Chi-Nations Youth Council

Chi-Nations Youth Council We are committed to social/environmental justice. We created the First Nations Garden

Chi-Nations Youth Council is an inter-tribal Native youth council in Chicago with a mission to create safe space for Native Youth, through arts, activism and education. Chi-Nations Youth Council was created in 2012 and is comprised of a diverse group of youth and adults, with a mission to create a supportive open environment for Native Youth, to raise awareness of cultural identity and promote a

healthy lifestyle through arts, activism, and education. We work towards this goal by strengthening community through avid volunteerism, fundraising and traditional values.

May 30th 7pm we will be hosting a comedy night at the garden (3979 W. Wilson) Damon Howard will be the host. This event ...
05/21/2026

May 30th 7pm we will be hosting a comedy night at the garden (3979 W. Wilson)
Damon Howard will be the host.
This event is free to attend. Donations accepted at the gate. We are currently raising money to install art.
Carla Youngbear will be selling her famous frybread, Indian tacos and Blanket dogs.

Please join us May 23, 10am 3979 W. Wilson Chicago to help us build the raised beds for the community garden. We encour...
05/18/2026

Please join us May 23, 10am 3979 W. Wilson Chicago to help us build the raised beds for the community garden. We encourage all former growers to come contribute and claim your box, we will also have smaller circle raised beds for folks. We currently have two "farm" beds this year we are three sisters planting. We will also be growing food for our cook-outs and feast in garden beds.
Rain day will be May 24

It's time to plant our corn. Join us for a Mother's Day to put our corn in the ground, 2pm at the First Nations Garden. ...
05/08/2026

It's time to plant our corn.
Join us for a Mother's Day to put our corn in the ground, 2pm at the First Nations Garden.
We are still in the midst Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, week of action, we recognize this includes trans-women and girls.

May 5th is National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Day of Awareness. It will kick off a week of action starting w...
05/04/2026

May 5th is National Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Day of Awareness.
It will kick off a week of action starting with the dedication of our MMIW&Girls Garden. We will begin with a pipe ceremony followed by plantings, and preparing red willow for pipes.
This will be Followed by a fireside chat.
While everyone (except predators and abusers) are welcomed to the garden dedication we ask only women, femmes and children(discussion may be difficult for young children) attend the fireside chat.

Our women are more than statistics, they are the backbone of our peoples.
MMIW awareness is also more than wearing red, handprints, singing and dancing it's acknowledging our part in the culture that perpetuates our crisis. It's calling out the abusers in our own communities like Nathan Chasinghorse, in our community we have Ronnie Preston, Mark Ford, Floyd Silas, Darryl White, Caleb Funmaker, Bunky Echohawk to name a few but how many men are protected under colonial institutions posing as Native communities? Continuing cycles of abuse with the non-profit industrial complex and elected officials labeling these abusers as safe.

Attached is a qr code for our community safety framework, which is a living document defining and laying out strategies for a future free of abuse and r**e.

Our Book recommendation is the Beginning and end of R**e by Sarah Deer

Here is a list of events planned for this month. Update on the garden progress, we have the tipi poles delivered, the co...
05/01/2026

Here is a list of events planned for this month.
Update on the garden progress, we have the tipi poles delivered, the construction for the shade structures and garden beds begin this month. Our storage container sheds will be delivered at the end of the month or the first week of June.
We are starting to open the garden for volunteers and events.
If you have time that doesn't align with planned events and want to come out and pull weeds shoot a message and we will have the gate open for you.
Also if you need space to relax or throw an outdoor event, please shoot a message and we can help arrange that.
May 1st 4pm MayDay Solidarity Planting Economic Blackout
May 2nd 9-10am Saturday Storytelling Series
May 2nd 11:30-1pm Books and Brunch Garden Book Club
May 2nd 3pm Volunteer Day
Tipi Set-up, prepare for Garden Bed Build and Fill
May 3rd 10am Farm beds Build and Fill
May 5th 3pm MMIW Garden Dedication Pipe Ceremony and Planting
May 5th 6pm MMIW Fireside Chat(Women and femmes only)
May 16th 10am Volunteer day planting, mulching and weeding
May 23rd Garden Beds Build and Fill (May 24th Rain Day)
May 30th 6pm Comedy night at the Garden
May 31st 5pm Water Walk Celebration

If anyone wants to come out and help set up the tipi please come to the garden later today.
04/27/2026

If anyone wants to come out and help set up the tipi please come to the garden later today.

The New First Nations Garden Logo designed by Anishnaabe youth artist Wynnie. It represents the garden claw that helped ...
02/02/2026

The New First Nations Garden Logo designed by Anishnaabe youth artist Wynnie.

It represents the garden claw that helped us start hundreds of gardens across Chicago and the two tipis we put up to begin the squat that turned into a land trust, that is the First Nations Garden.

The flowers represent not only flowers that grow in the garden but Missing and Murdered Indigenous women and the survivors of residential schools.

The First Nations Garden when it opens again, in bureaucracy of Chicago time, it will be dedicated to the survivors of the 60’s scoop and their families. The 60’s scoop was a Canadian government policy that removed Native children from their homes and communities and adopted into mostly white families, many of those children were trafficked to Illinois and across the US. Native children being taken from their homes didn’t start or end in the 60’s, it’s a practice still employed by occupying governments today.

Our sweet grass bed, white pine and strawberry mounds will be dedicated to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

While sitting in those tipis that first winter for stories, shooting the s**t, ceremony and community meetings it became clear our community needed The First Nations Garden to be a healing space, for generations we have not had the time or space for grief. There also was no place that explicitly said abusers are not welcome, not in any of our collective memories in The Native community.

Many of our teachings, our dances, our languages, our ceremonies and even ourselves are acts of resistance, caring for the land, creating spaces free of predators, being in community with people who care and uplift each other, this is how we win, this is how we survived.

The garden isn’t only for Native peoples of Chicago we invite our neighbors and non-Native community from all across Chicago to enjoy, we have an 80% chill rule, so if you do work you have to relax too.

P.S
ABOLISH ICE, everyone is Illegal on Stolen Land, Free Palestine, feed immigrants, Black Lives Matter, Trans people deserve a regular life span.

Today marks the last day of National Native American Heritage Month. In good practice we ask that we reflect on how this...
11/30/2025

Today marks the last day of National Native American Heritage Month. In good practice we ask that we reflect on how this month impacted you? How did you impacted others? What did you do for Native American Heritage Month? Did you pay your rent?

As we prepare for winter solstice and winter storytelling & reflections we’d like to update y’all what we’ll be working on:

Garden development we will use this time to imagine intentional learning & free play hubs for children of all ages to engage in discovery learning processes.

Lodges- we will be working to secure materials and resources for the rebuilding of our teaching lodge (wigwam) and sweat lodge for a spring harvest/build.

Spring re-opening & dedication- we will be planning a grand re-opening and dedication event. (If your an Indigenous vendor reach out to Fawn at [email protected] for more information on vendor space)

Education & leadership development we will working to reengage community partners and cultural pactioners to support garden cultural immersion programs and seasonal events for 2026 to support in transmission and development of traditional ecological

While we might be feeling the fatigue of 2025 our fight for liberation isn’t marked by a calendar. We’ll see you all in 2026.

We need help.4pm until we are finished. 4555 N Pulaski on the corner of Wilson and Pulaski in Albany ParkThe garden reno...
09/30/2025

We need help.

4pm until we are finished. 4555 N Pulaski on the corner of Wilson and Pulaski in Albany Park

The garden renovation is both moving incredibly slow but also sometimes very fast.

We were informed yesterday they finally have the TIF money to finish the project and we need to move plants today so they can mulch and sod tomorrow.

The tree planting will be finished by Friday and the fence will be finished next week and we can move into building structures.

The policy and procedures the AIC have in place that they do not name or post are to protect abusers from being called o...
09/30/2025

The policy and procedures the AIC have in place that they do not name or post are to protect abusers from being called out.

These policies allow Ronald Preston (cultural ambassador) use the same hands that strangled a Native woman to teach children how to bead, and to be the community pow-wow MC, and the featured MC at the annual Pow-Wow in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County

These policies allow convicted ra**st of a minor Floyd Silas 3 to be head staff at the annual pow-wow and to be an honored guest at the round dance.

These policies allow a registered s*x offender convicted of r**e Caleb Funmaker to be head staff at the annual pow-wow

These policies allow Negwes White accused of grooming teens in his care to be a featured artist with a curated art gallery while the teens, their families and supporters are banned from the community center, and for Negwes to be the face of Indigifest and night out at Chicago Park District

They do not support victims, they do not support women or children the policies and procedures follow decades long pattern and practices of uplifting abusers and protecting their feelings while their victims and supporters are ostracized.

It is Orange Shirt Day a day we remember the survivors of Indian Residential Schools started in Canada by a First Nations Woman.

We hold the stories of children as truth.

Today is truth and reconciliation day. We must allow space for truth and that truth will hurt abusers. We implore the AIC to create policies and procedures that take a victim’s centered approach not an abuser centered approach that they have followed since the inception of the AIC.

We implore the AIC to listen to women and children and ban bad men from community, even bad men that know how to pow-wow.

We ask the AIC to condemn the actions of Mark Ford and support victims, not lay the groundwork to discredit any victim that may come forward from Chicago.

When you create space safe for abusers you will always attract abusers.

The only reason the AIC made a statement is because the media got a hold of the story and named them in their compliance. They have never made a statement supporting the many women and children who trusted the center and ended up abused by staff, board members and invited guests

Mark Ford is on the Board of Directors at The American Indian Center of Chicago and has been arrested on r**e charges of...
09/29/2025

Mark Ford is on the Board of Directors at The American Indian Center of Chicago and has been arrested on r**e charges of disabled children.

There is decades long pattern and practice of the AIC platforming predators and covering up their crimes.

The AIC has been working in tandem with community partners like who is hosting Mark Ford’s and the AIC’s annual pow-wow, who hosts Mark Ford’s Indigifest and nights out at the park, who funds Mark Ford and the American Indian Center, that hosts Mark Ford’s and the AIC’s annual gala so they can continue to have the money to enable predators.

Ronald Preston who is convicted of domestic abuse and arrested for strangulation is the cultural ambassador and the MC at the forest preserve of cook county’s pow-wow,

The AIC is funded through the money they receive through the legitimization of their community partners as well as direct support from these partners.

All of their partners have known about the AIC platforming of ra**sts like Floyd Silas convicted of r**e of a minor since they worked together to host the 2021 and 2022 annual pow-wows, Caleb Funmaker registered s*x offender hosted the annual pow-wow in 2023 and 2024 and now the forest preserve knows about Mark Ford and the subsequent cover-up amd continues to legitimize the AIC as “safe for families”

Chi-Nations have been requesting they create policies to protect women and children for over a decade and the reason we had to remove ourselves from the space in 2019, when they chose to continue to honor Eli Powless who was accused of ra**ng many women in the community when they were children.

Currently the cover up crew at The American Indian Center is Dave Spencer (co-director), Ronnie Preston(woman strangler/cultural ambassador), Jay Young,(co-directo) Dr. Nataka Moore (board member) Noelle Garcia(board member), Jessica Pamonicutt(board president and the one who bought Mark Ford in), Sarina Dimaso(board member) Damien Kardaras(board treasurer)

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Wilson And Pulaski
Chicago, IL

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