Economic development
They operate a truck stop, two gas stations, two smoke shops, a bingo hall, two tribal casinos, FireLake Discount Foods in Shawnee, FireLake Golf Course, and First National Bank and Trust, with two locations in Shawnee, one in Holdenville, two in Lawton, and three in communities surrounding Lawton. Their estimated economic impact is $422.4 million. [1] In March 2023 the nation was preparing the launch of tribal-owned Sovereign Pipe Technologies, LLC., an HDPE pipe manufacturer, being the first business located at the tribe's 700-acre industrial park called Iron Horse. [3] The industrial park, located about 35 minutes west of Oklahoma City near Shawnee, is less than 10 miles from Interstate 40 and has a connection to the national rail network through the Arkansas-Oklahoma Railroad (AOK). [4]
Culture
In January 2006, the tribe opened its extensive Citizen Potawatomi Nation Museum and Cultural Heritage Center in Shawnee. The 36,000-square-foot (3,300 m2) building houses the nation's research library, archives, genealogy research center, veteran's Wall of Honor, exhibit and meeting space, and a museum store. [5]
The tribe's annual intertribal powwow is no longer held. The Citizen Potawatomi Nation's Family Reunion Festival is held on the final Saturday of June each year. It attracts about 5,000 CPN members and their family members for a variety of cultural and other activities over a three-day period.
History
The Citizen Potawatomi Nation is the successor apparent to the Mission Band of Potawatomi Indians, located originally in the Wabash River valley of Indiana. With the Indian Removal Act after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, the Mission Band was forced to march to a new reserve in Kansas. Of the 850 Potawatomi people forced to move, more than 40 died along the way. The event is known in Potawatomi history as the Potawatomi Trail of Death.
In Kansas, the Mission Band of Potawatomi lived on a small reserve with the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. The Prairie Band had adapted to the Plains culture but the Mission Band remained steadfast to the Woodlands culture. Both cultural groups exhibited very different ceremonial and subsistence strategies, yet were forced to share the land. Seeking a better opportunity for its people, the Mission Band leaders chose to take small farms rather than live together with the Prairie Band. Shortly thereafter, and not fully understanding the tax system, most of the new individual allotments of land passed out of Mission Band ownership and into that of white settlers and traders. In 1867, Mission Potawatomi members signed a treaty selling their Kansas lands in order to purchase lands in Indian Territory with the proceeds. To reinforce the new land purchase and learning from their Kansas experience, tribal members took U.S. citizenship. From that time on, they became known as the Citizen Potawatomi.
By the early 1870s, most of the Citizen Potawatomi had resettled in Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma, forming several communities near present-day Shawnee. In 1890, the Citizen Potawatomi participated, unwillingly, in the allotment process implemented through the Dawes Act of 1887. With this Act, the Citizen Potawatomi people were forced to accept individual allotments again. In the Land Run of 1891, the remainder of the Potawatomi reservation in Oklahoma was opened up to non-Indian settlement, with the result that about 450 square miles (1,200 km2) of the reservation was given away by the government to settlers.
Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States government for the relocation of Native Americans who held original Indian title to their land as an independent nation-state. The concept of an Indian territory was an outcome of the U.S. federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the U.S. government was one of assimilation.
Pink is a town in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, United States, and is part of the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area. The only town in the United States bearing this name, Pink lies within the boundaries of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. The population was 2,091 at the time of the 2020 Census, which is 1.6% above the 2010 census figure of 2,058, which itself was a 76.7% increase from the figure of 1,165 in 2000.
Shawnee is a city in and the county seat of Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 29,857 in 2010, a 4.9 percent increase from the figure of 28,692 in 2000. The city is part of the Oklahoma City-Shawnee Combined Statistical Area and the principal city of the Shawnee Micropolitan Statistical Area.
The Potawatomi, also spelled Pottawatomi and Pottawatomie, are a Native American people of the Great Plains, upper Mississippi River, and western Great Lakes region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a member of the Algonquian family. The Potawatomi call themselves Neshnabé, a cognate of the word Anishinaabe. The Potawatomi are part of a long-term alliance, called the Council of Three Fires, with the Ojibwe and Odawa (Ottawa). In the Council of Three Fires, the Potawatomi are considered the "youngest brother". Their people are referred to in this context as Bodéwadmi, a name that means "keepers of the fire" and refers to the council fire of three peoples.
The Wyandotte Nation is a federally recognized Native American tribe headquartered in northeastern Oklahoma. They are descendants of the Wendat Confederacy and Native Americans with territory near Georgian Bay and Lake Huron. Under pressure from Haudenosaunee and other tribes, then from European settlers and the United States government, the tribe gradually moved south and west to Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, and finally Oklahoma in the United States.
The Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma is one of three federally recognized Kickapoo tribes in the United States. There are also Kickapoo tribes in Kansas, Texas, and Mexico. The Kickapoo are a Woodland tribe, who speak an Algonquian language. They are affiliated with the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, and the Mexican Kickapoo.
The Shawnee Tribe is a federally recognized Native American tribe in Oklahoma. Formerly known as the Loyal Shawnee, they are one of three federally recognized Shawnee tribes. The others are the Absentee-Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.
Potawatomi is a Central Algonquian language. It was historically spoken by the Pottawatomi people who lived around the Great Lakes in what are now Michigan and Wisconsin in the United States, and in southern Ontario in Canada. Federally recognized tribes in Michigan and Oklahoma are working to revive the language.
Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands include Native American tribes and First Nation bands residing in or originating from a cultural area encompassing the northeastern and Midwest United States and southeastern Canada. It is part of a broader grouping known as the Eastern Woodlands. The Northeastern Woodlands is divided into three major areas: the Coastal, Saint Lawrence Lowlands, and Great Lakes-Riverine zones.
The Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma is one of three federally recognized tribes of Shawnee people. Historically residing in what became organized as the upper part of the Eastern United States, the original Shawnee lived in the large territory now made up of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and neighboring states. In total, they occupied and traveled through lands ranging from Canada to Florida, and from the Mississippi River to the eastern continental coast.
Indian removals in Indiana followed a series of the land cession treaties made between 1795 and 1846 that led to the removal of most of the native tribes from Indiana. Some of the removals occurred prior to 1830, but most took place between 1830 and 1846. The Lenape (Delaware), Piankashaw, Kickapoo, Wea, and Shawnee were removed in the 1820s and 1830s, but the Potawatomi and Miami removals in the 1830s and 1840s were more gradual and incomplete, and not all of Indiana's Native Americans voluntarily left the state. The most well-known resistance effort in Indiana was the forced removal of Chief Menominee and his Yellow River band of Potawatomi in what became known as the Potawatomi Trail of Death in 1838, in which 859 Potawatomi were removed to Kansas and at least forty died on the journey west. The Miami were the last to be removed from Indiana, but tribal leaders delayed the process until 1846. Many of the Miami were permitted to remain on land allotments guaranteed to them under the Treaty of St. Mary's (1818) and subsequent treaties.
Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation is a federally recognized tribe of Neshnabé, headquartered near Mayetta, Kansas.
Okla. Tax Commission v. Citizen Band, Potawatomi Indian Tribe of Okla., 498 U.S. 505 (1991), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the tribe was not subject to state sales taxes on sales made to tribal members, but that they were liable for taxes on sales to non-tribal members.
The Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska is one of three federally recognized Native American tribes of Sac and Meskwaki (Fox) peoples. Their name for themselves is Nemahahaki and they are an Algonquian people and Eastern Woodland culture.
The Cherokee Commission, was a three-person bi-partisan body created by 23rd President Benjamin Harrison, to operate under the direction of the United States Secretary of the Interior, of the President's Cabinet, as empowered by Section 14 of the Indian Appropriations Act of March 2, 1889, passed by the United States Congress and signed by President Harrison. Section 15 of the same Act empowered the President of the United States to open land for settlement. The Commission's purpose was to legally acquire land already occupied by the Cherokee Nation and other tribes in the new Oklahoma Territory for non-indigenous homestead acreage.
The Kickapoo Tribe of Indians of the Kickapoo Reservation in Kansas is one of three Federally recognized tribes of Kickapoo people. The other Kickapoo tribes in the United States are the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas and the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma. The Tribu Kikapú are a distinct subgroup of the Oklahoma Kickapoo and reside on a hacienda near Múzquiz Coahuila, Mexico; they also have a small band located in the Mexican states of Sonora and Durango.
Minnie Evans was a tribal chair of the Prairie Band of Potawatomi Nation who successfully defeated termination of her tribe and filed for reparations with the Indian Claims Commission during the Indian termination policy period from the 1940s to the 1960s.
Albert J. Negahnquet ("Leading-Cloud") was the first American Indian Catholic priest in the United States.
United States (
Oklahoma)