It's been 25 years since Miami University and the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma launched a joint effort known as the Myaamia Project. What started with one employee and a commitment to preserving Miami tribal culture has grown into a full-scale initiative revitalizing the Myaamia language and culture.
The Myaamia Center at Miami University turns 25 in July. Executive Director Daryl Baldwin arrived at the college in 2001, unsure of where the project he was founding would lead. He started with a small space in the university's library and three years of funding.
The Myaamia Project was an outgrowth of the partnership between the university and the tribe that began in 1972 when Chief Forest Olds, having heard about a university in Ohio that shared a name with his tribal nation, showed up on campus unexpectedly during a visit to Cincinnati. What came of that surprise encounter is a more than 50-year-long partnership between the two Miamis, which they commemorated throughout 2022.
Language is key
The Miami language fell dormant in the 1960s. Baldwin, a linguist and Miami tribal citizen, focused on bringing it back to life. By 2007, the Myaamia Project had produced a Miami language dictionary and was working to get it online.
"There is a growing fluency among the [Myaamia] community, and that's where we want to head," Baldwin told WMUB-FM in 2007. "Along with that linguistic fluency comes a fluency in their culture as well."
Baldwin and the tribal nation strongly believed reviving the language would lead to a cultural rebirth.
"When we talk about language revitalization, we're really talking about the revitalization of a peoples' knowledge systems. And so when we talk about revitalizing that, then we have to bring in all aspects of what that knowledge system touches. Language is really nothing more than an articulation of that experience, which includes a peoples' intellectual thought, so on and so forth. That's why language revitalization, for us, because we're actually engaged in it, is more than just teaching language, there's many different parts to it," he said.
By 2007, Baldwin said the Myaamia Project was already seeing the impact of its work at the community level, both with Miami tribal students attending Miami University through the Myaamia Heritage Award Program, and tribal citizens across the country.
"In terms of goal, we hope that any Miami tribe member who wants to have access to their traditional language and culture, that there will be an array of materials waiting for them to learn," he concluded.
That day is here
This academic year, there are 46 Myaamia tribal students participating in the Heritage Award Program, and 145 students have graduated since it began in 1991. It offers a tuition waiver for tribal citizens who meet university admissions standards. The program was expanded under the Myaamia Center to include an entire curriculum on tribal history, language and culture.
Baldwin plans to retire in 2027. His position will be split into two roles, with one person leading the Myaamia Center and a second directing the National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages. Baldwin will stay around to help the new leadership settle in. He spoke with WVXU's Tana Weingartner in April 2026 about the Myaamia Center and its work, ahead of the 11th biennial Myaamiaki Conference in April. Here are some excerpts from their conversation:
How does it feel 25 years on?
That's a great question. I don't know where 25 years went. ... The Myaamia Center, which was born out of the Myaamia Project, has 26 full- and part-time staff, and we have 46 tribe students on campus. I don't think any of us could have imagined that we would have arrived at this point in this way, but it just feels right and it feels like the right thing to do.
Do you feel like you have one major accomplishment from the past 25 years?
I think that what's really foundationally important to me is the relationship between the tribe and the university, because none of this would be happening without those two entities believing in each other and coming together to take risks and to try to do something that hadn't been done before. When I look back at that, I think that the leadership of the past and the present have shepherded that forward in a way that has made the accomplishments of the Myaamia Center work.
Secondarily, I would say that we spent a lot of time building a team here at the Myaamia Center that was very passionate about this work. We all work in the humanities. We know that ... the reality is that most of us are investing in our tribal future, not just for ourselves, but for that future generation. The idea that this work is central to identity building, rebuilding of the nation, it's a healing process from the past and it's an investment into the future. I think being a part of that has been really profound for me, especially as I'm on the cusp of handing the administrative baton on to a new generation.
What's your hope for the next 25 years?
I think the best we can hope for is that whatever foundational blocks we put in place — because that's how a lot of us see our work — that the next generation will build something on top of that. I don't know what that will be — technology is moving so fast — but I think creating a base that a future generation can work from.
We work a lot with archival materials, and we know because elders said so in the archives, 'I'm leaving this information, whether it be stories or whatever it may be, for the future generation hoping they can do something with this.'
We are that generation; we've picked up those threads. We're trying to weave those threads back together to reshape our community to survive in the present. And the best this generation can hope to do is to lay a good, solid, sustainable foundation for the future to do their work upon.
What would you want the larger Tri-State community that may not have a connection to Miami University or the area to know about the importance of this 25-year milestone?
We continually bump into individuals who think of tribes in a historic sense. We try hard to remind people we're living people with the past, not a people from the past.
If there's one message it's: Yes, many of these tribes were here in the Great Lakes, lower Great Lakes region, [and] in the 1840s and beyond they were relocated out. Those tribes still exist. We still have strong ties to our homeland. We're very honored to be doing this work in our homeland, even though our seat of governance resides now in Oklahoma, like many of the tribes in this region.
We're still here, and we're still active, and we're growing, and we're making a comeback in terms of our ability to sustain ourselves and our identities. I think that's an important thing to know.
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