Papers of the Fortieth Algonquian Conference: Actes du Congrès des Algonquinistes

“I heart this camp”: Participant Perspectives within the Story of Miami Youth Camps

“I heart this camp”: Participant Perspectives within the Story of Miami Youth Camps Wesley y. leonard Miami Tribe of Oklahoma Language Committee, San Diego State University scott M. shoeMaker Miami Nation of Indiana Language Committee, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, Macalester College Myaamionki is the place of the myaamia. The miami people are my family. . . . I think the most important thing in myaamionki is that we are all family. The quotation given above is an observation made by a fourteen-year-old Miami girl at the conclusion of an annual Miami language and culture youth summer camp in 2008. Within her statement are three important themes that have emerged from the camp setting. First, there is the question of defining and understanding myaamionki (literally ‘Miami place’),1 a key issue in that the Miami community has long been scattered and many children grow up without regular contact with other Miamis. Second, there is the related question of what it means to be Miami and what sort of value that identity holds. Finally, emerging not from her statement directly, but rather from our reading of it, is a recognition of how experiences at these annual youth camps are adding to a larger narrative of reawakening the Miami language and culture. This paper examines these themes through an investigation of Miami language and culture camps and focuses on how the observations and words of their participants both reflect and shape this larger community narrative. Since these camps began in the early 1990s, their role has grown and 186 1. Miami words in this paper are spelled in the orthography outlined in Baldwin and Costa (2005) with the exception of some personal names, for which we use the spellings used by the individuals. 187 “I heart thIs caMp” evolved in the two main Miami communities to the point where “camp” has become not only a major annual program for youth, but also an underlying philosophy that reconnects multiple aspects of community as part of ongoing decolonization efforts. While there are certain tangible effects of these camps such as the learning of phrases and exposure to specific traditional activities, camp organizers and facilitators have increasingly realized that less tangible results are the most important ones since they reflect larger cultural themes of relationship, responsibility, and action. We argue that annual camps in Oklahoma and Indiana have become a means of creating Miami space within a Miami place, empowering participants to enrich their own Miami identities and community roles. This paper relates these ideas in terms of how they create a Miami aacimooni ‘story’—here, a narrative rooted in the past but developed in the present for future generations of Miami people. Our examples come from participant observation, informal interviews, and pre- and post-camp student questionnaires collected in 2007 and 2008 for camp assessment purposes. We the authors write from multiple perspectives, and are among the “participants” alluded to in the title of this paper. We both were involved as students at Miami language camps in the mid-1990s. In more recent years, we have been involved as camp staff members, teachers, organizers, and as language committee chairs for the Oklahoma (Wesley) and Indiana (Scott) Miami communities. Our own stories thus fall into a larger pattern within the aacimooni of Miami language reclamation efforts in that we began with goals associated with the language itself, but have since adopted a more holistic approach that both responds to the social parameters that led to language shift and that also empowers community members to recognize their agency in the process of bringing the language back. “Reclamation” is the term we use to describe this process because awakening the Miami language goes beyond the steps associated with “language revitalization,” such as increasing the number of speakers and domains of use. Additionally, it includes asserting the prerogative to do these things at all and to define the associated goals using community values and needs. Such social elements of self-determination fall under what we term “reclamation.” Being able to relate this story from insider perspectives is also part of “reclamation,” as too often the story of the Miami language is evaluated outside of the cultural context in which it is occurring. Our story begins with the history underlying Miami language shift and the development of camps as a response to this history. We then turn 188 Wesley y. leonard and scott M. shoeMaker to the social...