The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma lived in the Ohio River Valley until forced removal by the U.S. government. Nearly two centuries later, the tribe has built a relationship over the past 50 years with its namesake, Miami University in Oxford.
This relationship culminated in the creation of the Myaamia Center, scholarships for Myaamia students and more. Last month the center released the first episode of a documentary series recounting this ongoing relationship and the unrelenting spirit of Miami peoples.
It’s called “Neepwaantiinki.” The first episode of the series is available to view on the university’s Miami Tribe Relations website.
Rachel Sachs Valerio is the director and producer of the series. Kara Strass is the director of the Miami Tribe Relations office at the Myaamia Center and served as the cultural adviser for the series.
WYSO’s Indigenous Affairs reporter Adriana Martinez-Smiley spoke with Sachs Valerio and Strass to learn more about “Neepwaantiinki.”
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
ADRIANA MARTINEZ-SMILEY: So I’m curious about the title, “Neepwaantiinki.” Now, I can’t say I’m familiar with the Myaamia language. So, Kara, do you mind explaining the significance of this title and why it felt fitting?
KARA STRASS: Neepwaantiinki means learning from each other. And it’s a phrase that we have used for a long time to describe the relationship between the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and Miami University. Because what we have found is through the now more than 50 years of this relationship, each side is learning, is benefiting and contributing in different ways to that relationship.
So our staff and our students are learning by being in this academic space. And we’re able to share with Miami University what it means to be a contemporary tribal nation. And so we use that word a lot —you’ll see it across Miami University’s campus. But we felt like it was really fitting for the docuseries because that was at the root of this story; how we work together and how that has impacted the revitalization of the Myaamia Nation.
MARTINEZ-SMILEY: I saw that the first episode of this series came out and I understand that more episodes are anticipated to be coming out. Rachel, can you talk about the time and effort that went into creating this series from your side?
RACHEL SACHS VALERIO: We’ve had lots of folks involved in the production of it over the, I think it’s been three to four years now that we’ve been working on this. So it’s a long, but really rewarding, process. We have 12 terabytes of footage recording a lot of different events and interviews and what we call B-roll, and just collaborating with the Myaamia Center to figure out the best way to tell this really powerful and ongoing story.
MARTINEZ-SMILEY: Kara, can you talk about some of the folks featured in this first episode, who they are and why you guys felt it was important that they were represented to start?
STRASS: The docuseries has a variety of different perspectives included. Much of that is our staff here at the Myaamia Center. These are folks who have been doing research and education around Myaamia history, language and culture for, many times, decades. So really they’re the experts in that historical or language knowledge.
So you’ll hear from tribal leadership who have been very supportive and included in the process. You’ll hear from Myaamia students. We really just wanted to include a wide variety of people who could speak to the broad experiences of the Myaamia community.
MARTINEZ-SMILEY: Rachel, as a non-Miami person taking part in this series, what was it like as the director and producer basically being responsible for threading this story together?
SACHS VALERIO: I really feel the weight of that responsibility and I really lean on Kara and the other folks from the tribe and from the Myaamia Center that we’ve worked with to help me grapple with that.
I’m constantly asking them questions and they’ve really been great about telling me there are no stupid questions. And so that has been really comforting, because I don’t know what I don’t know and just learning as I go along, and making sure that I’m not telling the story that I think people need to hear or that I want to learn about. I’m responsible for helping them tell their story.
MARTINEZ-SMILEY: Rachel, what should people expect from this series as more episodes are published?
SACHS VALERIO: People can expect to learn more about the history of the tribe as well as a lot more about contemporary issues and the revitalization of the language and the culture. I think that that’s been very important. We get deep into the history of forced removal and boarding schools and assimilation, which is a very strong term, but always bringing it back to, who are the Myaamia people today, not only who they were in the past.
MARTINEZ-SMILEY: Kara, having an executive producer role in the series and being a member and citizen of the Miami Nation, what do you hope people will take away from this series?
STRASS: It is a part of my job on a daily basis to educate people about the Miami tribe, who we are, what our work looks like. And that is one of the hardest parts of my job, oftentimes because I’m trying to educate somebody about several hundred years of history, about research that’s ongoing and how it impacts an entire tribal nation.
And we tell this story through a variety of different means at different times, but we often don’t have the ability — just because of the immense time and talent that it takes to create something like this — to tell our story through this visual medium. And so this is so important for us as a community to be able to tell our own story. And that is really what has happened throughout this entire series.
Rachel and her team have helped us to distill it down into something that hopefully is engaging. And even though it hits on really terrible subjects at times, hopefully you walk away understanding how hopeful our community is about where we are today and how we’re moving forward.
