Last December the Hannahville Indian Community, which lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, sued Notre Dame and the federal Interior Department, saying the community was cheated out of a tract of land on the Notre Dame campus near the modern-day WNDU television studios.
The Hannahville Indians are successors to the Potawatomi people who were living in Northern Indiana when Father Sorin arrived in 1842. They allege that the state of Indiana illegally transferred Potawatomi-owned land to Notre Dame in violation of treaties dating to the 1820s. The University says it acquired the land legally.
The case is moving ahead. A pretrial preliminary conference is scheduled for August 31, 2004, in federal court in South Bend.