Sweet Corn Circus is back again, and this year Illinois Art Station is showcasing the artistry and honoring the legacy of corn on this land.
Find us Saturday and Sunday on North Street not far from Gamma Phi Circus at Illinois State to make your very own Three Sisters-inspired mosaics and reflect on the beauty and story of corn (and beans and squash) in Central Illinois.
Illinois Art Station acknowledges that the land we call McLean County is the ancestral land of many Native groups, beginning with the Paleoindians 12,000 years ago, and most recently Algonquin-speaking groups, including the Kickapoo, who were forced west from this area in the 1830s. Other groups in this area include (but are not limited to) the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankashaw, Wea, Miami, Mascouten, Odawa, Sauk, Kickapoo, Mesquaki, Lenape, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Chickasaw Nations. These lands were and are the traditional territory of these Native Nations prior to their forced removal; and these lands continue to carry the stories of these Nations and their struggles for survival and identity.
This statement was drafted by the McLean County Museum of History in collaboration with Lester Randall, Tribal Chairman of the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, and Nichole Boyd, Former Director of the Native American House at UIUC.