From the top of the Ferris Wheel at the 1893 Chicago World Columbian Exposition, Simon Pokagon, an Indigenous rights activist born in 1830, addressed the burgeoning city, and saw an apocalyptic tide of change. How unlike the Chi-Kag-Ong of the red man! he wrote in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. The shoreline of the lake, with its fleet of canoes; the marsh and winding river, with flags and rushes fringed; the scattering wigwams and the red men were nowhere to be seen. But in their place rose roof-on-roof, with steeples tall, smoking towers and masts of ships as far as [the] eye could see. All had changed, except the sun and sky above. They had not, because the great spirit, in his wisdom, hung them beyond the white mans reach. Pokagon, a member of the Potawatomi tribe, and his critique of the dispossession and distortion that came along with this tide of canonical architecture has a special place in the permanent installation at the MacArthur Foundation headquarters in Chicago, which opened this fall. Curated by two Indigenous artists and scholars (John Low, of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, and Andrea Carlson, of the Ojibwe tribe), We Will Tell Our Story crafts an intervention that corrects the historical record and materializes Simon Pokagons critique of Chicago architecture from within, in building with its own history of distorted settler-colonial narratives.The exhibition was designed by Michigan-based Seven Generations A+E. (Courtesy MacArthur Foundation)Located in Holabird and Roches 1895 Marquette Building, an archetypal example of the Chicago Schools technological and formal innovations, the building has been celebrated, and landmarked, for its lobby, decorated with mosaics by Louis Tiffany and J.A. Holzer that depict Jacque Marquettes settler-colonial exploration of Great Lakes region in 17th century and his interactions with Indigenous people, who are represented inaccurately. The clothing and architecture depicted (teepees, feather headdresses) are associated with plains Indians further west. The European settlers are seen serenely passing a peace pipe in one mosaic, and in another Indigenous Americans calmly listen to Marquettes impassioned exhortations to the Christian faith.We Will Tell Our Story focuses on these misrepresentations explicitly. The consequences of this meeting were not Peace and Prosperity, but were conflict, dispossession, and diaspora, reads one panel. The first section of the museum visitors see as they exit the original lobby is labeled The dishonesty of the Marquette Building. While the original lobby is atmospheric, allegorical, and falsely idealized, the new exhibition, designed by Michigan-based Seven Generations A+E, which is owned by the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, is didactic, scholarly, and text-heavy. Its primary architectural organizing device is a set of birch wood shelves and frames inspired by the domed wigwam, vernacular shelter for Great Lakes Indigenous people, which wraps around the perimeter of the exhibition, creating a sense of curvilinear embrace as it arches over visitors heads. The goal was to reference in an abstract and respectful way a traditional architectural or structural methodology, said Alex Hokkanen, Manager of Design Research + Sustainability at Seven Generations A+E.The lighting and materials similarly draw aesthetic counterpoints to the lobby. Delicate, bright track lighting, the light-hued wood, and brilliant block panels of Indigenous ribbonwork patterns contrasts with the more subdued colors and subtle lighting of the lobbys pointillist mosaics. Three curving exhibition walls that center the Potawatomi tribes experience are themed Recollections, Power, Time, and Land, all orbiting a structural column recast as the center-point of this circle.Birch wood shelves and frames inspired by the domed wigwam wraps around the perimeter of the exhibition. (Courtesy MacArthur Foundation)Throughout, theres an intense focus on not historicizing Indigenous people. The installation addresses the 20th-century urbanization of Native people in Chicago and elsewhere and emphasizes that no matter how old the cultural practices of Indigenous people may be, their persistence today makes them contemporary, not prehistoric artifacts. Were not gone, were not conquered, were also not discovered, said Low. Furthermore, the exhibit makes it clear that the wigwam and effigy mound can lay claim to the title of the first Chicago School of architecture.The contemporary dynamism of Indigenous life is expressed in the architecture of the exhibition as well. The cellular organization of the wigwam-like structure can be used to frame 2D works, as its done now with a selection of drawings and photographs of Indigenous people by Indigenous artists, and as a display case for 3D objects, so that new exhibitions can be rotated in and out. The present tense, as a general guiding principal, was very strong, said Hokkanen. The project began several years ago, when the MacArthur Foundation sought to refresh a previous exhibition in this space, which focused on the foundation and the Marquette building. In conversation with Indigenous community members, the foundation realized they had the opportunity to cede more leadership to Native voices, Native leaders, and Native artists, said Jamie Waters, a staff member at the MacArthur Foundation who was co-chair of the exhibition working group.Exhibition content emphasizes that no matter how old the cultural practices of Indigenous people may be, their persistence today makes them contemporary. (Courtesy MacArthur Foundation)The urge to demonstrably alter the lobby to point out its historical inaccuracies would be understandable, but between its landmark protections and the obvious progression in Indigenous depiction the two spaces demonstrate, the curators felt this fundamental contrast should be embraced. In and of itself its a history lesson of how white people thought about Indians at the time the Marquette building was built, said Low. We dont want to lose that lesson.Editors Note: Zach Mortices wife is a staff member at the MacArthur Foundation, though she was not involved in the organization, production, or promotion of We Will Tell Our Story.Zach Mortice isa Chicago-based design journalist and critic focused on architecture and landscape architectures relationship to public policy.