SHABONNA – The first federally-recognized tribal land in Illinois is in DeKalb County, after portions of the Shab-eh-nay Reservation were placed into a trust for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation on Friday.

Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation said Friday was a victory in a battle his family has been fighting for most of two centuries.

“Words can’t describe the feeling that I’m feeling today,” Rupnick said. “My grandfather, Chief Shab-eh-nay, four generations removed, has been fighting for 180 years. I’ve got pictures of my grandmother and great grandmother coming up to Illinois in the 60′s trying to get this land issue settled.”

The Nation once occupied much of the Great Lakes region but was forcibly removed in the 19th century and now has its headquarters in northeast Kansas, Capitol News Illinois reported.

[ Native tribe seeks return of ancestral land in DeKalb County ]

The United States Department of Interior placed the reservation, which is in Shabbona, into a trust for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation on Friday, according to a news release from the department.

“Words can’t describe the feeling that I’m feeling today. My grandfather, Chief Shab-eh-nay, four generations removed, has been fighting for 180 years. I’ve got pictures of my grandmother and great grandmother coming up to Illinois in the 60′s trying to get this land issue settled.”

—  Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick

“My mom, who was the chairperson, really started the push 30 years ago and today we finally got it done,” Rupnick said.

The Potawatomi Nation and other tribes ceded land in northern Illinois in a treaty signed July 29, 1829, commonly known as the Second Treaty of Prairie du Chien, according to legislation filed in 2023 by members of Congress from Illinois and Kansas.

Potawatomi Chief Shab-eh-nay and his Band at their village near Paw Paw Grove, however, were allowed to keep two parcels of land, totaling 1,280 acres. That land became known as the Shab-eh-nay Band Reservation. In 1849, while Shab-eh-nay was visiting relatives who had been forced to move to Kansas, the land was sold by the General Land Office of the United States at a public auction, according to the bills filled in Congress.

U.S. reps Lauren Underwood, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, D-Chicago and four others cosponsored House Resolution 3144, which would allow the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation to acquire 1,280 acres of land near Shabbona State Park in compensation for what the Nation has long held was illegal acquisition of the land by the U.S. government 173 years ago.

In a statement provided in a news release from her office on Friday, Underwood – who’s 14th Congressional District includes portions of DeKalb, Kendall, La Salle and Will counties – said Friday’s news is one step along the way.

“175 years ago, our federal government unlawfully sold the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation’s land in Illinois,” Underwood said in the release. “In Congress, I’ve been working in partnership with the Nation to correct this historic injustice. The decision to put portions of the Shab-eh-nay Reservation into Trust is an important step to returning the land that is rightfully theirs, and I am so honored to represent the first federally-recognized reservation in Illinois.”

ILLINOIS — Billions of cicadas will emerge in Illinois, possibly as soon as this month, according to reports, which is earlier than is typical for the insects.

Juvenile cicadas surface after rain when soil temperature 8 inches below ground level rises above 64 degrees, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The dependence on a specific soil temperature means that a changing climate can affect the emergence timing of periodical cicadas by a matter of days, months, and sometimes years,” according to the agency.

The 17-year cicadas in Brood XIII are expected to show up in the Chicago area around mid-May, but could come earlier due to warmer weather, Allen Lawrence, the associate curator of entomology for the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, told NBC 5 Chicago. Officials in Chicago and Lake Forest have warned the insects could arrive as soon as April, according to the outlet.

The 13-year cicadas in Brood XIX may emerge in central and southern Illinois even sooner, NBC 5 reported.

In a rare event that hasn’t happened since 1803, Brood XIII, known as the Northern Illinois Brood, and the Brood XIX, or the Great Southern Brood, are both expected to appear this spring.

READ MORE:

The Northern Illinois Brood, as the name implies, will mainly appear in the northern and central parts of the state, according to the University of Illinois Extension.

The Great Southern Brood will be in southern and central Illinois, with the broods transitioning from one to the other around the Springfield area and more broadly throughout the middle of the state, according to the university.

Brood XIII cicadas also appear in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and a bit of Michigan. The Northern Illinois brood has a reputation for being the largest emergence of cicadas anywhere. According to research by entomologists Monte Lloyd and Henry Dybas at the Field Museum in Chicago, a 1956 brood of Northern Illinois cicadas produced 1.5 million cicadas per acre.

The Great Southern Brood will be found in a much larger area that touches 15 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

Cicadas spend most of their lives underground as immature nymphs but surface en masse every 13 or 17 years. They are expected to appear for about four weeks, according to the university.

Their extraordinarily long life cycle, the longest of any insect on the planet, is part of an evolutionary strategy that has allowed the species to survive for 1.8 million years, or from the Pleistocene Epoch.

Cicadas are about an inch long and have a three-inch wingspan. Their mating calls can be deafening, heralding their arrival above ground with a high-pitched cacophony of buzzing that can reach decibels of 100 or greater — about the same as a subway train, forklift or motorcycle.

Pesticides won’t kill cicadas and are not recommended.