Aacimotaatiiyankwi

As the Fall 2025 semester comes to an end and winter settles over Oxford, Ohio, we are taking a moment to look back on a busy and exciting few months for the Myaamia Heritage Program at Miami University. From welcoming our newest students in August to sharing meals and games throughout the fall, it has been a wonderful semester of community building, language learning, and cultural engagement.

Meentitohkaalilaankiki ‘We welcome you all!’ 

The first-year Myaamia Heritage students moved to campus early on Tuesday, August 19, for a pre-semester program. That evening, we gathered with the 13 new students and their families to discuss the Heritage Program and welcome everyone to Miami University.

The following day, we jumped straight into programming to help them get settled. Several upper-class Myaamia students joined us to serve as mentors, showing the first-year students around campus, helping them locate classrooms, and answering questions about life in the Heritage Program. Together, we spent time working on an art project, playing Myaamia games, and learning Myaamiaataweenki ‘ the Myaamia language.’ It was a great way for the new cohort to acclimate to campus before classes officially began.

We welcomed our full cohort back for the first Heritage class of the year on Tuesday, August 26. This year, we have 46 Myaamia students enrolled at Miami University. We also have two Myaamia students, Gretchen Spenn and Oonseentia ‘Chris Bowyer,’ serving as Aanchtaakia Graduate Fellows at the Myaamia Center. 

Throughout the semester, the class has focused on Myaamiaataweenki. Students spent the past few months learning to speak about themselves, their families, and their daily lives in the Myaamia language.

Community Building 

To kick off the semester properly, we hosted our annual student retreat on the first Friday of classes. While our senior students aren’t required to attend the regular Heritage classes, they joined us for the retreat so the entire group could connect. The evening was filled with icebreaker activities, Myaamia games, and a community discussion about what activities the students wanted to pursue outside of the classroom this year for a semester filled with hands-on learning. 

In September, students had the opportunity to create their own seenseewinki ‘bowl game’ sets. Under the guidance of Chris Bowyer and Megan Sekulich, students learned to drill and paint Kentucky coffee beans for dice and decorated bowls to complete their sets.

Later in the semester, we took the fun into the classroom with a lacrosse game. Students tested their skills and learned specific phrases for gameplay, such as maahanto ‘scoop it’ and ahtoolo ‘put it/shoot it.’ We also held a shawl-making workshop where students made dance shawls with Myaamia Center staff, offering a space to learn, craft, and spend time with the community.

Toward the end of the semester, Heritage students participated in a cooking workshop led by Dr. Haley Shea, director of the Office of Assessment and Evaluation at the Myaamia Center, and Gretchen Spenn. As part of their ongoing research on Myaamia wellness, they taught students how to cook catfish, squash, and other ingredients commonly found in the Myaamia homelands.

In November, several staff members and students traveled to Bloomington, Indiana to attend a stomp dance hosted by the First Nations Educational and Cultural Center at Indiana University. It was a fantastic opportunity to gather with other tribal nations, both those with whom we share our homelands and new friends visiting the area. While there, the group visited the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’s “City on the River” exhibit, which tells the story of Indiana’s Indigenous peoples. Neewe ‘thank you’ to the IU First Nations Center for bringing us together! 

It’s been a busy semester, and we’re looking forward to seeing our students back on campus in the spring! If you would like to stay up to date on everything that the students are up to, be sure to follow the Myaamia Center Newsletter for more details.