heavily on Rupnick, Shab-eh-nay’s fourth great-grandson. And it remained at the forefront of his mind last month when he signed a deed placing 130 acres of that land in trust — a bureaucratic process that grants Prairie Band sovereignty in the territory.
It means for the first time in nearly two centuries, Illinois is home to a federally recognized tribal nation.
“All those years of fighting, and trying to get folks to see the injustice that was done, actually is starting to make change,” Rupnick said. “It’s kind of surreal.”
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Optimism, doubt ahead of Johnson’s Treatment Not Trauma mental health plan
Progress on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign promise to install the so-called Treatment Not Trauma plan remains difficult for Chicagoans to see. The City Council tasked a working group with answering many of the toughest implementation questions: where to open facilities, what to ask for in the budget, how many people to hire and more. Beyond that, few changes have materialized.
But the path forward should soon become clearer.
Lawmakers consider bill that would criminalize sexual relations between educators and older students
To close what some sexual abuse survivors and advocates see as a legal loophole, Illinois lawmakers are considering a bill that would criminalize sexual relations between school authority figures and students aged 18 to 23.
In Illinois, where the age of consent is 17, educators and other school employees can be fired if they are found to be in a sexual relationship with a student of any age. But there is no avenue to press criminal charges if the student is 18 or older.
Tensions flare between DePaul pro-Palestine encampment and counterprotesters
A group organized by the Chicago Jewish Alliance gathered at Fullerton and Seminary avenues Sunday morning in response to an encampment set up Tuesday at DePaul University to protest the war in Gaza.
Members of Chabad Lincoln Park, Stand With Us, Hillel Metro Chicago and the Jewish Institute for Liberal Voices, among other groups, helped organize the demonstration and said they wanted to help Jewish DePaul students feel safer. The group flew Israeli and American flags.
At U. of C. encampment, Jewish organizers explain significance of their anti-Zionist Shabbat service
After a tense day of protests, counterprotests and increased university police presence on the University of Chicago’s Main Quadrangle, the sun began to fade Friday evening and the Jewish holy day of Sabbath began.
Within the encampment established by the University of Chicago United for Palestine coalition, about 50 Jewish students and faculty and community members sat down on a blue tarp among tents and kaffiyehs to observe a planned prayer service.
Troops fired on Kent State students in 1970. Survivors see echoes in today’s campus protests.
The shootings at Kent State and their aftermath have taken on fresh relevance, with students demonstrating against another far-off war, college administrators seeking to balance free-speech rights against their imperative to maintain order, and a divided public seeing disturbing images of chaotic confrontations.
Ukraine marks its third Easter at war under fire from Russian drones
As Ukraine marked its third Easter at war, Russia launched a barrage of drones concentrated in Ukraine’s east and claimed its troops took control of a village they had been targeting.
Breastfeeding moms sent naked photos, videos to purported lactation consultant on Facebook. Now they fear it was a scam.
Sleep-deprived and anxious about feeding their babies, tens of thousands of moms in Illinois and elsewhere recently turned to a variety of Facebook groups offering support for breastfeeding, pumping breast milk and postpartum care.
Via Facebook Messenger, the creator and admin of these groups would request photos and video recordings of the mothers’ naked breasts — and in some cases vaginal areas — for supposed health care purposes, according to multiple members of the groups and screenshots of private messages.
Chicago wrestler Joe Rau’s improbable journey leads him to the Olympics — at age 33
“It doesn’t feel real,” Joe Rau said. “I’m still a little paranoid that it’s going to be taken away from me or I’m going to get hit by a car. But I’m starting to get used to it, and it feels amazing.”
Chicago Bears’ lakefront stadium proposal: What’s been said, what we know — and what we need to know
Illinois politicians are faced with the Chicago Bears’ request to build a new, publicly owned $3.2 billion enclosed stadium on Chicago’s lakefront. The state’s top leaders expressed reluctance, but Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is all in.
So what exactly is proposed, what else is at stake, and how will this play out? Here are a few highlights.
Protect your young trees from incoming cicadas
The only plants that may be vulnerable to cicada damage are young, newly planted trees and some shrubs. “Female cicadas make slits in small twigs and branches to lay their eggs,” said Sharon Yiesla, plant knowledge specialist at The Morton Arboretum. “On a very young tree, small twigs and branches may be all it has.”
The ‘Crime of the Century,’ 100 years later
Nathan Leopold would be questioned when Bobby Franks’ corpse was found, released, and then called back for a second interview. At that point, someone else would demand a lawyer. But Leopold was convinced he could outsmart the cops and had reason to think so.
He was 19 and had studied 15 languages, claiming to be fluent in five. The previous October, in Boston, he presented a paper on the Kirtland’s Warbler, and showed footage he shot of the elusive songbird at the annual meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union.
But his encore performance for the Cook County state’s attorney was disastrous. He inadvertently put himself at the scene of the crime. It was the fatal error in Leopold and Richard Loeb’s blueprint for a perfect crime.
Henry Travers as Clarence the angel, left, and James Stewart as George Bailey in the 1946 film “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
Column: An ode to failure: Some classic movies were flops when they first came out
Know that phrase “the numbers don’t lie”? It’s a lie, writes Tribune film critic Michael Phillips. The numbers lie constantly. With the movies, as with every creative medium in which visionaries must cross the six-way intersection of greed, exploitation, risk, reward, art and commerce, it’s a mug’s game to lie about numbers not telling the whole story about anything.
