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- By Levi Rickert
Native Vote 2024. CHICAGO — Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Tribal Council Vice Chairman Zach Pahmahmie and Secretary Lorrie Melchior were on stage last Monday evening at the Democratic National Convention's opening session. Pahmahmie provided a land acknowledgement and welcome to the attendees who gathered that night to hear Preisdent Joe Biden later in the night.
The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation (PBPN) were afforded the main stage because it is the only federally recognized tribe in the state of Illinois.
That distrinction came earlier this year for the tribe that is based in Mayetta, Kansas, when the U.S. Department of the Interior placed portions of the historic Shab-eh-nay Reservation into trust for the PBPN.
The Shab-eh-nay Reservation is located in suburban Chicago, west of Aurora.
Pahmahmie welcomed the DNC delegates with these words:
“Here we are together on our ancestral homelands of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and our sister Potawatomi nations. We also honor the spirit of the other tribal nations who traveled through this beautiful area.
Welcome 2024 Democratic National Convention. From time immemorial, our ancestors lived in the Great Lakes region. However, in 1849 an illegal action by the US government forcibly removed our tribe from our homeland. Since then, we have been working to reclaim it. Finally, this year, the Department of the Interior placed some of our ancestral lands west of Chicago into a trust.
Thanks to the resolve of our tribal community and the Biden-Harris administration, we reclaimed a piece of our home. We became the only federally recognized tribal nation in Illinois in 175 years.”
Pahmahmie and Melchior were joined in Chicago by other tribal council members: William Evans, Raphael Wahwassuck, and Ronald “Tony” Wahweotten, Jr.
Rep. Sharice Davids and former U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA)
On Tuesday morning, the PBPN, based in Mayetta, Kansas, hosted a breakfast for the Kansas DNC delegates at the Chicago Hilton. The breakfast attendees heard from Rep. Sharice Davids (D-KS), a tribal citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation, and former U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA).
Center for Native Futures co-founder Monica Rickert-Bolter (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) greets PBPN tribal council members
Later on Tuesday, the tribal council members took time off from the DNC to pay a visit to the Center for Native Futures, located in the Chicago Loop at 56 West Adams. Co-founder Monica Rickert-Bolter is a citizen of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation.
PBPN Vice Chairman Zach Pahmahmie, Member Raphael Wahwassuck, Secretary Lorrie Melchoir, Member Ronald “Tony” Wahweotten, Jr., and Member William Evans sit down on the "powwow chairs" at the Center of Native Futures.
Rickert-Bolter and co-founder, Debra Pappan (Jemez Pueblo) greeted the PBPN tribal council, along with Forest County Potawatomi Chairman James Crawford, with a welcome and provided an overview of the contemporary Native art gallery that opened in September 2023.
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