Aacimotaatiiyankwi

wiiyaakiteeheelo weehki-kihkatwe ‘Happy (Gregorian) New Year!’

In the next few days, we’ll be celebrating the Gregorian New Year! While this is the most commonly celebrated calendar new year around the world, it is also not the only one. For Myaamiaki, our year is based on the lunar calendar which reflects the cycles of the moon. This puts our lunar new year…

Ciinkwia Minohsaya ‘Painted Thunderbird Robe’ Series

We have partnered with a team of scholars to bring you a new series of interpretations of this Ciinkwia Minohsaya ‘Painted Thunderbird Robe.’ In this short discussion, our team explores a series of key questions as they seek to contextualize this beautiful work of art in time and place, as well as within the culture…

Introducing the Neehsapita Adult Summer Program

Written by Joshua Sutterfield For the past several years, we have been looking for ways to bring our Eemamwiciki Summer Programs to our parents, caregivers, and other adults in our community. Many parents and caregivers had asked if they could get more information about the day to day programs their children were participating in and…

Removal – the Treaty of 1840

This audio file is a reading of the post that follows. In the previous entry, we saw that in the Treaty of 1838, Myaamia leaders agreed for the first time to consider a future Removal west. As we look at the Treaty of 1840, we will see how that agreement to consider became an agreement…

Myaamia Heritage Program: Year in Review (2020-21)

We are coming up on the end of the school year here at Miami University. This is the last week of classes, and then students will have a week of finals before the end of the semester. This year has been a challenge for our students and staff who have worked to stay connected, even…

iši neepwaamici nintaana ‘what my daughter has taught me’ Part 1

Part 1: 0 – 10 months It’s not an understatement for me to say that everything I know about Myaamia language, culture, and people comes from my family, from my wife Tina (Peehkateewa) and daughter Adeline (nicknamed Seenseewia). My first exposure and experiences with Myaamiaataweenki ‘Miami language’ began when Tina was a student in the…

An Introduction to Myaamia Nouns and Animacy

This post introduces a unique feature of Myaamia nouns known in linguistics as animacy. This system is used to separate nouns into two categories: animate and inanimate. Every noun we have falls into one or the other and that gets represented by the last letter of the word. For animate nouns the word ends in…

Four Versions of a Little Turtle Speech at Greenville, 1795

Four Versions of a Little Turtle Speech at Greenville, 1795 *and a conversation about them The following four primary sources all reveal aspects of a critical message delivered by the Myaamia leader Mihšihkinaahkwa ‘Little Turtle’ during the summer of 1795 at negotiations in Greenville in the Ohio territory. For the context, see our previous two…