Miami Nation of Indiana
The Miami Nation of Indians of Indiana is the contemporary national body of the Miami Indians who legally remained in Indiana after removal, which is about half of all Miami people. Today the Miami Nation of Indiana continues to serve the Miami, hosting language and cultural reclamation events, public education on Miami history and culture, managing community-held lands, and consulting with government agencies and public organizations on Indigenous knowledges and perspectives.
Myaamionki, the Miami homelands, once stretched from western Ohio towards Chicago, south of what is now Indianapolis and up into Michigan. Before colonization, the Miami regularly traded in what is now Green Bay, Detroit, and Indianapolis. Our corn has been located as far west as what is now New Mexico. The Miami fought American colonists alongside Tecumseh and many lower Great Lakes Indigenous peoples have shared history with the Miami in trade and battle.
The Miami retained the majority of their homelands even after the United States declared Indiana a state in 1816, but quickly the US created economic pressures to push for land dispossession and removal treaties. The Miami were able to put off signing a removal treaty much longer than most of the Indigenous nations in the region due to our influence over the waterways in northern Indiana; however, in 1832 Chief Richardville signed a treaty allowing the removal of all Miami except his own family near Fort Wayne. Over the next ten years the Miami fought the terms of this treaty in every way they could come up with. By the time the removal was in enacted in 1847 nearly half of the Miami were legally granted exemption – these Miami families were deeded land to be tax-free in perpetuity in Indiana and given permission to continue to receive their payments from previous treaties at Fort Wayne.
The contemporary Miami Nation of Indiana is made up of the descendants of the Miami who successfully fought to remain in Indiana before1847 and have been fighting to retain their lands and rights as Indigenous people in Indiana ever since. These legal battles included suing settlers who stole lumber from their property as the courts decided that the Miami had no legal protection under state law for those lands, the illegal confiscation of those lands when the State of Indiana decided to charge back-taxes on all Miami households, even arresting Miami heads-of-households for non-payment on tax-free land, fighting to maintain spear-fishing rights in the 1920s-40s, and then fighting the flooding of the treaty lands in the creation the Frances Slocum Recreation Center and Park.
In the later half of the 20th century the Miami have been fighting for sovereignty as an Indigenous nation. Today members of the Miami Nation of Indiana are considered “adult American Indians” under the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). This means that most of us have BIA payroll numbers, were named in the Cobell settlement, and are recognized as individual American Indians under US law. However, the Miami Nation of Indiana is not currently recognized as a sovereign Indigenous nation by the US federal government. It is one of the many odd inconsistencies in US-Indigenous relations created when policy is crafted on a nation-by-nation process.
If you want to learn more about Miami history, I recommend Stewart Rafert’s book Miami Indians of Indiana: a Persistent People, 1654-1994. Nearly every Miami person will have something in the book that they wish to amend, but overall, this is currently the best historical account of the Miami and is commonly used by Miami historians.
If you want to meet with the Miami Nation, each August the Miami Nation hosts “Days at the Pillars” near Peru, Indiana, which is an event where the Miami invite the public onto our lands to meet with us and learn. There will be a historical village, the Twigh Twee Drum will play, there will be dancing, singing, and contemporary vendors.I
If you want to support the Miami Nation, learn about the Miami Nation Honor Fund, or make a donation now.