The Branch County village of Union City will soon have a dedicated art and local history tour, including highlights of local Potawatomi history with the help of a $25,000 tribal grant.
Ariel Pate is the Tribal Council Vice Chair for the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi, which awarded the grant through its Native American Heritage Fund.
She said, in the past, these grants were usually awarded to help schools rebrand Indigenous-themed mascots.
"It's geared towards wanting to revise mascots and curricula regarding Native history, but since we did a lot of the rebranding already of mascots, we've been able to look at other opportunities such as what Union City has provided us," Pate said.
“They're making history visible. It's going beyond the verbal style of teaching that would be in a classroom because they're using interpretive signs, brochures, maps, kiosks and memorials."
Pate added that the grant is helping to address issues of Potawatomi representation, by allowing the tour to touch on pre-colonial history.
“Helping them do it is helping us to incorporate our tribal history into the story so we can tell them ourselves, so we can help them create a fuller understanding of the people and events that shape those places from our perspective.”
To accomplish this, Pate said tour organizers will work with the Nottawaseppi Huron Band's historical office and tribe elders.
“They've lived it, they've seen it. And we're only given such a glimpse in the school, from when I grew up, of what had happened in the area. And even growing up, we didn't get the in-depth knowledge that we do today.”
The Union City Society for Historic Preservation is behind the tours.
A guide will lead some of them, with a self-guided option also planned. The society aims to launch the tours in the summer of 2027.
