A committee leading the Village’s initiative to develop a new Village seal is seeking community members’ input on the characteristics and attributes that they feel represent Skokie’s past, present and future.
All who live, work, visit or study in Skokie are invited to complete the Village Seal Committee’s survey by Friday, September 15. Community members’ input and ideas will be collated and shared with artist(s) who will be commissioned to develop new seal designs for consideration.
Background
After a yearlong review that included extensive research and outreach to Chicago-area Native communities, a Village committee unanimously recommended that Skokie design a new Village seal for use on official documents and materials, replacing the current seal featuring Native imagery that has been used since the late 1940s.
The Village committee’s review determined:
- National peer-reviewed research shows that Native mascots and depictions of Native people have had a harmful effect on Native communities and the greater population by reinforcing stereotyping and prejudice
- The Native imagery used in the Village seal is not a culturally or historically accurate representation of the Potawatomi people who inhabited the area that is now Skokie
- Members of the local Native community and the broader Skokie community find the seal image and its depiction of a Native person to be inappropriate, and in conflict with how some Native people would like to be represented
The committee unanimously recommended that the Village develop a new, culturally appropriate design that reflects the rich history and promising future of the Village, representing the history of Skokie's land, the Native community, the possibilities of Skokie's future, and the richness of Skokie's multi-cultural community.
Because Skokie (formerly Niles Centre) was established on land that was originally inhabited by Indigenous peoples, and the Village would like the new seal design to continue to honor that fact, the Village intends to reach out to Native artists and other artists in the region to develop seal design concepts.
Visit the Village Seal Initiative web page to stay updated on this initiative, and review the research and recommendations of the Village Seal Review Committee, which completed its work in early 2023.