The Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma is collaborating with its namesake city in Illinois by building display cases for a year-long museum exhibit there.
"The Promise of Liberty" houses a series of historical American documents dating back to the country's founding, which will be on display at the Peoria Riverfront Museum throughout 2026.
More than 250 items are on display, many of them encased in display cases constructed by the Peoria Tribe's fabrication company, Henley Custom.
"I think that just the way that it's set up, you can glean a little bit of American history from it in the sense that we are… creating the integral infrastructure for these documents that are so important to America to be shown to people," Peoria First Councilman Nick Hargrove said.
Exhibit items housed by Peoria cases include a 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence, a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation and a 1963 copy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
Noah Popejoy, Henley Custom's business manager, said the company constructed seven cases based on the museum's preexisting ones, though with some improvements. He said this project began last spring.
"We really enjoy the kind of creative, kind of weird one-off things (where) we're gonna build cases to fit the space, not try to fit the space to the cases," Popejoy said. "We're going to build the customer what they want and try to match it as much as we can to that."
Hargrove said the tribe wants to be represented in the city that bears its name, which he said many residents don't know the history of. He said this collaboration can be a net positive for both communities.
"We were removed forcibly from our homeland in Illinois. That's just the plain truth of it," Hargrove said. "We can deal with that, though, in a way now that is generative and positive and helpful for everybody. Our history broadly, not just the Peorias' Indigenous history, is inseparable from American history."
John Morris, the museum's chief executive officer, said he did not know about the tribe until a citizen informed him four years ago.
"Peoria is my home base," Morris said. "I did not know the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma was a contemporary thing. I'm embarrassed to say that."
He said he hopes the exhibition and the tribe's contribution to it will help make people aware of Peoria people's contemporary lives.
"So often, museums are asking permission to show artifacts that belong to deceased relatives generations ago," Morris said. "I said, 'Why doesn't the Peoria Riverfront Museum look at the population of Native peoples today who are alive today?'"
Morris said the exhibit first details events occurring before the American Revolution, inside and outside of the colonies. That includes the Peoria area, Illinois and its Indigenous people. Morris said the exhibit acknowledges the relationship between the government and tribes through treaties.
According to the museum, no artifacts from the Peoria Tribe are on display.
Hargrove and Morris both said the museum wants to continue working with the tribe.
"They view it even as an obligation — as they should — to work with Indian nations, particularly us, because they're on our homelands," Hargrove said.