Chicago’s Native youth are reclaiming a contaminated, city-owned lot as part of a grassroots Indigenous land restoration movement.
When the City of Chicago entrusted a 15,625-square-foot vacant lot into the hands of urban Native youth and their head auntie Janie Pochel, she feared that their goal to open the city’s first Indigenous garden might never take root.
The land they steward, still in the city’s custody, on the corner of North Pulaski Road and West Wilson Avenue in the northwestern Chicago neighborhood of Albany Park, was an eyesore before they arrived.
Members of the Chi-Nations Youth Council (CNYC) worked tirelessly to clear the property of debris in the fall of 2018, months before the First Nations Garden’s grand opening by next spring. They believed it was an obligation to pass on tribal and inter-tribal knowledge and traditions to the next generation — and to heal the land that their ancestors thrived on a few centuries ago.
“It’s still a fight,” says Pochel, who is First Nations Oji-Cree and serves as CNYC’s lead advisor. “People tried to take the land from us.”
Eventually, they were able to transform the empty, standard five-city lot into more than just a garden. It’s now a safe space, a new home for Chicago’s urban Native youth who feel lost and alienated.
