In 2021, I wrote about the term kiiwahtekaataawi, meaning “let’s dance around something.” The term can be used generically for dancing around anything, but it’s also strongly connected to our stomp dance. As we approach some community stomp dances, like the Annual Meeting dance in June, I thought it would be helpful to review this…
Category: New Word
weehki-kaloosioni: aayaacimwaakani ‘New Word: Phone’
If you look up ‘phone’ in the dictionary, you will find the Myaamia word aayaacimwaakani. If you have been around the Myaamia language for a while you may have heard other variations of this word to mean phone, but for the sake of this post we will stick to the word on the dictionary. So,…
weehki-kaloosioni: oonsaawiminaapowi ‘New word: Lemonade’
Sometimes creating a new word in Myaamiaataweenki requires days or even weeks of work researching in the archives and asking our relatives in other tribes questions about how they name something. But every once in a while a new word emerges in a moment and immediately feels right to everyone (and passes muster with the…
weehki kaloosioni: koohkoošhkinaahkwa ‘New Word: Armadillo’
Throughout our history Myaamia people have constantly encountered animals that were new to us and created words to talk about those animals. In the late 1800s, many Myaamia people lived around and worked within the circuses that wintered near Iihkipisiononki ‘Peru, Indiana’ and created new names or repurposed old names for the animals they found…
weehki kaloosioni: šoohkwaakana ‘New Word: Car’
The Myaamia word we’re going to introduce today is our word for ‘car’ šoohkwaakana. This term was created years ago, but it’s a very useful one! So let’s talk through what the different pieces of the word mean and other related words that you can use. šoohkw + aakan + a ‘slide’ + ‘tool that…
weehki kaloosioni: kiinteelintaakani ‘New Word: Computer’
Computers are everywhere today. Everyone has them and we all use them on a daily basis. It’s important in any language to be able to talk about your daily life and the things around you, and Myaamia is no exception. For our new word post today we introduce a word we created many years ago,…
weehki-kaloosioni: wilaalaansanto ‘New Word: Color It!’
We recently helped the Cultural Resources Office (CRO) of the Miami Tribe with the creation of a new word for ‘color it’: wilaalaansanto. This word is going to be used in a new children’s coloring book that the CRO will publish later this year. We created wilaalaansanto because in the time period before our language…
nakaani-kaloosioni: kiiwahtekaataawi ‘New Word: Let’s Dance Around It/Stomp Dance’
In a normal year, we host a large public stomp dance during our Winter Gathering in Miami, Oklahoma. We could not have it in person this January, but we want to give our community a chance to learn more about the language we use at a stomp dance. Kiiwahtekaataawi is our word meaning “let’s dance…
weehki kaloosioni: waapicahkihkwa ‘New Word: shaker cans’
Normally, this time of year we would have had our Annual Winter Gathering filled with lots of socializing, fun, games and one of our big events of the year, stomp dance. Stomp dance is a common intertribal dance that has been around for a very long time and is still a big part of the…
2020 Year End Wrap Up
COVID turns everything upside down The year of Neehseehpineenki COVID-19 was full of tragedy and disruption. In addition to all the lives lost and sickened by this terrible disease, we also paid a serious price in our ability to gather together as Myaamia people. We were forced to cancel events like the Myaamiaki Conference and…
Aacimotaatiiyankwi 