The students in the Myaamia Heritage Program finished out their fall semester strong.  This year in the Myaamia Heritage Course, students are learning about Myaamia ecological perspectives and history.  We spent the majority of the year outside, exploring the ideas of how to view our environment through a Myaamia lens.  This included tree walks on campus, learning about the Myaamia lunar calendar system, and discussing Myaamia stories.  

One highlight of this semester is it’s link to Myaamia food.  During class, students had the opportunity to process both acorns and persimmons to prepare them for the cooking process.  One day of class was set aside solely for eating Myaamia foods, cooked both in historical and contemporary styles.  Myaamia Center staff and students provided foods made with corn, bison, squash, persimmons, and pawpaws.  The opportunity to come together to eat the foods that we learned about in class was a fun opportunity to synthesize what we learned this semester.  Plus all of the food was really tasty!

Our seniors (who do not take the Myaamia Heritage Course) were hard at work on their senior projects.  They are each working on projects that combine what they have learned in their major or minor with what they have learned in the Myaamia Heritage Program.  The goal of these projects is to give back to the Myaamia community.  This semester, the students reflected on their first three years in the program, brainstormed multiple project options, and narrowed down to their final project idea.  From there, they have done the research and planning necessary to complete their project next semester.

This semester, we also held the Celebrating Miami: Tribe and University Week in Miami Athletics.  During this week, each athletic event highlighted the relationship between the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and Miami University.  The students helped plan all of the activities during the games, including games, trivia, and in-game recognitions.  Four Business Committee members came for the week, and were also able to take part in the celebrations.  

In addition to planning for Miami University athletic events, the students also participated in several intramural sports, including curling and aankwahaminki aašikooninki ‘broomball’.  The Myaamia broomball team, Kiiloona Myaamiaki, even went on to win this season’s championship, with the final game going into double overtime.

Finals are always a stressful time for students, so we finished out the semester with a fun, Myaamia study break.  Students were able to make necklaces with a combination of buckeyes and glass beads.  We know that our Myaamia ancestors wore necklaces made with buckeyes, and we enjoyed making our contemporary versions.  It was a nice, relaxing way to finish out the fall semester before students make their way back home for winter break.