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NILES — Nestled near the St. Joseph River is a new sign installed to both honor and recognize the rich Indigenous history of the Niles area.

The City of Niles and the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi recently collaborated to install a new Pawating River marker sign along the river across the street from Corewell Health Lakeland Hospital.

Designed by Tribal Artist Justin Johnson with assistance from Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Language Specialist Kyle Malott, the sign features the text “Pawating,” which means “place of the rapids,” and Senathwen Zibe, meaning “rocky river.” 

“If you go back in history, the river was about 12 feet lower than it is today,” Malott said. “There are a lot of big rocks and boulders at the bottom of the river. Because of that, the river was real rapid-ey, which is why we call the area Pawating.” 

“We named geographic places to reflect what was or is there,” said Pokagon Band Representation Outreach Board Vice Chair Julie Dye. “Pawating celebrates the spirit of the land.”

Tulip-style flowers found on the Pokagon Band seal were placed in the top two corners, purple loosestrife flowers in the bottom two corners and a springcrest flower is located at the center.

“I used a lot of my inspiration from the plants found along the river,” Justin said.

The Niles area is known to the Potawatomi as Pawating. When city founders laid out the village plat in the late 1820s, they adopted the name Niles. 

The new sign was created to replace an older sign that had deteriorated and displayed misinformation. The former sign mistranslated Pawating as “great crossing.” 

“It feels really good,” Johnson said. “It’s been a dream of mine to put work out there, to represent my tribe and to educate people on the area.”

According to Dye and Niles History Center Director Christina Arseneau, the collaboration was born out of city residents bringing the state of the old, deteriorated sign to the attention of city leadership.

“That sign had been around for a long time,” Arseneau said. “There were some fourth ward citizens that brought it to our attention.”

Upon reaching out to the Pokagon Band, both parties were eager to create a fresh, new sign to educate citizens and visitors alike.

“We wanted to make it inviting and durable,” Dye said. “It’s an opportunity to educate about our culture and heritage and how descriptive our language is. It was a great opportunity. A lot of people don’t even know we still exist.”

“With our band specifically, our villages were in the Niles-Buchanan area,” Malott said. “It is important to get that information out there.”

The sign features a QR code that links to information about Pokagon Band history and the pronunciation of the words on the sign. Both Dye and Arseneau aim to build on the completion of the sign project and continue to educate community members on Niles’ Indigenous history.

“It’s making people aware of history,” Arseneau said. “It’s important to us and for us to work through (the Pokagon Band) and have it be their wording, their designs, their images that were important to them that reflect their actual history. They have that history here and they’re still here. We want to make that connection between the past and the present.”

“We share an elaborate history and we’re a current presence in the community,” Dye said. “It’s a sense of pride because we are the original people of this land. History shoved us aside but it is a sense of pride. It’s reclaiming the real first name of Niles and putting it out there. With this sign, people may want to investigate and learn the history.”

For more information on Pawating, visit wiwkwebthegen.com.