In 1990, then-U.S. Sen. Bennett Johnston, D-Louisiana, unsuccessfully pushed for a bill to recognize the Houma Nation. A few elders among the Tunica-Biloxi After years of conversation and planning, tribal representatives, Turner, and support personnel from Lowlander Center and the nonprofit LiKEN, which facilitates collaboration between communities and scholars, have identified more than 15 priority sites scattered throughout the 60-mile expanse of wetlands that encompass their different ancestral communities to protect through a process called backfilling, which involves carefully knocking spoil banks back into the canals. arts and crafts and beauty of Indian languages has been shared, 155 Chitimacha Loop  |  Charenton, LA  70523 |  337-923-4973  |  Employee Email  |   Tribal Login, Welcome to the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana’s website. has the most diverse cultural scene. John R. Swanton, Albert Gatschet, Frank Speck, and others. Louisiana is home to a fifth of the country’s oil refining capacity and supplies a quarter of its natural gas. Houma craftsman Antoine Billiot demonstrates a palmetto-wrapped blowgun used with darts to hunt small birds. But the plan has no provisions for backfilling. Similarly the Indian languages Since the 1920s, coastal Louisiana has lost more than 2,000 square miles of wetlands — an area slightly larger than Delaware — to open water. elders speak archaic Spanish dialects; and the Houma primarily The Clean Water Act requires oil and gas companies to repair environmental damage done to drilling sites, but depleted wells and canals are often abandoned. “There’s a plethora of life besides human life that’s dependent on these places — the microscopic life, the insect populations, the mammals, birds, nesting birds, the marine population— all of these are dependent on the land that we restore.”, Funding for backfilling projects like this could depend on how the state rules on a number of environmental lawsuits looking to hold the oil and gas industry financially accountable for damage done to the coast. The proliferation of man-made canals, most of which were opened up to access oil wells, have altered the wetlands they have called home for generations, allowing the rising Gulf of Mexico to swallow them up. The Louisiana Indians: Overview of Louisiana archaeology, with photos of ancient paleo-Indian artifacts. folklorists were having trouble learning what children already You start with two parallel canals, and then the land between them erodes away, so what was once two parallel canals has become one large, open body of water.”, As sea levels rise, open bodies of water rapidly overtake what remains of coastal tribes’ sacred earthworks. The Louisiana tribes call Terrebonne, Lafourche and Plaquemines parishes home. One Coushatta elder put it candidly, "Why can't “It’s like cancer in a body,” said Philippe, of the Atakapas-Ishak/Chawasha tribe. Indian foods and how to derive them from the woods and waters Descendants of Ofo, Avoyel and hoctaw are included in the tribe. “It’s not just ‘land’ that we’re restoring. “They were not easy to build.”, The team is seeking funding to start initial steps including reaching out to landowners, pursuing state permits, and applying for half a dozen grants through nonprofit agencies and federal programs. "slow learners" by Indian standards. But some areas where the tribes historically lived are already under water, forcing members to … Welcome to the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana’s website. Atchafalaya, Mermentau, Calcasieu, Tensas, We all learn without doing Christine Baniewicz is a queer writer, educator, and theater artist from Louisiana. a medicinal drink. Marion John's Coushatta pinestraw basket. Dr. Julie Maldonado, a member of the planning team with LiKEN, said that “it’s challenging to get funding for the whole project, which ends up forcing communities to piecemeal, which takes more time and more capacity.”. even some of the French toponomy is of Indian origin—Bayou Nez In Louisiana Indian communities, other groups the creolized Mobilian jargon, an early trade language, of the material cultural of Louisiana. The canals near the sites pose serious threats to wetland ecosystems, as well as the tribes who call the region home. “The government has chosen oil companies over people,” said Devon Parfait, a citizen of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw. Stuart Brown, CPRA’s strategic planning assistant administrator, said that while the word “backfilling” is absent in the plan, “small scale hydrologic restoration is consistent with [it],” and that future drafts will make that more clear. We are restoring habitat,” she said. knew! The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana (CPRA), which oversees the plan, has prioritized controversial land-building projects like the $1.4 billion Mid-Barataria Diversion. Photo by Julie Dermansky, Philippe, citizen of the Atakapas-Ishak/Chawasha, said the state’s approach to restoration stems from a failure to grasp the bigger picture when it comes to marsh health. Stories abound about the "giants of academia": This causes plants and animals specially adapted to a freshwater environment to die. The tribe has acquired 685 acres (2.77 km 2) of reservation near its traditional homeland of the 18th and 19th centuries. She is among the few remaining citizens of her nation that still live in their ancestral community of Grand Bayou Indian Village; most others have moved away due to land loss. She received her M.F.A. By Christine Baniewicz, September 2, 2020, Theresa Dardar, a member of Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe. Clifton, and an urban group in East Baton Rouge Parish), Chitimacha, Learn, and love, it as they do and tribal people become the teachers, columnist recently observed, "I'm overwhelmed." Alligator, shellfish, all sorts of fish and waterfowl, The Louisiana Indians are State University. Early on, Europeans, both “It’s not that anybody has a negative view on a particular [restoration] technique,” he said. “And it has spread throughout the entire body. Indians somehow noticed that professors were terribly Koasati (Coushatta), Choctaw (four groups: Jena, Bayou LaCombe, northwest Louisiana rounds out a complicated cultural picture. It aims to protect at least 15 different tribal mounds along the coast through a strategy called backfilling, which Turner describes as “knitting [the wetlands] back together the way they were [before] they were torn apart.”, An abandoned oil canal that was supposed to be backfilled by ARCO Oil & Gas Co. Photo courtesy of Healthy Gulf. have provided refuges for Indian tribes; and while others have all derive their names from one Indian tongue or another. While some of them served burial or ceremonial purposes for her ancestors, this particular large, oblong mound provided elevation upon which four families once lived. Coastal Louisiana tribes have also tried this route. Museum and teaches in the Department of Social Sciences at Northwestern •The Tunica finally received federal recognition in 1981. The Houma speak French most of the time, and among the But some areas where the tribes historically lived are already under water, forcing members to relocate and breaking apart their communities. “It’s common sense, really. flies in the face of students of folklore and anthropology. The Louisiana Indians are the inheritors of ancient traditions. Photo: Philip Gould. Dulac, Terrebonne Parish. of the region. We hope that you enjoy learning about our Tribe’s. In the United States, the Native American tribe is a fundamental unit of sovereign tribal government, and the constitution grants to the U.S. Congress the right to interact with tribes. even lead to the name of the state's capital city, Baton Rouge—isti Included are the geography, history, society, language, ethnology, and myths, legends and religion of the Choctaws who resided within the area of Bayou Lacomb. or hear. But a significant portion of the cost of that project went towards paying for a full year of planning and monitoring — tasks the tribal representatives have already begun to undertake on a volunteer basis. published in the 1988 Louisiana Folklife Festival booklet. State-recognized Indian tribes are not federally recognized; however, federally recognized tribes may also be state-recognized. The marks of the tribal people A mixed Choctaw and Apache group in Pique is named after a chief, while Lacassine refers to and folklorists. Root systems on the edge of the canal suffer, too, and as they deteriorate, the earth they held in place falls away. been forced into losing their cultural identities, the Louisiana are typical names of Louisiana water bodies. one becomes a real Louisiana native. Calcasieu, Tangipahoa, Ouachita, Tensas, and Natchitoches Parish but tribal people request it be understood as what it is-another The restoration project team wants to save the remaining mounds. that!" The Coushatta language survives. Louisiana also learned of Turner provides consultation as needed on best practices for backfilling in different areas. Anglo and French, borrowed such things from their Indian neighbors. public mind, is itself derived from the Choctaw (or Mobilian) If you’re going to cause damage, you need to repair it.”. In a healthy marsh, shallow water sheets out over cordgrasses and meanders in thin waterways, unobstructed, allowing aquatic life to travel safely to and from breeding sites and feeding grounds. Brown said the costs would be higher: For instance, a 2016 project in the Jean Lafitte Historical Park cost $8.7 million to backfill 16.5 miles of canals. historical Louisiana tribes to pool resources. In Indian communities Tribal constitutions determine the criteria for an individual's tribal enrollment, for more information regarding the process of tribal membership and enrollment, please visit the federal Department of Interior website. Indians have clung tenaciously to their old ways. Photo: Nicholas R. Spitzer. A 2018 paper Turner co-authored estimates that, at approximately $12,224 per hectare of canal, it would cost $335 million to backfill all the abandoned canals in Louisiana’s coastal zone —  a mere 0.67% of the $50 billion Plan. When fossil fuels were first discovered under its coastal wetlands in the 1930s, no laws existed to protect these ecosystems. Apply to our environmental justice writing workshop, Lessons from Hurricane Katrina: A Q&A with General Honoré, a fifth of the country’s oil refining capacity. Some canals double their width in just five years.

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