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          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 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.
      
  
  URL
              https://ojs.library.carleton.ca/index.php/ALGQP/article/view/1281/1168
      
  
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