Talk:Northwest Indiana

"Da Region" is The Calumet Region because of the Calumet River. That's Lake and Porter counties.

The Lake Region?
I lived in Northwest Indiana for most of my life, and I have never heard it refered to as The Lake Region. What is the source of this name?--Theoldanarchist 03:32, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm on the NWI fringe, and though nowhere near as commonly used as the other nicknames, people (outside the region) do refer to it as such. I have no source for that though, so I wouldn't be heartbroken by its removal. Craig R. Nielsen 07:27, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not necessarily asking for its removal, I'd just like a source. I have honestly never heard that term used, so it puzzled me.--Charles 18:53, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I found a couple of references, although they're just private, casual use of the term - and . Craig R. Nielsen 19:27, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I too have lived in NWI for my whole life (Michigan City) and I have never heard of it being called the Lake Region..ryry77..09:24, 25 April 2007

Lake Region sounds like some kind of Indiana Tourism commerical designation. I agree that, being a lifelong NWI resident, I've never heard the term before. --fleela | ± 15:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Those of you hail from "NW Indiana" have never had heard of "da Region" because you don't/didn't live there. The definition here is way too broad. Da Region does not include Michigan City (a great town), Valpo, Merrilville, etc. I had nver heard of it either until I went to college at Indiana U., and saw postings on the "ride board" in my dorm for rides to "da Region." I asked about it and was promptly schooled by "Rregion Rats" that da Region extends no furhter east than the west side of Gary and no further south than Munster. Davis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.203.206.89 (talk) 23:09, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I've lived in NW Indiana, La Porte County, for seven years, and I have yet to hear anyone refer to the area as "The Region", let alone "The Lake Region". Is this an archaic reference that has fallen out of use?  Or is it a term applied specifically to a smaller geographic area within NW IN, perhaps in Lake County, and not generally used as a substitute for "Northwest Indiana" when refering to the whole area?  I question its use here in the leading statement as a synonym for "Northwest Indiana".Bennycat (talk) 17:42, 10 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I have lived in NWI for all of my 34 years, and I've known about being called "Da Region" ever since junior high. True it's sometimes the downstaters that call us that (and not in a nice way), but we've always called ourselves region rats, especially the people like me who either live or have ancestry in the industrial cities of Whiting, Gary, EC and Hammond. In fact, I remember when Gary got its baseball team, Region Rats was in the running for a team name before they settled on the RailCats. Rick081677 (talk) 23:23, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I grew up in Hobart and attended IU. On campus, the entirety of Lake and Porter was considered "The Region", although most people who lived outside of Gary/Hammond/East Chicago/Whiting in "The Region" contested that.Gtwfan52 (talk) 20:29, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not "the lake region." Forget about that! I don't know who even came-up with that, or why. I'm guessing they heard "the region" (or "da' region") and couldn't figure out what that could possibly mean, and so added "lake" to it, or something. Or maybe (and I actually think that this is what it is), knowing the dirty little secret about it that I'm about to disclose, in the section I just created, below, they were trying to sanitize it to political correctness because, believe me, the left-out word between "the" and "region" isn't the word "lake." Please, then, get that version out of your heads! And please, now, see the entire section that I've just added, below, to finally settle "the region" or "da' region" matter, once and for all around here. Gregg L. DesElms (Username: Deselms) (talk) 02:23, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Settling "the region" or "da' region" matter, once and for all
I see that calling Northwest Indiana "the region" or "da' region" is unknown to some, here; and that there's a call for a citation of it in the article (and appropriately so, I should add).

I'm posting, now, to humbly request that no one delete that "the region" and "da'region" reference from the article on account of that a citation hasn't cropped-up yet...

...because, trust me, it is true and accurate. I'm an eye witness.

The reason some who've lived for a while in Northwest Indiana maybe never have heard of it is because only the rest of the state -- particularly students at the two big main campuses of both Indiana University in Bloomington, and also Purdue University in West Lafayette -- ever really called it that. That said, it was a well-known saying in pretty much all of "downstate" Indiana, too.

I was born and raised in Gary, Indiana -- in its Miller (now incorrectly called "Miller Beach") section, right on the southernmost tip of Lake Michigan -- and lived there for nearly 40 years until I finally just couldn't take it anymore and almost literally fled. Don't get me wrong, I still love it; but only just to visit, now. I've been in Napa, California for some years. I'll probably die here... sooner than later, if I don't take better care of myself; but now I digress. Sorry.

This may not seem relevant, but just work with me for a moment, here... it'll all tie in: I belonged, back then, to a youth group, called The Order of DeMolay, sponsored by Freemasonry (my ol' man was a Mason and a Shriner; and both he and my mom were members of the The Order of the Eastern Star... yeah, yeah... weird, I know... that's partly why I never joined Masonry... er... well... that, and that only whites were allowed back then... and still, in many places); and I climbed up through DeMolay's highest local chapter ranks, and then even some lower-level state offices; and I also set a still-unbroken record for the most times winning a certain of DeMolay's state conclave's oratorical competitions, which oratorical ceremony I was invited to recite at DeMolay officer installation ceremonies all around the state back in those days. And so, then, my point is, that even as a teenager (so that would have been... what... the 1970s, I guess), I traveled quite a bit around the whole of Indiana -- way, way more than the typical Indiana teenager ever would -- and whenever I'd visit almost any of the DeMolay chapters pretty much more than even only a couple counties away from Northwest Indiana, someone would say to me something like, "so... you're from da' region, eh?"

Seriously, it happened almost every single trip to almost anywhere else in the state. And when I went to college, downstate, every single time -- and I mean every single one -- that I would say where I was from in a room with pretty much more than just me in it, someone in said room would blurt out, "aaaayh... da' region... aaaaayh!" in the same sort of contrived southwest Chicago suburban accent as the guys did in the famous "Bill Swerski's Superfans (a Youtube video)" sketch on Saturday Night Live (SNL). In fact, the Geico Gecko even imitated that accent in a recent TV commercial (a YouTube video). If I've had one person in downstate Indiana use that accent to say "da' region" to me over the past now nearly 50 years, I've had 'em say it a thousand times. Seriously. It got old so, so, so long ago.

So, then, trust me, everyone, it's real. Others who've lived in Northwest Indiana for but a little while, but who maybe never traveled much to other parts of the state and made much of a mention of where they were from while so doing, likely never heard the term. But among persons in other parts of Indiana, it's well-known. May God strike me dead before I can even finish typing this if I'm lyin'.

Now, here's the dirty little secret of it; and this may help to explain why it's not said as often, anymore, as we've all matured and become more politically correct (and bear in mind that I'm a white guy as you read the following): What everyone elsewhere in the state actually meant, back then, when they said "da' region," was the black region... the part of Indiana that was pretty much all black, as far as they knew. Oh, sure, Indianapolis, South Bend, and Fort Wayne, chiefly, had not-insignificant black populations... even more so, now; but back in the '70s and '80s, it was pretty much only Northwest Indiana which everyone else in the state believed had a sufficiently significant black population that it could be considered "mostly black;" and so the lilly white (and obviously racist) kids in the rest of the state thought of it as the state's "black region."

This became something I first understood one evening when I was down in the southern third of the state, to do that oratorical thing at a ceremony, and someone, as expected, said "aaaayh... you're from da' region... aaaaayh!" But then he added, "yet you're white," followed by, "what a surprise."

Remember, I was just a kid... barely old enough to drive; and a kid who lived in a fairly-well-integrated local culture, and so I didn't really hear very many really seriously racial comments. Oh, I did as I got older, mind you, but maybe the universe was trying to shield me from it up to that point. The whole of the Chicago area, actually, is fairly racist, but in the way that northern cities are racist... which is very different, I've learned in my 56 years on the planet, from racism further south. In most of Indiana -- especially its central and southern parts -- there's some fairly seriously white, rednecked style racism, even to this day. And so it was certainly going on back then!

I remember that Mayor Hatcher's election in '67 (the first elected black mayor in the United States) did a lot to make ignorant and racist whites in the rest of Indiana (and a lot of the rest of the US, too, come to think of it) believe that pretty much all of Northwest Indiana was where all the blacks in the state lived. I suppose they assumed that that was because of US Steel's Gary Works being there, and all of Chicago's south side blacks migrating there for work (never mind that south Chicago had its own, albeit smaller, US Steel plant).

But, actually, that belief went way back, in history, further, even than the sixties. Let's not forget that Martinsville, Indiana, south of Indianapolis, was, in the 1920s, something of a Ku Klux Klan stronghold. One of my childhood-thru-college closest friends is, to this day, one of that little town's biggest lawyers (and his wife a pharmacist there); and during one of my visits, some years back, I got to talking to an old guy (who's probably long dead, now; and whom it was just painfully clear had been a Klan member) who told me that they were calling Northwest Indiana "da' region" even before The Great Depression.

And so "da' region" became short for "da' black region" possibly as long as 70 or more years ago! I'm guessing more, actually.

Of course, such as that is just so, so politically incorrect, now, that I'm guessing many fewer people use the term today. But, if I know conservative, lilly white Indiana (and I do), then I'll bet there's no shortage of people, downstate, who still use the term. If they're young enough, they may not realize it's racial significance, but I'll bet they still use it 'cause they've heard their parents use it.

But I agree that even my attestation to it, here, changes not the fact that the article needs a "the region" and "da' region" citation. The reason it's likely hard to find one, though, is because the term's racial history makes it something that history-revisionist historical societies, and what not, tend to want to forget; and so they intentionally leave out of their narratives... especially in Indiana! It could, then, be hard to find an online reference to it.

Since finding citations when seemingly no one else can is one of my favorite things to do on Wikipedia, I'll make a note to go see if I can work my research magic on this whoe when next I've got some spare time. There's a fellow whose last name is "Lane" (whose first name I can't remember at the moment) who wrote some of the best books and articles on Gary and its history; and if I can hunt down some of his stuff online, I might find that there's a "da' region" (or "the region") reference somewhere in it. If he's still alive, I might even know someone who can connect me with him (I've spoken to him a couple times over the years). If anyone else reading this, now armed with that lead, can find him, and maybe get him to steer you to a good "da' region" and/or "the region" citation, then more power to you! Go for it! Have him read what I've just written, here, to orient him. He'll confirm it, at least anecdotally, I'm sure.

In the meantime, though, until at least someone finds a citation, please do not remove the reference to it in the article because, godasmywitness, it's true... albeit irritatingly so, at least to me.

Gregg L. DesElms (Username: Deselms) (talk) 02:23, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * "The Region" is a name I've frequently heard in Bloomington by people, mostly from there, to refer to northwestern Indiana. I got the impression it did NOT include Gary, but rather was the cluster of small cities next to it. editeur24 (talk) 02:39, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

External links modified
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Map
This article needs a map with the counties and cities of northwestern Indiana shown. NOT a map of all Indiana, but it could be a cropped one. editeur24 (talk) 02:40, 17 July 2023 (UTC)