The Center for Great Plains Studies and its Reconciliation Rising Project hosted the second annual Proclamation Day and Homecoming Ceremony for the Otoe-Missouria Nation on Sept. 21.

The day was organized by the City of Lincoln and included a public celebration at Lied Commons at 2 p.m. with speakers, drumming, dancing and singing. Click the video above to learn more about the celebration.

Prior to settlers coming to Lincoln and the surrounding area, people from many Indigenous nations hunted along Salt Creek and its tributaries and harvested salt from its deposits. By 1714, the Otoes had settled in a village on the Salt Creek tributary of the Platte River in what is now eastern Nebraska. In 1798, their relatives the Missourias joined them there. The Otoe-Missouria Nation signed two treaties with the U.S. government, on Sept. 21, 1833, and March 15, 1854, that ceded the lands that became Lincoln and the University of Nebraska. The Otoe-Missouria moved in 1854 to the Big Blue reservation near Beatrice, but Congress sold the land and moved them to Indian Territory (which would now be in Oklahoma) in 1880 and 1881.