It’s hard to believe another Fall Semester has already finished at Miami University! As many of the Myaamia Heritage students have left campus for Winter Break, we want to reflect on what we accomplished this past semester.
Reflecting on Fall ’23
In August, the Myaamia Center welcomed a cohort of 12 new students to the Myaamia Heritage Program, bringing our total number of students to 47. This semester, the Myaamia Heritage class focused on Tribal Sovereignty and Current Events affecting Myaamiaki ‘Myaamia people.’
The class explored topics such as tribal citizenship and belonging within a tribal nation, peoplehood, the Miami Tribe’s constitution, and the importance of storytelling.
To learn more about sovereignty and contemporary issues, our students had the opportunity to visit virtually with two guest speakers working in tribal law.
Robin Lash, Miami Tribe of Oklahoma General Counsel, spoke to the class about sovereignty within the Miami Nation, and Ian Young, a Myaamia Heritage alumnus and a staff attorney for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in northern Minnesota, shared his journey of learning about his Myaamia heritage and connecting with the Myaamia community. He shared how this impacted his trajectory to law school and spoke a bit about the work that he is doing today. Our students had great questions for the guests and the Myaamia Center is grateful to connect with these community members to hear about their experiences with tribal law.
In the last few weeks of the semester, students explored what Myaamia people like to do for fun, including listening to aalhsoohkaana ‘Winter Stories’ and participating in stomp dancing in class. The aalhsoohkaana were told by students who were enrolled in an independent study course, learning Myaamiaataweenki ‘Myaamia language’.
Throughout the semester, this group learned to tell aalhsoohkaana in Myaamiaataweenki and participated in weekly language immersion sessions with Myaamia language coordinator, Jarrid Baldwin. At the end of the semester, each of these students told their story to the Myaamia Heritage class before the entire class participated in a stomp dance.
Myaamia students had opportunities to engage in some fun activities outside of the classroom this fall, too. In October, Doug Peconge, from the Miami Tribe’s Cultural Resources Extension Office in Fort Wayne, Indiana, taught a group of students to make pakitahaakana ‘lacrosse sticks.’ Students learned each step of the process, from selecting and preparing the wood to lacing the net used to catch the ball. We’re grateful to Doug for taking the time to travel to campus to teach us this skill.
In early November, we participated in our annual Celebrating Miami: Tribe and University Week activities. All five of the Miami Tribe’s elected leaders joined us in Oxford for the celebration. They spoke to many Miami University classes, including the Myaamia Heritage class, and participated in several activities hosted by the Miami University Athletic Department. You can read more about the week here.
During final exam week, the Myaamia Center hosted a day of crafting Buckeye necklaces for the Myaamia Heritage students. This gave students a break from studying and a chance to catch up with the community before leaving campus for Winter Break.
While many people in Ohio may associate the Buckeye with another state university, Myaamia people have been utilizing them long before that school was founded. In the past, Myaamia people used buckeyes in a variety of ways. Today, they are mainly worn as jewelry and to teach about our complex cultural connections to the ecology of our homelands.
Outside of the Myaamia Heritage program, the Myaamia Center, with the support of the Office of the Provost, began the second Indigenizing the Curriculum workshop with faculty from across Miami University. The year-long workshop brings faculty together to examine ways to incorporate Indigenous perspectives, knowledge, and experiences into their course curriculum. The first semester of the workshop was spent discussing these topics and participants will develop a module or class project for use in their courses during their second semester.
The Fall Semester was filled with intense, fruitful, and inspiring discussions and analyses of the topics. A highlight of the semester was when the Miami Tribe’s leadership visited Oxford and met with the group. They are also looking forward to traveling to Miami, OK for the Tribe’s Winter Gathering at the end of January.
While this cohort spends the Spring semester developing their modules and course projects, we will also start a third cohort that will be our first remote workshop, making it more accessible to faculty on Miami University’s Regional Campuses. This remote workshop will run through the Fall of ‘24.
The Myaamia Center also had another successful semester collaborating with preservice teachers in Miami University’s Art Department. This year we worked with two classes, Elementary Art Methods and Art Across the Curriculum, where we spent about 8 weeks developing two lessons about Myaamia people and culture and a craft inspired by Myaamia art, before teaching the lessons to local elementary school children. This fall, the program added a lesson for 5th graders, meaning children at local elementary schools are learning about Myaamia art in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. This year, the lessons were taught to a total of 450 local students!
It was a busy and fun-filled semester around the Myaamia Center and we can’t wait to see what the Spring Semester brings. One thing we’re looking forward to is the exhibit on Minohsaya “Painted Hides” opening at the Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum on campus next semester. If you’re spending time in Oxford, I hope you’ll visit this community-curated exhibition which explores new research and the revitalization of the painted hides tradition.
Aacimotaatiiyankwi 