Brackish Bayou Blood: Weaving Mixed-Blood Indian-Creole Identity Outside the Written Record
American Indian Culture and Research Journal
Volume 32, Number 2 (2008)
Special Issue: Indigenous Locations Post-Katrina: Beyond Invisibility and Disaster
Online Date: 2008-08-22
pages 93-108
ISSN: 0161-6463
L. Rain Cranford-Gomez
As a child on the Gulf of Mexico, evacuation to higher ground for floods, hurricanes, and tornado warnings were common. At the end of August 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the homelands of this author’s father and grandfather in Louisiana. Hundreds of miles of wetlands, already threatened, were turned to open water; vital brackish waters were flooded with seawater, thus damaging the delicate balance between fresh and salt that many plants and animals need for their habitats. Vital records and historic documents were flooded, damaged, besieged with mold, and lost to the ravages of wind and water. However, these records do not tell the only stories in Louisiana. In the wake of the devastation that has impacted Louisiana communities, in particular Creole and Indian communities, it makes other forms of record-keeping, such as historic oral narratives and material culture, vitally important as they seek to preserve their histories as Indians, Louisiana Creoles, and uniquely mixed-blood people in Louisiana. This article is taken from a greater conversation, a work in progress. The text presented in this article should be read as a story and a conversation that seeks to open possible dialogues and interaction, shared histories, narratives, and cooperation between Louisiana Indians and Louisiana Creoles as manifested in shared material culture practices and mixed racial-cultural inheritance. By revisiting the racial mixing of Creole identity from a metis/mestizo perspective, “reading” Indian and Creole basketry as a material culture source that speaks for a people, and sharing personal reflections, the author hopes to illustrate converging narratives and dialogues further rooting Louisiana Creoles in an indigenous history; a metis/mestizo people separate but linked to their indigenous land and kin ties. The author urges other scholars to explore further the indigenous connections between Louisiana Creoles and Louisiana Indians with a particular focus on those of both Louisiana Indian and Creole descent.
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