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Pokagons Announce Pokagon Township-Dowagiac Reservation
DOWAGIAC, Mich., Sept. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians announced today the location and their tentative plans for their first traditional reservation site in Pokagon Township. The 1,589 acre site located in Cass County, Michigan is just a few miles southwest of Dowagiac.
The Pokagon Township Reservation site will provide a multi-use community for Tribal members and their families, including new homes on one or two-acre lots, a Community Center, Health Care facility, and Tribal Government Center, as well as educational, parks, and recreational facilities for children of the Tribe.
Less than one-third of the land will be developed with 371 acres set aside for agricultural use and more than 700 acres as a natural preserve. The site also provides a natural setting along the Dowagiac River for Pow Wow Grounds and a cemetery.
"It has been 167 years since we have had any right to our traditional land," said John Miller, tribal chair for the Pokagon Band. "This reservation site will allow us to provide our Tribe and its members with the facilities to live once again as a community. The first housing opportunities will be made available to our elders who have waited for so long."
The securing of the Dowagiac site is the second phase of their reservation land acquisition and development process for the Tribe. The Band is in the process of taking 700 acres in trust in New Buffalo Township, Michigan for a casino resort operation. The Tribe is still in the process of identifying traditional reservation sites in the Hartford, Michigan and South Bend, Indiana areas.
The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians was recognized as a restored band by Congress in 1994. This Restoration Act recognized an area including six counties in Indiana and four counties in Michigan as ancestral homelands. In January of 1999 the Department of Interior and the tribe reached a Memorandum of Understanding allowing the tribe to take up to 4,700 acres of land into trust in their traditional homelands.
