First Nations Garden
The First Nations Garden (Wiinso, Wiikonge Otishinikaaso), an urban land trust under Neighborspace, was established in the Spring of 2019 through community organizing led by the Chi-Nations Youth Council with support from Alderman Carlos Rosa of the 35th Ward.
Name
The community chose First Nations Garden 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, as 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 providing navigational information and teachings to the greater public.
Location
The First Nations Garden is located on the corner of N Pulaski Road and W Wilson Avenue in the Albany Park neighborhood. Albany Park is known for its diversity of culture, ethnicity, and background.
The garden is relationally located between Elston Avenue to the South and West, a historic road that predates colonization. The North Branch of the Chicago River is to the North, an area that flourished as Native villages before and during the early days of Chicago, before forced removal.
The garden’s placement on Wilson Avenue holds historical significance, particularly during and after the Indian Termination Era (mid-1940s to late 1960s) and the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, which brought thousands of Natives back to Chicago.
The Uptown neighborhood, and Wilson Avenue in particular, remained a pivotal hub for Chicago’s Native community well into the 2010s when gentrification eventually compelled the community to relocate again.
Mission
Our mission is to provide a healing space for Chicago’s First Nations communities and promote public knowledge and appreciation of Chicago’s Indigenous landscape and ecosystems.
Vision
Our shared vision is to create a preeminent cultural and educational hub within the Albany Park Neighborhood.
What’s Growing
Independent Plots: Independent raised bed plots within the First Nations Garden under direct care from autonomous community members. These beds are for their personal use, and they decide what is planted, which ranges from perennial beds to managing personal plots of vegetables.
*Independent plots are asked to refrain from growing corn and certain squash that may cross-pollinate with heritage varieties being grown by the management team.
Hinged Hoop House Raised Beds (HHHRB): The HHHRBs was built in the Fall of 2020 to start growing prairie sage, sweetgrass, and strawberries, all of which hold cultural significance to the Native communities of this region. The intention for these beds is to provide more access to traditional medicines of this region to the local Native Community.
Circular Raised Beds (CRB): We currently have 18 CRB for the 2022 growing season. In 2021our CRBs grew Midewiwin Tobacco, White Buffalo Cafe Tobacco, Prairie Sage, Echinacea, Bear Tongue Foxglove, Rose Milkweed, and Spotted Joe Pye Weed.
Planting Mounds: The mounds are directly managed by Chi-Nations each of the three mounds contains different Native plants. Our mounds are developed as a teaching aid to help revitalize Indigenous cultivation while providing substance for a wide range of pollinators.
Adopt A Plot: Community Plots have been fully allocated for the 2022 growing season. Since our inception, we have worked to maintain stewardship and relationships with our community gardeners. Once a plot is assigned to a community gardener, that gardener is allowed to keep their plot until they can no longer maintain their space.
*Community plots within the First Nations Garden are currently at capacity. Please email fng@chinations.org if you’d like to be placed on a waiting list.
Organizers
The First Nations Garden, an urban land trust under Neighborspace, is a community effort led by Chi-Nations with support from Alderman Carlos Rosa (35th Ward) and local Native cultural practitioners.
Partners
The First Nations Garden’s Partners are Advocates for Urban Agriculture, 11th Hour Project, Kuumba Lynx, Southeast Side Environmental Task Force, and Young Cultural Stewards (ArtSeed).
Origins
The First Nations Garden (Wiinso, Wiikonge Otishinikaaso) was established in the Spring of 2019.
The garden has been given roots from many seeds planted by the Chicago Native community advocating and fighting for access to land. Adrien James initiated our access to the physical land where the garden is located. When he was a high school student in Chicago Public Schools, he began attending Albany Park community events and meetings to get a better grasp on the gentrification process that forced over 500 primarily Lantine/x families out of Albany Park.
For Adrien, placemaking and access to land had always grounded him as an Anishinini. As a member of the Chi-Nations Youth Council, Adrien was familiar with organizing and advocating for access to land and developed the idea of a garden space in Albany Park for both of his communities, the Chicago Native community and Albany Park. By providing access to land for Albany Park residents, he hoped that it would slow gentrification by shifting toward a future that gave more access to community stewardship of space.
At the time, Adrien’s brother Anthony, also a member of Chi-Nations, was beginning his journey in local politics and started working under Alderman Carlos Rosa of the 35th Ward, where the physical land sat at the time. CNYC proposed a land acknowledgment resolution for the city of Chicago with the understanding that land acknowledgments in their being must come with direct action. Alderman Rosa supported the creation of the first land acknowledgment for the city of Chicago and agreed to take action in supporting Chicago’s Native community through the advancement of the First Nations Garden.
In November 2018, Alderman Rosa submitted the land acknowledgment, which passed through the city council, and we cut the lock to establish the First Nations Garden. That day, CNYC set up two tipis as we opened the garden to our larger community with an opening ceremony which was co-hosted by Alderman Ramirez-Rosa and documented by Tom Callahan of Sensitive Visuals.
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In April of 2019, the First Nations Garden was officially open to the public. 4 days after the official opening, The Chicago Native Community came together and built FNG’s first wigwam, with support from the Pokagon Potawatomi youth and under the guidance of Prairie Band Potawatomi citizen Sean Youngbear.
Native Sundays
Native Sunday is a social space held at the First Nations Garden for Chicago’s Native community.
Native Sundays were created out of the need for more collaboration, representation, accountability, and healing within Chicago’s Native community. Sundays are a place for Native people and our families in Chicago to come and be surrounded by peers because Native people deserve spaces where our commonalities and shared experiences are centered with the acknowledgment and understanding that our tribal traditions and affiliations are uniquely diverse across our varying nations.
*BIPOC-identifying folks are welcome to attend by invite
Construction Timeline
Learn more about the First Nations Garden Construction page.