The Center for Great Plains Studies and its Reconciliation Rising Project will host the second annual Proclamation Day and Homecoming Ceremony for the Otoe-Missouria Nation on Sept. 21.
Organized by the City of Lincoln, the event includes a public celebration at Lied Commons at 2 p.m. with speakers, drumming, dancing and singing. The local Lincoln Indian community will also erect a tipi south of Pound Hall for the day.
“We want this year’s homecoming to focus on healing from the past and building new relationships,” said Cory DeRoin, an Otoe-Missouria tribal citizen who has led Otoe-Missouria planning efforts.
During the celebration, Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird will issue a proclamation marking the occasion as Otoe-Missouria Day and welcoming members of the tribal nation back to their ancestral homelands. The proclamation represents an important step in fostering greater education and awareness about the Indigenous peoples who lived in present-day Lincoln and Lancaster County and in promoting reconciliation between the city and the Otoe-Missouria nation.
Margaret Jacobs, director of the Center for Great Plains Studies, co-founded Reconciliation Rising with local Lakota journalist Kevin Abourezk in 2018 to further healing and reconciliation efforts between Natives and non-Natives.
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.
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Center for Great Plains Studies is at 1155 Q St. The ceremony is open to the public.
