Indivisible 250: 'We're still here,' The lasting Native American legacy 

DOWAGIAC, Mich. -- As the United States of America celebrates 250 years of independence, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians Tribal Chairman Matthew Wesaw has one message: "We're still here. We've been here from the beginning; we'll be here 'til the end."   

Wesaw showed ABC57 around the Pokagon Band's government campus administration building in Dowagiac, Michigan.  

Photos on the walls show tribal members in traditional dress at the Band's annual Powwow. This traditional ceremony remains a visible display of the lasting legacy of the people that were here first.  

"It's just a big family reunion," Wesaw said.  

Also on the walls are six symbols to represent the different clans that formed the Pokagon Band.   

"Our citizens are members of all the different clans that we have here," Wesaw said. "So, we have fish, thunder, bear, wolf, eagle and turtle." 

"You think about America reaching 250 years," ABC57's Annie Kate asked Wesaw. "250 years doesn't even pale in comparison to how old the Pokagon Band is. Can you tell me how far back this tribe goes?" 

"In years? No," Wesaw replied. "I can only tell you: from the beginning of time."    

From the beginning of time 

"They lived pretty much like the cycles of our seasons.  And they were really, really in tune with what the earth could give them at specific times of the year," said Travis Childs, archivist and St. Joseph County historian for The History Museum in South Bend. "They knew instinctively and from centuries of living off the land out here." 

"We are called Indiana because 'Indian,'" Childs continued. "We had Shawnee tribes, Miami, Kickapoo, and Wyandot. They were all over the states but typically, up here, it was typically Potawatomi." 

Jesse Deanhart sets up historic Native American reenactments. ABC57 caught up with him at Kosciusko County Freedom Fest in June. There, he set up a traditional native campground to show how the Miami Tribe lived centuries ago.   

"This would be pretty typical of a seasonal hunting village or a smaller family group village," he said. "You would've seen what we call [native language], or also known as a wigwam, a dome-shaped house or dwelling."   

Deanhart tells ABC57's Annie Kate that the occasion of America 250 leaves him with complicated feelings. 

"That's sort of a funny, a tricky question to ask a Native American. There's a lot of dualistic history that we reflect on when we think about American holidays," he said. "For most Native Americans that I know, they are very patriot, American people. But there's always a little bit of a sensitive area when we think about histories that could have been, lands that have been lost, rights that have been lost by indigenous people."   

Yet, he still showed up at Kosciusko County's 250 celebration.  

"Personally, I've chosen to participate in some of the 250th anniversary celebrations this year because regardless of the feelings I may have about a colored Native American history with the United States, I believe that we are all Americans today, and can work and learn and grow together," Deanhart said.    

Settlers arrive on Native land 

Everything changed for tribal communities when European settlers discovered what they called the "new world."  

Originally, they were neighbors and trading partners to indigenous Americans. 

"Much of the native trade business was built around the fact that Europe had exhausted all of its fur supply, North America was a bountiful, new place to get fur," Deanhart said. "That's really what initially began driving the fur trade, or the relationship between Europeans and various indigenous tribes." 

However, over time, the newly formed American government started to view natives as less-than-civilized.  

"The government, U.S. government, wanted this land cleared for farming," Childs said.   

"There was an attempt to make us extinct," Wesaw said. "It didn't work."   

The Indian Removal Act of 1830, signed by President Andrew Jackson, forced Native tribes West of the Mississippi River. 

"And by the 1840s, most of the Miami was removed," Deanhart said, "first to Kansas, then to Oklahoma. A small portion was allowed to remain here in Indiana. They became Indiana Miami, whereas the ones that were forcibly removed to the West became Oklahoma Miami."   

This removal, heavily targeting local Potawatomi, became known as the Trail of Death.  

"They came here, gathered up all the Native Americans, men, women and children, piled them into wagons, and then made everybody else walk," Childs said, "and they walked down to Fulton County, Rochester, went West out to Kansas, and put in a reservation system."   

Many were marched on the Trail of Death. Many died. Similar trails existed for other tribes across the country at this time.  

"That is a black, black eye for Indiana, for our region," Childs said.  

Pokagon makes a deal  

For local Potawatomi Native Americans, one leader made all the difference: Leopold Pokagon.  

"Pokagon, we don't give him enough credit," Childs said. "He was a smart guy." 

"He was one of our great tribal leaders," Wesaw said. "Leopold, in his relationship with the Catholic Church, was able to get into the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, the ability for us to stay here."   

Pokagon got his band to join the Catholic Church.  

"He did make a deal. He also has all of his band baptized into the Catholic faith, which in Europeans' eyes, they no longer were classified as 'savages,'" Childs said.    

This meant local Potawatomi were able to stay on their homeland and form what they now call the Pokagon Band. 

"The court ruled that we could stay here because we were farmers, Catholics," Wesaw said. "We've been here forever. This is home. It's always been home." 

Indian boarding schools  

The Pokagon Band was able to stay, but at a cost.  

Eventually, many Native children were still taken from home and subjected to the "Indian boarding schools," mostly run by the Catholic Church with the help of the U.S. government.   

"Their whole intent was to basically strip the native students there of their heritage, their culture, their tradition," Wesaw said. "They cut their hair, didn't let them speak their language, didn't let them see their families. I think the term was, 'Kill the Indian, save the man.'"   

In July 2024, Volume II of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report identified 417 such institutions across the country. These received government dollars. More than 1,000 other institutions are listed as having similar forced assimilation practices. The research is admittedly incomplete. 

Indiana had two Indian boarding schools. Michigan had five. 

"My father, he is the oldest boarding school survivor in the Pokagon band," Wesaw said. "He is coming up on 95 years old."    

Sovereignty in America 

Younger generations were stripped of their Native American language and culture.  

"There is a lot of generational traumas for the way that the Native community has been treated over the years," Wesaw said. "You figure it wasn't until about 1972, I think, through a court decision, we were allowed to practice our religious ways. Before that, it was against the law."    

The forced assimilation, however, forced a stubborn resilience, and the tribe survived.  

"What does it mean to be a sovereign nation here in the United States of America?" Annie Kate asked Wesaw, to which he replied, "That means that the State of Michigan can't tell us what to do. We are a self-governance nation, which means we govern our own peoples. We have our own laws. We have our own court system."   

The Pokagon Band has its own constitution, owns more than 6,000 acres of land in Michigan, and is run by an 11-person tribal council. 

One council priority is to make sure the United States government honors the treaties it signed with Native tribes.  

"Those treaties are living documents," Wesaw said. "They may have been signed in the 1800s, but they are still valid today. And the courts have ruled that they are still valid today. So, the promises that the government made back then-- which, very few have been kept-- are still promises that they are obligated to fulfill." 

The lasting Native American legacy  

On Sept. 1, 1994, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians was reaffirmed by Congressional action as a federally recognized tribe.  

"Many of our folks went to Washington, D.C., and there actually is a photo of probably 50 of our folks in the oval office with President Clinton as he signed the legislation," Wesaw said.    

The lasting Native American legacy endures in other ways. 

"Some could say that it's-- it can be preserved in the language that remains on our lands, that remains on our waters. Whether the names of our rivers, the names of our lakes, the names of two-thirds of the counties of Northern Indiana, or the cities," Deanhart said. "A legacy clearly remains written in the language of our people, both on the waters and on the land." 

Now, Native descendants are reclaiming their tribal culture. One of the first tribal council actions after reaffirmation, according to Wesaw, was implementing a language program.  

"We started taping our elders that spoke the language," Wesaw said. "I've got young grandkids that speak more of the language than I do."   

Meanwhile, the Band is forging partnerships and building. New Buffalo was the location for the tribe's first Four Winds Casino, which now has locations in Dowagiac, Hartford, and South Bend.  

"This is our community. This is where we live, and we want to get along with everybody," Wesaw said. 

The Pokagon Band is now growing, reaching nearly 6,500 tribal citizens as the United States of America reaches its 250-year milestone. 

"It's almost like rebuilding the nation," Annie Kate said, to which Wesaw replied, "That's a very good term, that's exactly what it is. We're rebuilding the nation."