LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT STATEMENT

Established September 2023

The land that First Presbyterian Church of Libertyville stands on today was stewarded by hundreds of generations of Native Peoples dating back at least 10,000 years, including the Peoria, Myaamia (Miami), Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux), Hoocąk (Ho-Chunk), and Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo).

Most recently, Lake County was home to the Bodéwadmi, or Potawatomi Nation, a society centered around villages where people practiced agriculture, hunting, trapping, and artistic crafts. By the late 1700s, the Potawatomi people oversaw a vast network in present-day Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan, trading furs and using local waterways like the Des Plaines River and trails like the Milwalky Trace (Milwaukee Road) for transportation. The Potawatomi are still known today for their intricate beadwork designs and sleek birchbark canoes.

As white colonizers entered the area in the early 1800s, the Potawatomi people were forced to cede the land on which they lived and move west of the Mississippi River after signing the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. This removal, which began when the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty in 1835, was brutally managed. As a result, the Nation was scattered, and many people died along the way. Thirty-four years later, our church was founded in Libertyville.

Today, the Potawatomi Nation has established bands in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Kansas, and Ontario. In addition, the Chicago area is home to one of the largest urban Native populations in the country, representing over a hundred different tribes.

With this acknowledgment, we seek God’s wisdom and guidance as we lament the sins of colonization and the generational harm done to Native Peoples, both in the past and in the present. We work to counteract Indigenous erasure, respect Native sovereignty, and be good stewards of the land. We strive through word and deed to build Beloved Community for all God's children.

We speak these words in short form regularly in worship and other activities at First Presbyterian Church of Libertyville as an expression of God’s abundant love for all people. By adopting, repeating, and reconsidering these words, we also hope to foster justice and grow Beloved Community now and in the future.

First Pres Land Acknowledgement Statement Approved by First Pres Session, September 2023