The story of the Indians of the Midwest is one of endurance.
Beyond the rich oral narratives that many tribes maintain, the
Newberry houses an archive of materials that records and
preserves aspects of the varied cultures and traditions of the
indigenous nations of the region we have come to call the
Midwest. Though the greater Midwest is also home to peoples of
the Plains, this exhibition focuses on the largely Algonquian
and Siouan cultural region of the Great Lakes. Native peoples of
this region have long been at the cultural crossroads created by
intertribal relations, the rise of the fur trade, colonialism,
and finally Euro-American settlement. From the ascendancy of
Cahokia, the largest indigenous urban center north of Mexico, in
what is now central Illinois, to the struggles for American
Indian civil rights in the mid-twentieth century, the Midwest
remains an Indian space. The gallery exhibition was on view at
the Newberry from November 2 to December 31, 2011.