Cameron M. Shriver is a senior research associate at the Myaamia Center at Miami University. Bobbe Burke is the Miami tribe relations coordinator emerita at the Myaamia Center at Miami University. Their most recent book Our People Believe in Education: The Unlikely Alliance of the Miami Tribe and Miami University (Nebraska, 2025) was published in October.

Across the United States, many institutions are striving to acknowledge and repair oppressive pasts and unequal presents, even as Indigenous communities are struggling to reclaim and revitalize the philosophies and knowledges of their elders. Our People Believe in Education explores the stories of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and Miami University to show how two organizations with almost nothing in common, aside from the name Miami, have collaborated to support Indigenous language and cultural revitalization. Founded in 1809, Miami University is a midsize public university in Oxford, Ohio, on land that once belonged to the Miami Tribe. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma was, like many tribal nations, forcibly removed from its homelands and is now headquartered in northeast Oklahoma.

Cameron M. Shriver and Bobbe Burke provide a reflective examination of why a relationship developed between the two entities despite significant geographical and ideological hurdles, and how that partnership has evolved since 1972, when Myaamia chief Forest Olds first visited Miami’s university campus in his nation’s homeland. This intimate history of a tribe and a university struggling to reconcile colonial education with Indigenous survival offers a jumping-off point for new conversations in, and between, these two spheres.

Introduction

A crowd gathered on a sunny morning in October. Chief Douglas Lankford stood at the lectern. His black collared shirt was ornamented with tightly sewn, diamond-shaped red, white, and black ribbonwork. The boats carrying his ancestors had floated through this area in 1846. Now the Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, had invited the Miami Nation from Miami, Oklahoma, to commemorate that moment. Miami citizens mixed with Miami students, Oxford townspeople, and others. “Our hearts moved us to attend,” Lankford told them, “as we considered the paths of history that extend from and return to this place. This ground beneath our feet is home, a place where countless generations of our ancestors left footprints as they lived their lives until a fateful period in the history of this country.” A light wind rustled the leaves of the oonseentia (the yellow poplar tree) that had been planted many years before in a similar ceremony. 

When we reflect on the history of removal, our hearts brim with feelings of sadness, anger, and regret.” Lankford stressed the deportation’s negative impacts that “run deep into the threads of our family lines and collectively through us as a people.” There was no escaping the influence of the past on the present and future. “Yet, suppose we allow ourselves to view our history as an ongoing, inclusive story. In this way, we can see that it moves from the brightness of full-sun—representing our vibrant, pre-removal community—to the darkened skies of loss, of being unwanted in our homeland, of separation, of boarding schools and assimilation—to a new day of returning sun, of revitalization. A time we call eemamwiciki: the awakening.” 

Chief Lankford’s speech took place on the campus of Miami University, or Myaamia Mihši-nipwaantiikaani (the big Miami school). Myaamia people, the first Miami people, have claimed this place again. 

Chief Lankford continued, his voice catching with emotion: “Though those memories are heavy on your heart, when you leave here today, lift your head from the sadness of that memory. Look around and see that we walk together on a good path ahead made possible by our commitment to each other through neepwaantiinki, our partnership in learning.” 

Together, the crowd silently marched across campus. Hundreds of calico ribbons fluttered from trees, each representing a person deported from the region generations ago and marking a route across the land. 

Despite their similar names, the tribe and the university have walked different roads. Our People Believe in Education: The Unlikely Alliance of the Miami Tribe and Miami University is about a Native nation and an American college, each called Miami, charting those paths of history. It is about examining sad histories as well as lifting our heads from them. It is about a surprising alliance. 

The partnership between the Miami Nation and Miami University is more than fifty years old. Today the relationship feels ordinary for those who live in it. Looking back, the two Miamis seem destined to link arms. What could be more natural? Memory has a way of fashioning coherence. Stories we tell and retell over time streamline the past in light of what we know in the present. The paths from 1972—when Miami chief Forest Olds first visited Miami University—to today did not follow a fixed route, however. It was a crooked path with many forks. History requires us to complicate memory and to reimagine the journey made with no map and no predetermined destination. 

The connection between the tribe and the school goes back to the founding of Miami University on Miami and Shawnee land at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Our People Believe in Education is a history of that relationship, a set of stories that are at times empowering and frequently sobering. Why did one nation and one university connect, and perhaps more importantly, how have they? For Myaamia people to attend, reclaim, and develop their Myaamia identity at a university, let alone that university, is at odds with historical trends. It is a radical arrangement, anything but destined. 

The institutions at the heart of this story are strikingly typical. Miami University—which locals pronounce “my-AM-ee”—is a mid-size public university in Ohio. Categorized as a high research university, its current brand largely rests on an idyllic campus and a reputation for excellent undergraduate teaching. Like all U.S. schools outside of American Indian reservations, it sits on land that not long ago was Indian Country. Miami University is in Oxford, which lies on the crest of a hill overlooking forests and farms in the floodplains of Four Mile Creek and its tributaries. Despite university marketing, it is not unique in the world. 

Miami, Oklahoma—which locals pronounce “my-am-uh”—is revealed through a much different approach. Interstate 44, the turnpike, swoops through Joplin and into Northeast Oklahoma, the “gateway to Indian Country,” on its way to Claremore and Tulsa. Here, the rolling and rocky Ozarks give way to the prairies of the southern plains. And Miami features the historic Route 66, nicknamed the Will Rogers Highway. The “Main Street of America” is also the main street of Miami, featuring ever fewer of its quintessential kitsch stops. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma is one of nine federally recognized tribal nations in Ottawa County, Oklahoma. With about seven thousand enrolled citizens, the tribe is neither a tiny rancheria nor a behemoth Indian nation. Like most tribal nations, it was removed from its homelands and suffered the myriad other colonial affronts. Despite Myaamia nationalism, the tribe has many siblings.

Both the tribe and the school use their histories to instill pride and belonging. The details—personalities, places, cultures—are distinctive, but the broader story rhymes with most tribes and with most colleges. Their individual histories have a universal character.

What these communities did in the last fifty years, however, suggests we take a closer look.