Miami Nation to hold Pow Wow at Peace Park

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By Shirley Belcher, Contributing Writer 11:18 PM Saturday, May 16, 2009

WEST ALEXANDRIA — It’s a library event but it’s likely to be anything but quiet.

The Miami Nation of Indiana’s Twigh Twee Singers will bring tribal singing, drumming and dancing to a Pow Wow at Peace Park in West Alexandria on Sunday, May 17 at 1 p.m.

The fund-raising event, sponsored by the Friends of the West Alexandria Library and area businesses, will be a free afternoon of Native American traditions at the park, located at 70 E. Dayton St.

“The main thing we try to get around is to let people know that the Miamis are still here,” said Miami Nation Vice Chief John Dunnagan, who will give a history talk. “A lot of people think that the Indians are gone and they were put out west and the only Indians still here are out west. But there are only 76 Miamis that left Kansas and went to Oklahoma and that was the base of the Oklahoma tribe.”

Tribal secretary Sarah Siders said when half the tribe was moved to Kansas in 1854 that many died. The nation holds a ceremony each year in October in Peru, Ind., its tribal headquarters, for them.

“There are about 3,500 Miami people in Indiana, and about 3,000 Miamis living in other states,” said Siders. “We get together many times throughout the year for our longhouse ceremony, like our church; our reunion in August which started in 1903, our Pow Wow held every year in Parke County, Ind. (This year June 6-7). We also have a day care, offer AA classes, operate a not-for-profit bingo operation, a gift shop, and a food pantry that is not only for Miamis, but the entire community.”

Scott Shoemaker, citizen of the Miami Nation of Indians of Indiana, said, the government tried to strip the Miamis of their land in Indiana and their way of life.

But the Miamis who remained in Indiana obtained Congressional exemptions to stay on their reserve lands along the Mississinewa River and Wabash River. And the United States created two tribal entities.

The portion of the tribe in Kansas was then moved again to a reservation in northeastern Oklahoma, where they remain today. The portion of the tribe in Indiana, now known as the Miami Nation of Indiana, rebuilt the community. The fight to keep their lands and their way of life on those lands came to an abrupt halt when, in 1897, the Bureau of Indian Affairs declared them no longer a tribe.

Their land became taxable and by the 1930s they were nearly landless.

For more information about the Miami Nation, visit www.miami indians.org or call 1 (800) 253-3578. Contributions to help defray the cost of the Pow Wow can be made at any Eaton National Bank branch with checks made to the Friends of the West Alexandria Library.

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