Letter from the Director of the Myaamia Center - August 2025
Executive Director of the Myaamia Center, Daryl Baldwin, provides updates on the operations of the Myaamia Center as the 2025 academic year begins at Miami University's Oxford campus.
Letter from the Executive Director, Daryl Baldwin
Fall 2025
Tipeewe neeyolakakoki aapweeyiikwi ‘Its good to see you all back.’
This summer was quite a whirlwind with the Miami Tribe’s Eemamwiciki Summer Programs and a trip to the Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. I enjoyed watching staff and Myaamia Heritage students engage in new opportunities by learning and sharing with the general public and other tribal nations. Since January, the Myaamia Center has added 3 new positions in education and technology. This year marks a developmental milestone as we begin the first stages of developing our first-ever technology team that will lead our work with the Miami Tribe community and National Breath of Life. This will increase our ability to grow our technologies as we prepare for how AI may support our work.
Just before the semester began, we welcomed the Miami Nation Enterprise’s board members to campus for their quarterly meeting. It was the first time they had met on campus, and it provided a great opportunity for us to share how our work has grown and what we see coming down the pipeline in the next few years. Over the last couple of days, I have had a chance to visit with our incoming first-year class of Myaamia Heritage students who will graduate in 2029. Some of them I have known since they were quite young, while others are new to our revitalization work. They are a great cohort of eager learners, and I look forward to observing their transformation over the next four years.
As we begin this next academic year, I find myself thinking about the strategic growth we will experience in this next year. Our first-ever full-time digital archivists will be joining us in early October to help us strengthen our ability to not only organize internally but also set the stage for greater ability to share content with our tribal community. Our annual Heritage Student numbers remain between 45-50 consistently, and requests for more learning opportunities from the community keep coming in. As the Myaamia Center and Miami Tribe’s Cultural Resources Office continue to work together in response, we are constantly looking long-term to ensure sustainable growth. Staff training, strategic planning, and ongoing fundraising are critical to sustaining the growth we are experiencing.
Echoing what I have heard tribal leaders say many times - “it's a good time to be Myaamia” - I feel fortunate to be embedded in our revitalization efforts. I am also further empowered by a younger generation that is feeding into this growth. The energy needed to support revitalization work has to come from a younger generation, and that is happening before our very eyes.
As we set our sights on the spring Myaamiaki Conference and celebrate 25 years of the Myaamia Center in 2026, we look forward to engaging with our stakeholders and lifting our hearts with pride for the work we have all accomplished together. As always, I am honored to serve my community.
Kikwehsitoole ‘respectfully’,
Daryl
