neepwaaminta myaamia Established 1826
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014
VOLUME 142 NO. 11
MIAMI UNIVERSITY OXFORD, OHIO
WWW.MIAMISTUDENT.NET
ANDREW STRACK, COURTESY MYAAMIA CENTER ARCHIVE
George Ironstrack (middle), Miami citizen and Myaamia Center Program Director, leads Miami tribe members in lacrosse.
Tribe member finds heritage in language Miami citizen Daryl Baldwin helps MU tribe students learn what it means to be myaamia
KAREN BALDWIN, COURTESY MYAAMIA CENTER ARCHIVE
DARYL BALDWIN MIAMI TRIBE REIS THEBAULT NEWS EDITOR
Daryl Baldwin settled down in his new office. It was at the end of a long hallway on the third floor of King Library. Its dimensions were strikingly similar to those of a closet. It was the first day of his new job at Miami University. “Now what?” he asked himself. King Library was Baldwin’s latest stop on his journey to bring his tribe’s language, myaamia, back from dormancy. He had no model and no one to advise him, but in 2001, he began his work with the Myaamia Project. It was a moment hundreds of years in the making. In 1846, the federal government under James K. Polk drove
the Miami Tribe, Baldwin’s ancestors, from central Indiana to present-day Kansas. In the 1870s, after a second removal forced members of the tribe to Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma, the Miami people were scattered across the center of the continent Baldwin was born to a Miami father and an English mother who raised him near Maumee, Ohio. “I was literally on the landscape where a lot of that history played out,” Baldwin said. “In many ways, that landscape is the history book.” He was always aware of his heritage, but never really knew what it meant. “I always knew I was a Miami Indian,” he said. “But I didn’t know much about that as a kid, because I grew up in an environment where there weren’t any other native people.”Attending high school in the late 1970s, he experienced first hand some things that would become contentious later — like mascot issues. Baldwin attended Anthony Wayne High School — the Fighting Generals — named after an 18th-century U.S. general. Wayne led American troops in the Battle
Chief of Miami Tribe visits university, connects with FSB
ANDREW STRACK, COURTESY MYAAMIA CENTER ARCHIVE
DOUG LANKFORD Leader of the Miami Nation of Oklahoma Chief Doug Lankford arrived at Miami University Wednesday. Lankford visits the university several times a year, but he said this time is different. “I’ve never gotten to visit the Farmer School of Business, so I’m pretty excited about going there and seeing that facility,” he said. CEO of Miami Nation Enterprises, the business arm of the tribe, Joe Frazier is also making the trip. Director of the Myaamia Center Daryl Baldwin said the visit is just the initial step in the possible relationship between FSB and the tribe. “We’re all excited about it but we really don’t know at
TODAY IN MYAAMIA HIS-
this stage what direction it’ll go,” he said. Lankford said the relationship could be mutually beneficial. The tribe, he said, could learn about the resources Farmer can provide, while the business school can learn how to deal with different American Indian tribes, how a tribe works and the benefits of partnering with a tribe. Lankford said the tribe is involved in a variety of different business ventures. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma owns an Ohio ambulance company and several IT companies, among others. Lankford said he would like to get the Miami tribe students who are in FSB to think about working for the tribe or for one of their businesses. Baldwin said the chief’s visit will not be all business, though. “Chief comes to campus, too, to take any opportunity to visit with the tribe students here,” he said. The personal connection, to the people and to the land, is what makes the chief’s visits particularly special. “He is coming for a visit, not only to the university, but to part of his own community that is here on campus.”
of Fallen Timbers against, among others, the Miami Tribe. One of
Baldwin’s ancestors signed the treaty that ended the fighting. Naturally, Baldwin objected to his school’s choice of mascot. He didn’t want to be a Fighting General. It wasn’t until later in his life, though, Baldwin began to dig deeper into his people’s past. “I was in my 20s when I started to ask questions,” he said. “Things like: ‘Well, where’s our
language? I know we had a language. Where is it?’” Aside f r o m ancestral names, he had never heard the language spoken. It wasn’t until he was leafing through his grandfather’s papers that he had his first real encounter with myaamia words. There, in between old legal documents, was a list of Miami words and their English translations. It was just a simple word list, the translations dating back to the early 1900s, tapped out on a typewriter. He started to feel the itch of curiosity. He decided to visit Miami enclaves in Indiana and Oklahoma and see if there were any speakers left. There were not. The last, he learned, had died around the same time Baldwin was born in the early ’60s. Baldwin was not satisfied. “I had questions,” he said. “If I was claiming this heritage, well, what does it mean?” Baldwin had begun to study
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Miami University and tribe unite MIAMI TRIBE LIBBY MUELLER
SENIOR STAFF WRITER
For a university that bears the name of the American Indian tribe, the student body’s knowledge and understanding of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma is questionable. For instance, many don’t know as they walk the sidewalks of the university, they are walking on the historical hunting grounds of the Miami Tribe. When the Treaty of Greenville was signed in 1795 by the United States government and leaders of various Indian tribes, including the Miami, land including southern Ohio was ceded to the U.S. in exchange for goods amounting to the value of $20,000. Many places around the region still carry the name Miami (Little Miami River and Great Miami River, for example) because southern Ohio American Indian tribes who used these rivers to travel to the Miami Tribe village in present day Ft. Wayne likely named them. The university inherited its name from landmarks such as these and is thus indirectly named for the Miami Indian Tribe. The word “Miami” is the Anglicized version of the native word “Myaamia,” which was bestowed upon the tribe not by its own
people but by an Algonquian speaking tribe to denote the location of the Miami people. “‘Myaamia’ is a name given to us by other people and it means, ‘those folks downstream,’” Miami tribe citizen George Ironstrack, who serves as the Assistant Director and Education Coordinator of the Myaamia Center, said. “The name stuck and began to be applied to all of our village sites.”
allotments, or individual parcels of land, hoping to assimilate them. The Miami Tribe settled in Oklahoma following the Civil War, when the U.S. government forcibly removed the tribe from their reservation in eastern Kansas. The first forced removal had occurred in 1846 and moved those tribal members who had not been granted federal exemption to Kansas; however, settlers had been encroaching on
niila myaamia I AM MIAMI Although the heartland of the Miami Tribe was northwest of Miami University, the current location of the university was significant to the Miami Tribe as well. “Where MU is situated was considered Miami hunting grounds,” Ironstrack said. Today, the Miami Tribe is headquartered in northeastern Oklahoma. They share a section of this territory with the Peoria Tribe, whose people spoke the same language. There are nearly 40 tribes today in Oklahoma, where they had originally reserved lands for themselves. However, the U.S. government later forced the native people into
the territories of the American Indians for years, ignoring the boundaries drawn in multiple land treaties. The land loss and removals changed the lives of American Indians of all tribes. “Hunting, farming and gathering was how the people fed and clothed themselves,” Ironstrack said. “In one generation, all of that was gone. They were consuming wheat, beef, alcohol, things you can trade for.” According to Ironstrack, this had negative mental and physical effects on native people. In addition, the U.S. government set up a boarding UNITE »PAGE 8
In October, 1846, over 300 Myaamia were forcibly removed from their homeland in the Wabash River Valley and taken via the Miami-Erie canal past Miami University at a time when classes were likely in session. After 27 days of travel, they arrived in the Unorganized Indian Territory (Kansas) and began the difficult process of rebuilding their community west of the Mississippi.
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wildlife biology at the University of Montana. But questions about the lost language haunted him. On a trip to Oklahoma, he crossed paths with someone asking the same questions. David Costa was a graduate student in linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley. He had come to Oklahoma in search of a native language to study. He chose myaamia. The two men began to exchange materials. They kept in touch. At home, Baldwin and his wife Karen were committing themselves to the language. Baldwin wanted to learn. He wanted to pass it on to his children. But it was not an easy process. At the time, Baldwin only had rudimentary word lists — the names of birds, animals and household items. He had no idea how to pronounce them. The family started small. They taped vocabulary lists to their walls and cupboards. Baldwin kept notes in his pocket throughout the day. They began to teach the words to their children. Meanwhile, Costa was traveling to old archives and amassing a huge amount of documentation. He unearthed centuries-old documents from French Jesuits and translations on field cards from Swiss and English linguists.
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