Illinois is poised to right a 175-year-old wrong by returning land in northern Illinois guaranteed to a Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation chief in 1829.
Prairie Band Potawatomi Chief Shab-eh-nay, shown in this image provided by the Northern Illinois University Digital Library, is at the center of legislation in Illinois to compensate the tribe for land taken from the tribe. Shab-eh-nay, who was born about 1775 and died in 1859, was promised land in northern Illinois in an 1829 treaty, but the government sold it to white settlers in about 1848.
“The average citizen shouldn’t know that title has been transferred to the nation so they can still enjoy everything that’s going on within the park and take advantage of all of that area out there,” said Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick, chairman of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation based in Mayetta, Kansas. “Instead, the tribe has offered a compromise, which is to say, ‘We’ll take the entirety of the park and give up our claim to the private land and the county land and the rest of that land,’” Guzzardi said. “That’s a better deal for all parties involved.”
“Yet Congress still kept those two sections of land for Chief Shab-eh-nay and his descendants forever,” said Rupnick, a fourth great-grandson of Shab-eh-nay. “At any one of those times the Congress could have removed the status of that land. They never did.” Rupnick said a casino doesn't make sense because state-sanctioned gambling boats already dot the state. He did not rule out a hotel, noting the park draws 500,000 visitors a year and the closest lodging is in DeKalb, 18 miles northeast of Shabbona. The park has 150 campsites.
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