American Indian Center will celebrate 70th anniversary in 2023

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The American Indian Center of Chicago is planning to celebrate its 70th anniversary next year.

"Seventy years is a long time to be a small nonprofit," AIC Executive Director Melodi Serna said.

The nonprofit was birthed in 1953 after federal termination and relocation policies brought thousands of Native Americans from across the country to the Chicago area. The center was there to help the new arrivals feel at home and stay connected to their culture -- a mission that remains today with the AIC's social services offerings and cultural programming.

"Essentially, our own government had laws into place that were to remove us as human beings," Serna said, "and to be here and live and breathe and participate, and be members of a productive society, and have our cultural foundations, I think it's so important to us."

ABC Owned Television Stations recently premiered an hour-long documentary around Native American sovereignty called "Our America: Reclaiming Turtle Island," a common Indigenous name for North America.

What sovereignty looks like for Native people depends on who you ask and where they live. For Serna, it means visibility.

"Illinois is one of those states that don't have any federally or state recognized tribes. And when you don't have that in a state, you put that responsibility on Native organizations or communities to create that visibility and sometimes that is 10 times harder," she said.

The AIC continues to work on making sure Native Americans have a seat at the table where policy decisions are being made that impact their community. The nonprofit is also focused on providing more services that honor their traditions -- and that includes building a rooftop garden for their Food as Medicine program. Serna hopes to harvest thousands of pounds of food each year to feed the community. She calls Chicago an indigenous food desert.

"Studies have shown that if when our elders or people are on these traditional diets decolonizing their diets, the health benefits you know, we are some of the highest in diabetes," Serna said.

A garden that will not only bring people together, but also nourish the community.

"So this program is really about not just having them come and work in this garden, but it's about teaching them how to recreate these gardens and how to recreate relationships with their relatives," Serna said.

The AIC is hoping to break ground on their rooftop garden this spring and start seeding sometime in the summer.