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Examining Our Monuments: Rogers Park Edition

Co-Sponsored by 49th Ward Alderwoman Maria Hadden

April 19 7:00 to 8:30 p.m.

Indian Boundary Line Marker is on the side of the building on the northeast corner of Rogers, Clark and Jarvis.

The Chicago Monuments Project has been launched to grapple with the often unacknowledged – or forgotten – history associated with the City’s various municipal art collections and to address the ways in which that history has been told. The intended outcome of the project is to develop more equitable and accurate ways to mark the public spaces that memorialize Chicago’s history. One of the 41 public monuments that are part of the assessment is the plaque marking the Indian Boundary Line in Rogers Park. Join us for a panel discussion on the historic significance of the Indian Boundary Line, the purpose of historical monuments, and perspectives on whether and how this particular marker serves its purpose.

49th Ward Alderwoman Maria Hadden and representatives of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events will introduce the goals and objectives of the monument project and three expert panelists will give their perspectives on the Indian Boundary Line marker plaque. Join us for an informative evening that will give you a better understanding of this important new civic initiative.

The Panelists:

Dr. James Akerman is the Director of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography and Curator of Maps at the Newberry Library. He has published widely on the social and political aspects of mapping, most especially transportation and travel cartography and the history of atlases and has curated many exhibitions, including Maps: Finding Our Place in the World at Chicago’s Field Museum (2007-08) and Ptolemy’s Geography and Renaissance Cartographers at the Newberry Library (2007-08). He also directed the creation of the Newberry’s award winning educational website, Historic Maps in K-12 Classrooms.

Dr. Patricia Mooney-Melvin is Associate Professor of History and Graduate Program Director at Loyola University Chicago, where she teaches courses in public history, local history, Progressive Era history, and social welfare history.  Her scholarship interests include urban and public history, the relationship of public space and public memory, and the history and evolution of city neighborhoods and settlements. Among her many publications are Reading Your Neighborhood: A History of East Rogers Park (1993) and she is currently completing The Landscape of Urban Memory: Public Space and Public Memory in Chicago with her Loyola colleague, Dr. Theodore Karamanski.

Dr. Dorene P. Wiese is founder and Chief Executive Officer of the American Indian Association of Illinois, an educational nonprofit that provides student centered, intensive, higher education counseling and other services to those interested in attending public, private, and tribal schools in Chicago and throughout the United States. AIAI celebrates American Indian culture, language and tradition, and strives to preserve and celebrate Native culture through the Chicago American Indian Museum, Bear Claw Multimedia and the Black Hawk Performance Company. Teaching and learning Native languages such as Ojibwe and Cherokee are essential parts of AIAI. Wiese holds a doctorate degree from Northern Illinois University in Leadership and Policy Studies and an MA degree from the University of Chicago in the Social Sciences.