- I'm an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon.

My husband and I are both enrolled members of that tribe, and so is our children.

We were born and raised on a reservation by our people.

His mom, she moved here.

We came to visit.

I was pregnant with our middle son, and it was a high-risk pregnancy.

We ended up staying here, thought we'd regroup for a while, and then go home.

And we've been here for 30 years.

So, that's how we ended up being in Ohio.

When we first got here, my husband was looking for a job, and he was going through the newspaper.

- Something Native American caught my eye, and I was just kind of thumbing through the pages, and I went back and I was like, "What?"

And anyway, there it was.

Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio.

- It was hard when I first came here to survive just not being with my people.

And everything that we did on the reservation and the ceremonial life and the foods that we have readily available are not here in Ohio.

I was very fortunate to have the former management in our lifetime to be here for us when we first came here.

They picked us up and brushed us off and tried to teach us how to take this as an opportunity.

As time went on, as I've grown, I realized that that might have been a saving grace for both Tyrone and I.

- [Ty] Our agency is located here on the south side of Columbus.

We just celebrated our 50th year of being in existence, 2025.

And my wife and I have the honor, responsibility of being the third set of hands to sit in as management.

It was founded back in '75 by the late Selma Walker.

Her background is Dakota, her intentions were just, you know, from the heart, sincere, and wanting to create space, you know, and essentially a home away from home for a lot of Native people here in Ohio.

- When Ty and Masami came on board, I think they just excelled in two different areas.

One is on the technical side, just doing the things you need to do to keep a nonprofit organization operational.

On the programming side, they were really instrumental in terms of my observations in promoting culture and traditional practices and providing services that the community valued.

- [Masami] We do everything here, from the cradle to the grave.

That's how my husband says it.

We have birthdays, we have funerals, we have community gatherings, we have all kinds of cultural events.

- I'm Anishinaabe Assiniboine Sioux.

I'm from the Turtle Mountain Chippewas, and also from White Bear, Canada, from my father's side.

Being military, my husband being military, everywhere that we've gone, I've always looked for a Native community to feel... I feel like I can be myself.

I've been to quite a few Native centers, and I believe Ty and Masami are offering a lot.

- [Ty] We are a very intertribal community.

- [Masami] There's been over 100 federally recognized tribes come through our doors here at NAICCO.

- [Ty] There's 574 different federally recognized tribes.

Again, in each one of them, there's their own worldview, their own creation story, language, lore, practices.

So all these variations of cultures, but you try to find those common grounds.

- [Masami] My mom taught me how to do everything, how to harvest food, how to bead, how to do applique.

So when I taught my girls how to bead and how to do different crafts, it's because that's what my mom taught me.

And I feel like our Native people, we are all very adamant about passing our gifts down to generations beneath us, because someday it's going to go away.

I think that when we do those things, it's not only because it's art, it's because that's what was handed down from our original people.

- [Ty] When we talk about culture and tradition, oftentimes that's about as much as it is, it's just spoken.

But this is our practices, our ways, our teachings are meant to be... it's meant to be a lifestyle.

It's meant to be lived.

- [Masami] Kids here, they don't get that hands-on experience that they would have if they were home on their homelands with their people, and they aren't getting the knowledge from their elders.

- It becomes tricky because we don't have that place.

We don't have that local tribe, if you will, either that we can lean on as a big brother, big sister in the storyline, right?

The original inhabitants, the original Indigenous people of this area, you know, were forcibly removed back in the early 1800s.

Our Land Back NAICCO campaign, that has been us aspiring to acquire land of our own that we can gather and simply just be ourselves as we see fit.

And to practice these cultural practices, and to, again, revitalize this piece of us, you know, that we're having a hard time in this modern world hanging onto.

And so we've really been leaning into what we're calling NAICCO Outdoors.

And this has a lot to do with us being outside foraging, gathering, identification of plants, food, species, medicines, you know, and we're incorporating in fishing and harvesting, - [Masami] Like none of us are from here, but we've been here so long now that we belong here, we have to learn how to connect with this land.

We're learning how to forage.

We're learning how to hunt and fish here, and we're making it our own.

- [Ty] The cool thing about all of this is that, as it's progressing, we're beginning to see this growth, this sense of... our Native people being able to feel and show that they're comfortable in their own skin.

And that's a huge win.

- [Masami] I don't really feel like I'm a leader.

Honestly, I just feel like I'm a good relative to a lot of people that I deeply care about, and I want them to win.

And I think that we have found healing and restoration in our own lives through our spirituality, through our Native American culture that's being lost, and we feel like it's important to preserve it.