Shawnee Tribe
A nation today
Background
The supreme governing body here is a Shawnee Tribal Council made up of all Tribal citizens enrolled under Article III of the Tribe's constitution, and that body hands the power to make rules and regulations to an eleven-member Business Council: a Chief, a Second Chief, a Secretary, a Treasurer and seven elected members at-large. Laws and resolutions the Business Council enacts stay in force until amended or repealed, and under the Business Council Records Act a Tribal citizen may inspect the Tribe's records in person at a Tribal office with the Secretary, the Treasurer or the Court Clerk present, take notes, and make no copies and no photographs. In 2020, right after the COVID-19 pandemic began, Shawnee Tribe leadership declared a state of emergency for the Shawnee language and started the Decade of Shawnee; the language program now runs across three Oklahoma communities and online, prioritizes speaking over reading and writing, keeps classes small, and has doubled its enrollment since 2021. The Tribe's Environment and Natural Resources Department dates to 2002, when it took its first General Assistance Program grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. A flour corn the Tribe calls lokhaana taami is being grown with university partners closer to its historic range, because crops planted in Oklahoma have failed in heat and spring flooding.
Visit and learn
Shawnee Tribe Cultural Center
A self-guided museum run by the Tribe, with rotating and permanent exhibits. The National Park Service records that the main Shawnee exhibit tells the story through objects rather than written text, that history and ways of life are held in oral tradition, and that the center's mission is to give Shawnees a place to tell the story of their past and of who they are becoming. The Tribe's own site has the current hours.
https://www.nps.gov/places/shawnee-tribe-cultural-center.htm
Tribal lands have their own laws. Check the nation's site before you visit.
Parks on its homelands
Mammoth Cave National ParkAccording to the Eastern Shawnee Tribe's own history, the Shawnee homeland was the middle Ohio Valley between modern Louisville, Kentucky and West Virginia. The same page lists the three federally recognized Shawnee nations, putting the Shawnee Tribe in Miami, Oklahoma. Source
New River Gorge National Park and PreserveThe Shawnee Tribe publishes the tribe's account of a flour corn it calls lokhaana taami, which it says was bred in Appalachia and along the waterways that feed the Ohio River and was never meant to be grown in Oklahoma. Source
Programs
Shawnee Language Immersion Program
The program began with in-person classes in three Oklahoma communities and moved online when the pandemic started, which the Tribe says has let it reach Shawnee across the continent. It works with a first language speaker to build a curriculum true to Shawnee culture, teaches by ear first, has published an interactive learning site called SLIPstream and is building an online dictionary and archive through the Indigenous Languages Digital Archive. It also makes Shawnee comic strips and trains Community Language Preservationists, and runs a summer internship for college students.
Shawnee Environment and Natural Resources Department
The department says its mission is to understand, protect, manage and restore the natural environment of the Tribe and its members, and that most of its outreach work over the years has gone into environmental education. It runs a ten-bin recycling trailer parked on the south side of the Community Building at 108 S. Eight Tribes Trail in Miami, Oklahoma, for tribal citizens, employees and community members to use.
Sources
- https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-01-30/html/2026-01899.htm
- https://shawnee-nsn.gov/government/
- https://shawnee-nsn.gov/language-program/
- https://shawnee-nsn.gov/ero/
- https://shawnee-nsn.gov/news/shawnee-flour-corn-and-climate-change/
Checked September 2026.