Prairie Band Potawatomi becomes 1st federally recognized tribe in Illinois. The move represents the first victory in the tribe’s larger effort to regain 1,280 acres of its ancestral land in Illinois via legislation in both the General Assembly and Congress. But the tribe first had to spend $10 million over the last 20 years to repurchase the first 130 acres of the Shab-eh-nay Reservation, located in what is now DeKalb County.