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The Two Miamis

(niišwi myaamiikaana)

By Miami University

October 7^th, 2021

A sovereign tribal nation in Oklahoma. A public university in Ohio. And a relationship that has led to the first generation in nearly 100 years learning to speak the Myaamia language.

By Margo Kissell

Thirty years ago, Daryl Baldwin’s father gave him several old documents that once belonged to Daryl’s grandfather. Tucked inside the accordion-style manila folder among other papers were 18 pages that captured an unfamiliar language, neatly typed on onionskin.

The words intrigued Baldwin, then a carpenter in his late 20s. He recognized them as Myaamia, his tribal ancestors’ language, which had all but vanished after the Miami Tribe was forced from its homelands — including what is now Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

Studying the vocabulary list with its pronunciation guide and English translation, Baldwin was puzzled. His grandfather hadn’t spoken the language and neither did anyone else he knew.

He, like others of his generation, was missing a link to his heritage and culture.

“These language papers sparked something Myaamia, something I could actually tie to,” he said.

He asked his father if there were any native speakers left.

“I don’t know,” his father replied. “Why don’t you go see what you can find out.”

And so began a remarkable journey that culminated in teaching the first generation of Miami Tribe citizens in nearly 100 years to speak their own language.

Daryl Baldwin holds documents that belonged to his grandfather, with Myaamia words and their English translations. (photo by Scott Kissell)

“Being able to learn and speak the language that was developed by my ancestors was something I never thought I would do.”

kiiloona myaamiaki, ‘We are Miami’

Leading groundbreaking work in language and cultural revitalization is the Myaamia Center, the research arm of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. Baldwin is executive director of the center, located in Bonham House on Miami University’s Oxford campus.

He credits the unique relationship between the two Miamis — the sovereign tribal nation and the public educational institution — with playing a key role in the cultural awakening.

Being able to carve out space for the Tribe to reposition itself and heal from the past was a critical step, he said.

“We just knew that we needed help trying to re-establish ourselves because we saw a whole generation of youth disconnected from their cultural heritage. And we knew if we didn’t do something, that disconnection was going to further erode the community.”

Daryl Baldwin, Miami University President Gregory Crawford (center) and Miami Tribe of Oklahoma Chief Douglas Lankford at the Miami University spring 2017 commencement. Baldwin was the 2017 commencement speaker. (Photo by Scott Kissell)

“We began to lose our sense of continuity, and much of our communal understanding went to sleep”

neepwaantiinki, 50 years of ‘learning from each other’

As with most significant journeys, the route was rarely easy or obvious. This is true for Baldwin, the Tribe, and the university. To recognize their mutual accomplishments and relationship, the university and the Tribe will celebrate a golden anniversary of sorts next year.

It will be 50 years next summer since Forest Olds, then chief of the Miami Tribe and a director of the Northeast Oklahoma Rural Electric Cooperative, traveled 657 miles from his home and the Tribe’s headquarters in Miami, Oklahoma, to Cincinnati to attend a conference on rural electrification.

After the conference in late August 1972, Olds toured southwest Ohio for a few days with his host, Raymond Standafer ’34 MA ’49. The two had become acquainted when Standafer, a Middletown, Ohio, elementary school principal, went to Oklahoma after he was “struck by the [early 1970s] controversy over the use of ‘Redskins’ and resolved to become better acquainted with Miami Indians,” according to Miami University 1809-2009: Bicentennial Perspectives.

Standafer and Olds drove to several locations, including Piqua, the “seat of his ancestors.” They also came to Oxford and stopped by the university president’s office so Olds could introduce himself.

“Several Miami Indians of Olds’ generation knew of a university ‘back East’ that was named for their people, but no official or member of the Tribe had ever visited Miami University before this occasion.” (Miami University 1809-2009: Bicentennial Perspectives)

With then-President Phillip Shriver away from the office, university officials were uncertain what to do with their unexpected guests. They decided on a campus tour. Olds seemed especially pleased to be on ancestral homelands becoming acquainted with a university that carried the name of his people.

Two years later, during a return trip when Chief Olds met President Shriver in person, the university made the chief an honorary member of the alumni association.

Miami Tribe of Oklahoma Chief Forest Olds with Miami University President Phillip Shriver at Lewis Place in 1974. (Photo courtesy of Myaamia Center Archives)

nilla myaamia (I am Miami)

For every Miami Tribe student graduating from Miami University, Karen Baldwin, (above, left) who works for the Tribe’s cultural resource office, creates a Myaamia stole adorned with ribbonwork for that student to wear at commencement and keep to treasure. Neepwaantiinki (learning from each other) is stitched on one side. On the other is nilla myaamia (I am Miami). “Thirty years ago, nobody said that phrase because they didn’t know it," Daryl Baldwin said. (Photo of 2021 ceremony for Miami Tribe graduates by Scott Kissell)

myaamiaki eemamwiciki, ‘the Miami Awakening’

Another noteworthy step in bringing the Tribe and the university closer together occurred in 2001 with the start of the Myaamia Project, the Myaamia Center’s predecessor.

Baldwin was still on his journey to discover — with hopes to recover — lost cultural touchstones such as ribbonwork, the Tribe’s art form that uses ribbons to create distinctive geometric patterns, which past generations had incorporated into clothing, moccasins, and other belongings.

Those touchstones declined, along with the language, following the forced relocation in 1846 from Ohio to Kansas and finally Oklahoma and mandated boarding schools, established to coerce Native Americans to learn European culture and language and abandon their own.

By the early 1960s, the last Tribe member to speak Myaamia conversationally had died.

After earning a master’s in arts with an emphasis on Native American linguistics in 1999, Baldwin, married to Karen and with three young children by then, couldn’t find a job in his field.

Even today, he tears up when he talks about how close he came to returning to construction work with his brother.

“I can’t do this anymore. I’m done,” Baldwin told Julie Olds in a phone conversation at the time. Olds, one of the elected tribal leaders in Oklahoma, had supported Baldwin’s language efforts. Related to Chief Olds by marriage, she also knew that for the previous decade, Tribe students had been attending the university in Oxford through the Myaamia Heritage Award Program. Created in 1991, the program provides a tuition waiver and a four-year undergraduate college experience for Miami Tribe students.

A pair of moccasins with ribbonwork, late 19th century, featured in the Miami University Art Museum's spring 2020 exhibition "Myaamia Ribbonwork." Read full description and view the online exhibit at https://sites.miamioh.edu/myaamia-ribbonwork/2020/05/

Julie Olds had an idea: “Let me call Miami University.”

Baldwin remembers thinking, “There’s no way a university is going to take on something like this. There’s no field for what we’re interested in.”

Reed Anderson, then associate dean for Miami’s College of Arts and Science, asked them to submit a proposal. It was a long shot, but they shared their deep desire to help revive the Miami Nation’s culture and language.

Julie Olds and then-Chief Floyd Leonard worked with Anderson and Myrtis Powell, vice president for Student Affairs at the time, to create the Myaamia Project. Miami officials agreed to fund the project for three years, after which they would evaluate whether to continue.

When he came to Oxford as founding director of the project, Baldwin wasn’t sure where it would lead. University officials didn’t know either, but they gave him a small room on the third floor of King Library. He now calls those three years a valuable incubation period in which the university granted him the space to think and determine how to move forward.

A major milestone: 100 Miami Tribe members are Miami University graduates

The major achievement of having 100 Miami Tribe members as graduates of Miami University is “a pivotal moment” in the revitalization work’s impact, Baldwin said.

“Once you reach that, it suddenly isn’t about the one, two, or three individuals who started this movement. It starts to take on its own life and its own growth.”

Below, the five 2021 Miami Tribe graduates of Miami University (four in person wave to the fifth, onscreen, who attended remotely) at a special pre-commencement ceremony during which they each received a handmade ribbonwork stole and a handcrafted lacrosse stick. (Photo by Scott Kissell)

“We know our graduation rate started going up when they started having access to their heritage, language, and culture.”

Interactive map: Where the graduates live

Click on the red markers in the map to view short videos by seven Miami Tribe members about their time at Miami University and what they are doing now.

Expand the map to view where the all graduates live now.

aahpitesinki, ‘going forward’

Today, there is much to celebrate:

This fall, the university has its largest incoming class of Tribe students: 13.
There are now more Tribe students on campus at one time than ever before: 39.
That robust start to the 2021-2022 academic year follows another major milestone reached last May: 100 Tribe students have earned degrees from the university.

In the midst of next year’s celebration of the Tribe-university accomplishments, Baldwin will continue to look ahead. He has set his sights on changing how Indigenous people are portrayed in public education.

Currently, at least in Ohio, the study of Indigenous people is limited to a few weeks in the fourth grade and focuses on the past. That frustrates Baldwin, whose mantra has become: “We’re a living people with a past, not a people from the past.” He believes a deeper education will make more people realize this. The Myaamia Center is providing the content.

Miami University art education majors Cas Napier, left, and Zania Hasty introduce Myaamia culture and imagery in a Talawanda School District fourth-grade classroom in October 2019 (photo courtesy of Stephanie Danker).

“We never had the bandwidth to deal with it because our own youth weren’t getting it, and in the start of this effort, we had to invest in our youth. Our future hinged on that,” Baldwin said. “But what’s happening now is we’ve come out from under the radar. We’re no longer in the incubation period, and we have enough legs under us where we can begin to look at regional impact.”

In the past few years, the Myaamia Center, Miami University art education students, and the local Talawanda School District have collaborated on curriculum to broaden fourth-graders’ understanding of the Tribe.

Barbara Hamilton ’86 MEn ’94, who teaches at Kramer Elementary in Oxford, believes the collaboration with the center staff and Stephanie Danker's ART 395 class are a gift to her young students.

“It was a special moment to be with my students when they realized that Myaamia people are a living people and that the culture is so much more than an excerpt in a history book,” Hamilton said.

Last fall, two Myaamia culture and imagery lessons became part of the Ohio History Connection’s fourth grade Ohio as America curriculum. It is used by more than 20,000 students in 91 school districts across the state, in public and private schools, and homeschool environments, said Carla Mello, department manager of school and teacher support for the Ohio History Connection, which supplies the curriculum.

“Our partnership with the Myaamia Center and Miami University has been a vital step into creating educational content that provides the perspectives of communities and cultures that have been historically marginalized by traditional textbooks and resources,” Mello said.

Talawanda fourth graders show off their ribbonwork bookmarks (photo by Maria Jose DeSantiago Galan).

The Myaamia Center is “a space to help us as a tribal community develop our young intellectuals into individuals who can contribute back to our tribal nation that is trying to rebuild itself.”

aantaamhkihsinki, ‘a changing world

Douglas Lankford, the current chief of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, believes the university has become part of the Tribe’s landscape. In another 20 years, he said, no one will remember when the university wasn’t connected to the Tribe.

“For our kids right now, who are in college, the university has always been part of the journey and what we do,” the chief said.

Miami Provost Jason Osborne calls the world-renowned Myaamia Center, the relationship with the Tribe, and all that goes with it a valuable “hidden gem.”

“This relationship is unique in higher education and presents us with exciting opportunities for our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and broader Miami family,” he said.

Chief Lankford said of the partnership, “Each party seems to think they’re getting the better part of the deal.”

The provost adds, “I believe we have only begun to see the potential we can realize from working together.”

niiyaawi meeloniteelotamaani, ‘self-discovery’

Breathing new life into the Myaamia culture and language has been a work of passion for Baldwin, who was awarded a prestigious “genius grant” when named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016. Last April, President Joe Biden nominated the linguist and cultural preservationist to a six-year term on the National Council on the Humanities. The U.S. Senate confirmed him Sept. 30.

The hard-earned and well-deserved accolades, although much appreciated, are not what drive Baldwin, a humble, soft-spoken man who wants to share the credit and the praise.

He is quick to point out that the program wouldn’t be what it is today without Bobbe Isler Burke ’70 and David Costa.

Burke, now Miami Tribe Relations coordinator emerita, spent more than 30 years at Miami tending to the relationship and the Tribe students, including the decade before Baldwin arrived in 2001. That commitment served as an important step “in keeping the relationship active,” Baldwin said.

“David Costa’s groundbreaking work on the Miami-Illinois language beginning in the late 1980s served as the basis for the revitalization,” Baldwin explained. Today, Costa is director of the Myaamia Center’s language research office.

They, along with others, helped build a program that has supported Tribe students in discovering their heritage and identity.

“This is about discovery of self,” Baldwin said after receiving the MacArthur Fellowship. “This is a wonderful recognition of what the community has been able to do, and it’s a direct outcome of the collaboration of the Miami Tribe and Miami University.”

Miami University President Gregory Crawford said Baldwin’s work is having a tremendous impact that will be felt for generations to come.

“This cultural reawakening is significant for the Tribe and has also brought a wealth of knowledge to the university community,” Crawford said. “I’ve seen firsthand how students share stories fluently in the Myaamia language. It’s incredibly moving.”

Crawford has joined the hundreds of Miami students, faculty, and staff who have traveled to Oklahoma over the years for the Tribe’s winter gathering to learn about its culture.

Bobbe Burke, then-Miami Tribe Relations coordinator, with students inside the Richard and Emily Smucker Wiikiaami Room, a gathering space in Armstrong Student Center that educates visitors about the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. (2017 photo by Scott Kissell)

Created by Miami University Communications and Marketing

Margo Kissell, writer. Donna Boen, editor. Susan Meikle, designer. Scott Kissell, photographer. Ian McCue, videographer. Adam Wolfe, graphics. Jessica Rivinius, manager.

“We understand that by sharing, we create understanding, and that is what we want to achieve in a cross-cultural experience,” said Baldwin, who is also known in the Myaamia community by his Myaamia name, Kinwalaniihsia. He believes that the Tribe is now “more a part of the fabric and identity of Miami University because of our engagement with each other.”

Learn more about the Miami Tribe and Myaamia Center

Aacimotaatiiyankwi: A Myaamia Community Blog

Miami Tribe Relations

Myaamia Heritage Logo symbolizes the unique relationship between the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and Miami University. The design is a reference to Myaamia ribbonwork, a traditional Miami Tribe art form.