Indigenous Peoples Day: What the Potawatomi taught me

In recent years, as the public ritual called land acknowledgment has become more common, I have become more aware of the names of the Indigenous nations that used to live on the land I stand upon. While I found the ritual a nice sentiment, I felt something was missing.

So did Nicole Anderson Cobb, a historian, playwright, and journalist, and Latrelle Bright, who teaches theater at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, my alma mater and Dr. Anderson Cobb’s.

“You go to events, ... you drive by places, ... you see names on things, and you don’t know anything about their history,” Ms. Bright tells me in an interview. “We read land acknowledgments.