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-H.