The Skokie Park District announced last week it would rename three Skokie parks to honor Native American tribes, with the input of the tribes.
The name changes have been made online, but physical changes to the signs will take some time, said Michelle Tuft, executive director of the park district.
The three parks with the name changes are:
- Menominee Park becomes Mamaceqtaw Park (pronounced mah-mah-KEE-tah)
- Seneca Park becomes Onöndowa’ga Park, and will have a subheading that reads “People of the Great Hill” (pronounced uh-NUN-doh-WAAH-gah)
- Sequoya Park becomes Sequoyah Park. (pronounced (seh-KOY-uh)
The park district board unanimously voted in favor of the name changes at its July board meeting. In addition to the new signage, the park district will add QR codes with links to web pages about the history of the tribes and the pronunciation of the names, Tuft said.
“We want to be respectful of the tribe(s) and to name a park in the way, in the manner, that they would like us to do it,” Tuft said. “We need to treat all the tribes individually because they may have individual opinions on how that should be handled.”
The district hired the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian as a consultant to connect with various tribes to gauge their level of in having a park named in their honor. A survey conducted by the museum, however, only received five responses. Tuft said the district had difficulty getting responses for the survey. Eight other Skokie parks named after Native American tribes are also up for consideration for a name change, if a tribe wishes for a park to be renamed.
Tuft said four of the responses came from representatives from the Powhatan, Sequoyah, Menominee and Seneca tribes. Kim Vigue, the museum’s executive director, said the museum used its connections with tribal nations to connect the park district with approved representatives from the tribes who are authorized to give their tribe’s approval.
At Menominee Park, the district would remove the word “zoo” from signage, which had been there because the playground has a zoo theme, Tuft said.
District documents show that members of the Virginia-based Powhatan tribe said they would want for Pohatan Park to be renamed for a tribe that was local to Skokie. Tuft said park district staff suggested the park be renamed Potawatomi Park because the Potawatomi tribe was present in the Skokie area, and the park district does not have a Potawatomi Park yet. Staff would need to get permission from the Potawatomi tribe before naming a park in their honor, Tuft said.
The park district began its initiative to rename 11 of its parks with Native American tribe names in 2022 as part of a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative. The park district held a listening session in July 2023 for the district’s plans to rename some of the parks and add digital background information via QR codes. Tuft said the event was lightly attended, but got good feedback from the attendees.
