Generational Perspectives
By Dylan Mcelroy, video editor The United Houma Nation is a tribe of Native Americans from South Louisiana fighting for their culture. Fighting to stay above water both metaphorically and physically. But why is their culture vanishing? Below are members of the community from different ages and areas. Listen to their stories of their everyday life as a Houma Native American. Generational Perspectives Chad Pierre 47 from Grand Caillou Connie Fields 45 from Golden Meadow Kacie Fields 22 from Cut Off Kalob Pierre 17 from Houma Virginia Fitch 72 from Grand Caillou
A Religious Spirit
By hannah orgeron, staff writer While the United Houma Nation’s traditional religious practices have mostly been lost over time due to the integration of Catholicism and Protestantism, religion is still an integral part of their lives today. Micheal Dardar, UHN historian, says the Catholic and Methodist religious practices were brought to the people by religious leaders and church groups starting schools. When the Indigenous people could not attend school, many Catholic and Methodist church communities fought to give them an education. When the Native Americans would attend the Catholic and Methodist schools, the teachers within the schools were teaching their religion and the citizens began adopting it. Father Paul Du Ru was the first person to start a Catholic Church within the Baton Rouge area. “Paul Du Ru stayed in the tribe ever since Catholics stayed in the tribe and he is especially relevant in the Grand Caillou community,” Dardar says. Ann Bolton of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, says Du Ru was the first person to hold a Catholic mass in that territory. According to the Native Heritage Project website, in the 1700s, Du Ru travelled with Iberville and instructed the Houma Natives to build the first Catholic church, St. Paul’s, in the Mississippi Valley in Bayou Goula, Louisiana in Iberville Parish. Du Ru eventually left to go back to Canada, but the teachings of Catholicism stayed with the Native people, who continued practicing Catholicism, passing the faith down from one generation to the next and replacing the old traditions. Helen Duplantis, a United Houma Nation citizen who works at the Southdown Plantation, says religion is very important in the area. “I grew up in a Catholic Church,” Duplantis says. “It was dominant in our area and we had a segregated church along the bayou. Our parents wouldn’t attend, but they made sure that we would.” Duplantis says her parents were more traditional and hadn’t fully adopted the Catholic religion, but wanted to make sure that the children got opportunities to go to church and have a sense of religion that was going along with their schooling. In the Dulac and Dularge areas, the Methodist communities started to evolve into larger groups. The religious leaders of the Methodist church noticed there was not a school system in place, so several started schools that evolved into a community center. The schools were employed by religious leaders who taught Methodists practices. As the children went to school, they started to adopt the Methodist religion into their lives. “Today a lot of people aren’t in the Catholic church, they are Methodist now and following the Methodist church,” Duplantis says. The Methodist religion was introduced by Rev. Anatole Martin in 1912, according to the document labeled Clanton Chapel. Anatole traveled across the bayou in a canoe to Bayou la Butte where a community of Houma families lived. This area no longer exists because in the 1930’s everyone started to move closer to the Dulac Mission Center. In order to be closer to the schools and the church community. The citizens of Dulac needed a place to hold services because they were taking place within residents’ small homes. According to another document from the United Houma Nation Archives, when Clanton met with the teacher of the Dulac Mission Center to see the work that was taking place, she and her husband decided to donate money to build the chapel. In 1936, the chapel opened and it served to fill the spiritual, social and physical needs of the people. Although previous generations had more traditional spiritual practices, the newer generations have adopted the beliefs and practices of non-natives, leading to the practice of modern day religions. PODCAST Tribal member Corine Paulk talks about religion and the United Houma Nation. Garde Voir Ci · Season 4, Episode 4 – Religion with Corine Paulk before and after clanton chapel in pictures The Dulac Indian Mission School helped give the Southeastern Louisiana Native Americans the education they deserve. Miss Ella Hooper and Mrs. George Deforest were sent to complete mission work with the Native American community in Dulac. They soon became concerned that none of the children were in school. Wanting to help in any way they could, they came together and organized a school for the community. For the first year they were holding classes in a dance hall, and then in April 1933, Miss Hooper purchased a plantation house that would soon become the Dulac Mission School. This school was a part of the four church-related schools in the area at that time. Although the schools were Methodists, they were still open to anyone regardless of their religious beliefs. (LSU) Miss Bessie Williams, an employee at the MacDonnells Methodist Center, reached out to her former Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Mattie Clanton, and mentioned that she felt the Houmas in Dulac needed a church building to have religious services. Mrs. Clanton and her husband wasted no time and donated the money that was needed for the chapel. The Chapel was named Clanton Chapel in the dedication of them in 1936. (Houma Chamber) Shortly after Miss Ella Hooper obtained her college degree in rural education at the Louisiana State Normal School, she had taken on a position at Terrebonne’s Cedar Grove School. She soon came to the conclusion that she wanted something different. She and fellow Methodist, Loura White traveled to the lower bayou communities in hopes to spread the Methodist faith. Once she made it there, she realized that there were bigger issues that needed to be taken care of. Hooper knew right away that establishing schools was the greatest need of the Cajuns and the Houmas. (J. Daniel d’Oney) In October 1919, the missionaries purchased a home that contained acres of property that would soon become the center of educational activity in Houma, this school. The Houmas main religion at the time was Catholicism; however, they soon realized they may have to convert to another religion if they wanted to receive an education. A hurricane
RJ Molinere
Grand Bois, Louisiana United Houma Nation RJ, along with his son Jay Paul, is featured in the History Channel’s Swamp People, a reality series about alligator hunting. About Swamp People “I have a son that’s been with me fishing alligators since he’s three years old. Because his mama came to this school here, this college here. And she wanted to get her education. And he was like three years old when she was doing her clinicals and she said ‘RJ, I know alligator season just started and you know, I’ma need a sitter.’ I said, that’s no problem baby, I said I have a seat and I have a life vest he can come fishing with me. No problem because she knew what I’d done. “I turned them down like three times and eventually the third time. So what like, Well, where is your partner? I said My partner’s Jay Paul, my son. So, they interviewed Jay Paul and they told me it was going to be a no because they didn’t want my partner. By nine o’clock the next morning they freaking out. Because they showed the boss and the boss said, ‘What more can you ask for father and son really, and y’all don’t want Jay Paul?’ He said ‘you call RJ now.’ And they called me that day, and let me tell y’all, that was a blessing, you know?” Favorite Tradition “My kids when they were growing up, if they had something on their mind, and it was bothering them, they couldn’t sleep at night, they was having bad dreams and stuff like that. The next morning, they would come find me and they will tell me ‘dad could you come smudge my room?’ I’m like ‘what’s up brother or sister?’ whatever. I call them my kids, brother and sister. Anyway, I said no problem. I would, but I wouldn’t only smudge their room. I would do the whole house you know, walk around and that’s where this comes into place, my eagle feathers. And as I’m burning my Sage, I’m also praying to my whole house especially in the bedroom that my son or my daughter sleeping in, and it just makes you feel good when you’re your son or your daughter will come back to you and say ‘thanks dad.’” Being UHN “First thing they teach you is how to pray. They teach you your prayers right away the minute you can talk and they know you old enough, that’s one thing we taught our prayers, you know, so that’s just one thing. To me, that’s a blessing.” Growing Up in South Louisiana “Growing up as a kid, I mean, I’m talking about as far as I can remember. You know, my people always lived off the land. And, and you know, when you’re growing up as a kid, your growing up and doing things with your grandparents and your parents and stuff like that. You don’t realize that you’re there and you just living a normal life and you think everything is normal, you know, so, not realizing that I was learning the way the Houma. In other words, the way that Native Americans from the Houma Tribe that I’m from. I didn’t even know that I was even a Native American actually. “I don’t want to make this sound crazy, but we live like in a disputed area. And it was like Lafourche Parish on one side and Terrebonne Parish on the other side. So, you either had a choice to go five minutes to school, or you had to go 10-12 miles to school. So that was kind of hard, you know, because you didn’t have a choice. “As I got older, I just started living off the land in other words, trapping, hunting for our food, shrimping, fishing alligators, on and on and on everything that my people did, I did, you know, and that was just part of life, the way we live, you know, and it was normal. It was good. It was a good life, you know. But, again, today, I regret my education, I wish I would have had to get the chance to get my education.” Listen
Logo Symbolism
Environmental Threats
“Our people are having to leave because of land loss. A lot of them are not doing better for it.” – Thomas Dardar
Lucas Gilbert
Cut Off, Louisiana United Houma Nation Favorite Tradition “My favorite tradition would have to be beading, in which my mother, she is a very good beader in which she taught me how to bead. And so she passed down her knowledge to me. In which I have actually, in some part, have taught others to bead. So, I am passing down what she taught me, you know, to others. So that is my favorite one.” Being UHN “I would say it is taking heritage, and the history and being able to apply it, even to the modern day, in which, taking the old traditions and making them new, and then also too, remembering the old ways and carrying it on into the modern era. I think that’s what us, in our generation should strive to do.” Growing Up in South Louisiana “South Louisiana is just like what it is. It’s growing up in south Louisiana. Hot summers, you know, chill winters, maybe a couple of days of freezing cold, and then hot again. But other than that, I would not trade it for anything else. Good food, good people, just all around great.” Listen
Modern Migration
Many Houma families migrated to northern parishes such as Orleans and Jefferson Parishes in the 1940s-1960s for new educational and job opportunities. As the oil industry became a more valuable career option for them, many of these families migrated back to southern Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes in cities like Isle de Jean Charles and Dulac. Today, the Houma people are beginning to migrate north again due to significant erosion of their land along the Louisiana coast. According to the United States Geological Survey, more than two thousand square miles of Louisiana’s coast has been lost since 1932. “They now fish where they used to hunt,” -former Chief Thomas Dardar, Jr. In the 1940s-1960s, many Houma people migrated from Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes to more northern areas due to education, employment and erosion of land.
Luke Jansen
Cut Off, Louisiana United Houma Nation Favorite Tradition “You’re either trawling, working with family, having fun or you’re somewhere working. It’s just an experience you gotta try it and see what you like. I like the dancing. That’s one thing I like to do. I like the fact that you are able to jump around a lot. I get into a trance when I do it. You’re having fun and you don’t want to stop” Being UHN “It means a lot. It’s unity. We are one of the biggest tribes that are still here and we’re starting to finally be noticed by the actual government itself.” Growing Up in South Louisiana “It’s an experience, that’s for sure. You have thunderstorms. You have all the water around you. You have family that can be out of hand sometimes, and then you just have an overall coming together and that’s about it, you know, it’s just family.” Listen
Evelyn Marie Matherne Jarrell
Golden Meadow, Louisiana United Houma Nation Favorite Tradition “I like to get together at the Indian powwows and we do all kinds of stuff and it’s nice.” Being UHN “Nice… we used to have a lot of fun and do a lot of things.” Growing Up in South Louisiana “My grandma always protected me from the prejudice of our people because of the fear and discrimination that she would see from the white-wash of our people “I think my family, the reason I wasn’t shared as much as I should have been, was because they were trying to protect me, or them themselves were scared of showing who they were. My grandma, I could’ve picked up on that language, I could’ve learned more, I could’ve helped out the tribe with storing and saving the tradition of our language and she was so scared to talk in that language. She was fussed and beaten for talking in that language. She protected me from that same thing. So, when you say that it sounds like ‘Well, how could they keep that from you?’ But, looking back with me working with the tribe, I know why they did that. It was so they could protect me. So, they had a good reason to do that. “I didn’t know who I was and I knew I was different than other kids but it wasn’t something that we really talked about.” Listen
Tyler Duplantis
Dularge, Louisianacurrently in Thibodaux, Louisiana United Houma Nation Favorite Tradition “Making Gourds. I like them because you are able to tell a story and its expression that you can express through creation. “I’m also fascinated with drumming. It tells a story that isn’t by word of mouth but rather by sound.” Being UHN “It makes me realize the ties I have to the water and the man. It also gives me a sense of safety that you might not find in a typical small family because we all have the same blood. When someone says that they are a Houma, I automatically feel a connection with them. “When we look down the line, we are related one way or another and when I meet new people that are natives, I can tell just by their cheek structure that they are Houma blood.” Growing Up in South Louisiana “My grandma always protected me from the prejudice of our people because of the fear and discrimination that she would see from the white-wash of our people “I think my family, the reason I wasn’t shared as much as I should have been, was because they were trying to protect me, or them themselves were scared of showing who they were. My grandma, I could’ve picked up on that language, I could’ve learned more, I could’ve helped out the tribe with storing and saving the tradition of our language and she was so scared to talk in that language. She was fussed and beaten for talking in that language. She protected me from that same thing. So, when you say that it sounds like ‘Well, how could they keep that from you?’ But, looking back with me working with the tribe, I know why they did that. It was so they could protect me. So, they had a good reason to do that. “I didn’t know who I was and I knew I was different than other kids but it wasn’t something that we really talked about.” Listen