Article: Next City (Online), 2022
FIRST NATIONS GARDEN
Subject: First Nations Garden
Article: From A Vacant, City-Owned Lot To Chicago’s First Indigenous Garden
Publication: Next City
Author: Gabriel Pietrorazio
Location: Chicago, IL (Albany Park)
Date: 08/22/2022
ARTICLE
“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.” – From A Vacant, City-Owned Lot To Chicago’s First Indigenous Garden, Next City, 2022.
INFO
First Nations Garden (Wiinso, Wiikonge Otishinikaaso) was established in the Spring of 2019 due to community organizing led by the Chi-Nations Youth Council with support from Alderman Carlos Rosa of the 35th Ward. Currently, Chi-Nations is working closely with Neighborspace to ensure a more sustainable future for the garden.
First Nations Garden was chosen as the English name of the space. The term First Nations is a collective noun that emphasizes the importance of direct and ancestral relationships to the land, both human and non-human. As First Nations peoples, we’ve chosen names that carry the garden site’s history and ancestral ecological knowledge and assist in helping provide navigational information and teachings to the greater public.
