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Louisiana Creole Peoplehood: Afro-Indigeneity and Community - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Louisiana Creole Peoplehood: Afro-Indigeneity and Community

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Over the course of more than three centuries, the diverse communities of Louisiana have engaged in creative living practices to forge a vibrant, multifaceted, and fully developed Creole culture. Against the backdrop of ongoing anti-Blackness and Indigenous erasure that has sought to undermine this rich culture, Louisiana Creoles have found transformative ways to uphold solidarity, kinship, and continuity, retaking Louisiana Creole agency as a post-contact Afro-Indigenous culture. Engaging themes as varied as foodways, queer identity, health, historical trauma, language revitalization, and diaspora, Louisiana Creole Peoplehood explores vital ways a specific Afro-Indigenous community asserts agency while promoting cultural sustainability, communal dialogue, and community reciprocity.

With interviews, essays, and autobiographic contributions from community members and scholars, Louisiana Creole Peoplehood tracks the sacred interweaving of land and identity alongside the legacies and genealogies of Creole resistance to bring into focus the Afro-Indigenous people written out of settler governmental policy. In doing so, this collection intervenes against the erasure of Creole Indigeneity to foreground Black/Indian cultural sustainability, agency, and self-determination.

ISBN-13: 9780295749495

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Publication Date: 03-22-2022

Pages: 304

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Age Range: 18 Years

Rain Prud’homme-Cranford is assistant professor of English and international Indigenous studies at the University of Calgary. Darryl Barthé is the visiting professor of History at Dartmouth College. Andrew Jolivétte is professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego.

What People are Saying About This

Gabrielle Tayac

"Asserts a profound rootedness in Afro-Indigeneity that invites a wide community to enter through interrelated aspects of collectivity. Highly significant in its contribution not only to Louisiana communities but to Afro-Indigenous peoples throughout the Western hemisphere."

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall

"An extraordinarily valuable contribution to redefining the meaning of Louisiana Creole. It avoids the erasure of Native Americans and settler colonial rigid racial and racist definitions. It is strongly rooted in urban and rural communities despite the diasporic spread of Louisiana Creoles during and after World War Two and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Thus Louisiana leads the world in peacefully integrating the cultures of her varied peoples: the wave of the future."

Kimberly Wieser

"An ambitious project that breaks ground in Indigenous studies, African American/diaspora studies, and Southern studies."

Table of Contents

Introduction. Ayou Komensé: Louisiana Creole Land, Community, and Recognition Rain Prud'Homme-Cranford Darryl Barthé Andrew J. Jolivétte 3

Part 1 Sacred Histories; From Kinship to Cultural Resurgences

Chapter 1 Post-Contact Peoplehood: History, Kinship, and Redefining Louisiana Creole Indigeneity Rain Prud'Homme-Cranford 21

Community Response. So, Have You Heard the One about the Louisiana Creoles Who Fight the System of Indigenous Erasure? Carolyn M. Dunn 44

Chapter 2 Speak White, Speak Black, Speak American: Assimilation in Creole New Orleans Darryl Barthé 50

Community Response. The Racialization of Creole Identity and Heritage Language Loss Joseph Dunn 66

Chapter 3 Acadian/African/Indigenous Trinity: An Identity Mosaic from Nova Scotia to New Orleans Annalyssa Gypsy Murphy 74

Community Response. It's Not the Weight, but How You Carry It: A Prose Poem Kelly Clayton 83

Chapter 4 Bulbancha Is Still a Place: Decolonizing the Tricentennial of New Orleans Jeffery U. Darensbourg 86

Community Response. Bulbancha Is Still a Place: Decolonizing the History of the Present Leila K. Blackbird 93

Part 2 Landbase: From Homelands to Food and Health

Chapter 5 Filé Man: Creole Food Harvesting and Sovereignty Tracey Colson Antee 103

Community Response. Colson's Creole-Indigenous Cultural Continuity: Filé Man Robert B. Caldwell Jr. 111

Chapter 6 Telling It Right: In Search of the Ishak Jeffery U. Darensbourg 115

Community Response. Comments on "Telling It Right: In Search of the Ishak" John Depriest 121

Chapter 7 A Perfect Circle Bound in Chains: Creole-NDN Health, Historical Trauma, and Settler Colonialism T. Shawnee 124

Community Response. Caught in the Cycle Summer Wesley 137

Part 3 Languages: Literacies and Bodies

Chapter 8 Language Revitalization, Race, and Resistance in Creole Louisiana Oliver Mayeux 143

Community Response, Nothing to Manifesto Tanner Menard 159

Chapter 9 No Body Sings the Blues Like a FAT Body: Gender, Race, and Eco-Colonialism Rain Prud'Homme-Cranford 172

Community Response. Thunder Thighs: A Storm's Brewing / Sorte cette laville avant l'ouragan commence Frances E. Hopson-Cuevas 192

Community Response. "Fatten Up, You're Too Skinny": Body, Color, and Trauma Andrew J. Jolivétte Joelle Jolivétte-Gonzalez (In Memoriam) 197

Chapter 10 Don't Scratch My Washboard, but You Can Pull My Fiddle: Negotiating Queerness in the Creole Diaspora Andrew J. Jolivétte 201

Community Response. Bending the Story M. Carmen Lane 215

Part 4 Ceremonials and Cultural Practice: From Testimonials to Activism

Chapter 11 On Passing and Survival: Memories of a Choctaw-Apache Thomas Parrie 221

Chapter 12 LA to L.A.: Growing Up Louisiana Creole in the Los Angeles Diaspora Carolyn M. Dunn 224

Testimonial 1 Louisiana Creole Peoplehood: Mixed Race Foodways John Lafleur II 240

Testimonial 2 A Reflection Danny Lee Landreneau-Petrella 245

Testimonial 3 Interview with Kenneth L. Jolivétte Andrew J. Jolivétte 247

Testimonial 4 Reflection Pierre Brooks Metoyer 251

Conclusion. Nouzot Kréyol: Louisiana Creole Peoplehood or all our Relations Resisting Settler Violence and Indigenous Erasure Rain Prud'Homme-Cranford Darryl Barthé Andrew J. Jolivétte 253

In Memoriam. Reflections on Janet Ravare Colson, Cane River Creole Matriarch Andrew J. Jolivétte Rain Prud'Homme-Cranford Carolyn M. Dunn 263

Appendix. Louisiana State Legislature Resolution and Certificate of Special Recognition from the Governor of the State of Louisiana in honor of Janet Ravare-Colson 269

List of Contributors 271

Index 281