At first glance, Miami University in southwestern Ohio seems an unlikely spot for a major American Indian language and cultural preservation and revitalization project. There are no reservations in the state, nor is there a significant American Indian population.
By the 1850s most of the remaining Ohio tribes were removed to reservations west of the Mississippi River, joining others who were forced from their lands by the great sweep of the Indian Removal Act. The law was enacted in response to European Americans’ demand for the fertile lands occupied by many tribes east of the Mississippi River. American Indians comprise 0.3 percent of the Ohio population, numbering a bit over 11,000 people, according to the Census Bureau.
Yet, Miami University houses the Myaamia Project, a unique collaboration between academia and a sovereign tribe, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma.
Named in reference to the orthography of the Miami Tribe, the Myaamia Project was created in 2001 and conducts a large array of programs for Miami tribal citizens, Miami University students and academia at large. The language component is divided into summer language camps and workshops mainly for youth; language classes at Miami University; and home learning. Myaamia Project Director Daryl Baldwin and his staff have developed extensive home-learning materials, including the Smart Pen that plays a recording of a word in the Myaamia language when rolled over a picture of an animal.
The project is part of a tribal initiative to revitalize the Myaamia language and culture. Largely due to the work of the Myaamia Project, tribal members in Ohio and Oklahoma now speak a language that linguists declared dead in the 1960s. While working on his dissertation in the late 1980s on linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. David Costa discovered massive Myaamia writings and later realized there was a community of people interested in getting their language back. He became acquainted with Baldwin, who was working to revitalize the language, even teaching it to his children.
Descended from Miami tribal members who resisted removal, Baldwin provides meaning and context to the language revitalization and preservation efforts.
“The loss of language has placed the Miami tribe face to face with the loss of their culture. Language loss is a social loss,” says Baldwin.
