Sharing Indigenous Oklahoma stories at Field Museum exhibit ‘really inspiring’ for Stilwell students

• Robby Korth
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  Robby Korth covers education for StateImpact Oklahoma. He grew up in Ardmore, Oklahoma and Fayetteville, Arkansas and is a graduate of the University of Nebraska. Before working at StateImpact, he covered higher education for The Roanoke Times newspaper in Virginia.
• Kateleigh Mills
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  Kateleigh Mills returned to KOSU in December 2019 as Special Projects Reporter, following a year-long stint at KWBU in Waco, Texas. Previously, Mills was a news assistant and All Things Considered host for KOSU from March to December 2018. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Central Oklahoma in December 2017. While studying journalism and professional media, she worked with the UCO’s journalism staff to reinvent the campus newspaper for a more multimedia purpose – joining with the campus radio and television stations for news updates and hosting public forums with campus groups. The Edmond-raised reporter was editor-in- chief of her college newspaper when it won the Society of Professional Journalism award for Best Newspaper in Category B. Mills also received the Oklahoma Press Association Award for ‘Outstanding Promise in Journalism’ at the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame event in 2017. She is also the Oklahoma Collegiate Media Association's recipient for 'College Newspaper Journalist of the Year' in 2017.

StateImpact is on a listening tour with Oklahoma’s youth. And we’ve brought along our microphones.

Reagan and Jimma are students at Stilwell High School. 

Earlier this year, the pair, along with their classmate Tyla, got to share some of the poetry they worked on at the Field Museum in Chicago as part of the Native Truths exhibit.

“Just bringing something from Oklahoma and putting it in this big place for people to see it, it’s just really inspiring,” Reagan said. “Tyla and Jimma, their poems really are… really beautiful and they really inspire me also to keep creating things not only like poetry and writing and stuff.”

Both credited their creative writing teacher Faith Phillips for connecting them to the experience. Hear some of their poetry below.

“Blackbird Flats,” by Jimma:

“Control,” by Reagan:

This conversation was produced by grants from the Education Writers Association and America Amplified. 

The mission of the Education Writers Association is to strengthen the community of education writers and improve the quality of education coverage to better inform the public. 

The America Amplified initiative using community engagement to inform and strengthen local, regional and national journalism. America Amplified is a public media initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.