Miami University and Oxford feel different this week as the majority of students have moved out and things have quieted down. For the staff of the Myaamia Center, this marks the transition to summer programs, but before we move on, we would like to reflect back on this year. This past weekend, we celebrated our…
Category: Myaamionki (Miami Places)
One of the ways we think about and talk about our history is based on where an event occurred. These categories organize our community histories based on the important places in our landscape.
2022 Myaamiaki Conference Recap
The Myaamiaki Conference is a biennial event that invites members of the Myaamia and Miami University communities to learn about the current projects being developed at the Myaamia Center. The 9th biennial Myaamiaki Conference comes four years after the last was held, as the 2020 Conference had to be canceled due to the Coronavirus pandemic….
2022 Myaamiaki Conference Preview
This year, the Myaamia Center is hosting our ninth biennial Myaamiaki Conference on Saturday, April 9th. This day-long event is a chance for our staff and affiliates to present their research projects to the Myaamia community. The conference is held at Miami University, which allows faculty, staff, and students to also attend and learn about…
eehsenaamišipoohkiiyankwi (meeloohkamiki 2022) ‘Maple Sugaring (Spring 2022)’
“The women bring sugar, which is generally neatly packed in a square box made of bark, containing about fifty pounds. It is made from the sugar tree. This art has long been known to the Indians. They make and use large quantities of sugar. We have seen very white and clear looking sugar of their…
šoohkwaahkiinki ‘Snowsnake’
Over the past years, we’ve been working on reintroducing the game of Šoohkwaahkiinki ‘Snowsnake’ back into the Myaamia community. In šoohkwaahkiinki, players compete to see who can slide a thin piece of shaped wood as straight and as far as possible. Šoohkwaahkiinki can be played on frozen lakes or on a flat field covered in…
Winter Gathering 2022
Winter Gathering is one of the major events each year that Myaamia citizens and friends of the community can come together in Noošonke Siipionki ‘Miami, OK’ to celebrate Myaamia culture and hear about important news and developments within the community. This year’s gathering was meant to be the beginning of a yearlong celebration of the…
Myaamia Heritage Program Update – January 2022
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…
Removal to Indian Territory
In the December 3 blog post, we learned about the 1847 second forced Removal of Myaamiaki from Indiana and the subsequent movements of Myaamia people between Indiana and the Miami Reservation in present-day Kansas. In the November 5 post, we saw that the winter of 1846-1847 was very hard for Myaamiaki, and many died. Still,…
The Underground Railroad in Myaamionki
A while ago, an interesting blog post brought my attention to a fascinating and, at least to me, new aspect of Myaamia history: the Underground Railroad in Indian Country. I admit, I had never considered that the flight north to freedom for the formerly enslaved required movement through Myaamionki ‘Miami Territory.’ When I think about…
mihsoolatenwi ‘Canoe Hill’
In early November of this year, I made a trip to Šikaakonki ‘Chicago’ for a meeting at the Newberry Library about a project called Indigenous Chicago. I was born in Šikaakonki and still have a lot of family living in the city and surrounding suburbs. However, due to COVID, I hadn’t made many trips to…