Sassafras, Stickball and Stories:
Indigenous Cultures of the Gulf South
March 18-19, 2022 LBC Room 213, Tulane University
This event will be in-person and live-streamed online. Register button below
For the in-person event there will be exhibitions as well as items for sale by different Tribal members. Please join us!
Sassafras, Stickball, and Stories: Indigenous Cultures of the Gulf South explores the notion of “culture” and the myriad ways it is expressed and practiced in contemporary Native communities in the gulf south region. On the first day of the symposium, scholars present research on various topics ranging from Tribalography and Indigenous sports to settler colonialism and the plantation/petrochemical complex, to climate change. On the second day, the conversation on the environment and culture continues with our keynote speaker Dr. Andrew Jolivétte (Atakapa-Ishak Nation) presenting on Queer Afro-Indigenous Futurity and Kinship. Discussion on Indigenous foodways with Chef Loretta Barrett Oden (Citizen Potawatomi Nation) and others along with a dynamic language panel with Tunica Biloxi and Coushatta members are among some of the topics presented at this event. The day concludes with a roundtable of ongoing research projects and engagement opportunities with Gulf South Indigenous peoples followed by a reception. Further information on the schedule is listed below.We acknowledge that the land upon which the colonial city of New Orleans sits has been, and is known as, Balbancha. Balbancha is a Choctaw word for “a place of other languages” and was commonly used by many nations such as the Acolapissa, Bayagoula, Chitimacha, Choctaw, Biloxi, Houma, and Tunica. The surrounding area along the Mississippi River has traditionally included the Natchez, the Taensas, and the Chawasha and Washa, among others. Tribes continued to come and trade on this land and also settled on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain (Choctaw) and along the waterways in Lafourche and Terrebonne (Chitimacha). There are several Tribes who live in this region, including but not limited to the Isle de Jean Charles Band of the Chitimacha, Choctaw, Biloxi Tribe, the United Houma Nation, and Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe.
This territory has always been a polyglot place and since contact has seen numerous people from all over the world arrive and settle here, sometimes of their own volition and sometimes by force, including some Indigenous People who were enslaved by colonizers. Indigenous People have lived here continuously for many centuries and New Orleans, is now, as always, a highly cosmopolitan territory with all kinds of overlapping sovereignties and fidelities.
Prospective Students
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This event will be both in-person as well as live-streaming for wider accessibility. It is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
For the in-person event there will be exhibitions as well as items for sale by different Tribal members. Please join us!
Program Committee:
- Robert Caldwell, Ph.D. (Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb) Hampshire College and Brown University
- Lora Ann Chaisson, (United Houma Nation)
- Jeffery Darensbourg, Ph.D. (Atakapa-Ishak Nation)
- Denise Frazier, Ph.D. NOCGS, Tulane University
- Laura D. Kelley, Ph.D. Tulane University
- Jason Lewis, (Choctaw)
- Judith Maxwell, Ph.D. (Etowah) Tulane University
- Christopher B. Rodning, Ph.D. Tulane University
- Rebecca Snedeker, NOCGS, Tulane University
Social Media:
Facebook: Nola Gulf South
Facebook: Music Rising at Tulane
Twitter: @NOCGS
Instagram: Nola Gulf South-
Schedule Please note we will be filming these sessions.
March 18th Day One
Presentations on the first day’s schedule represent the selection of proposals submitted and accepted by the CFP process.
Call for Proposals8:30
Registration:
Coffee and Tribal Display
8:45 – 9:00
Welcome
Territorial Acknowledgment
Principal Chief Edward Chretien Jr., (Atakapa-Ishak Nation)
9:00 – 9:15
Opening Remarks
Rebecca Snedeker, NOCGS, Tulane University
9:15 – 10:15
First Session:
Moderator: Lora Ann Chaisson, (United Houma Nation)
Tribalography: A Thousand Years of Stories from the Southeast
Panel:
* The Choctaw Tribalography that is French Louisiana
LeAnne Howe, (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) University of GeorgiaIn my paper, I’ll discuss the ten years I worked on the eighteenth-century history of the Choctaw Confederacy and how that love affair with my tribe’s past grew into the contemporary novel, Shell Shaker. Central to this work was the study of the Mississippi Provincial Archives, Vols I-III, (Press of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History), Mississippi Provincial Archives, French Dominion, vols. IV and V (Louisiana State University Press), the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives, Cyrus Byington’s papers, and the papers and recordings of Frances Densmore. All of these texts were of great importance in piecing the past together around French Louisiana, and for showing me how to write historical fiction about the Choctaws in a contemporary setting, New Orleans, and Oklahoma.
* Trade Routes, Stickball, and the Choctaw Mother Mound: LeAnne Howe’s Gulf South Groundings
Kirstin Squint, East Carolina UniversityBuilding on theories of Indigenous groundwork and author LeAnne Howe’s (Choctaw) vision of embodied tribalography, I will discuss the ways that Howe’s work represents Gulf South spaces, including ancient trade routes, stickball fields, and mound cultures and their legacies. Beginning with her award-winning 2001 novel Shell Shaker, I will analyze Howe’s depictions of trade among eighteen century tribes along the Gulf Coast, and the integral role of the Nanih Waiya, in present-day Winston County Mississippi, as a place Choctaw people gathered for millennia. I will also discuss the relationship between ancient and contemporary ballgames as described in Howe’s 2007 novel, Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story. My aim is to demonstrate the ways LeAnne Howe’s work connects Choctaw peoples, wherever they may be, to their Gulf South homelands.
10:15 – 11:30
Second Session:
Moderator: Robert Caldwell, (Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb) Hampshire College and Brown University
The Use of Space, Sport, and Stories in Indigenous Communities Past and Present
Panel:
* Entre el mapa y la pluma: Indigenous Knowledge of Space
Guillermo Pupo Pernet, University of ArkansasMy dissertation compares Louisiana and the Orinoco basin in the first half of the 18th century. My primary texts are L’histoire de la Louisiane (1758) written by Antoine Le Page du Partz, and El Orinoco Defendido e Ilustrado (1747) written by Joseph Gumilla. By overlapping travel accounts, maps, archives, and paintings, my research will shed light on how this methodology could teach us more about Indigenous peoples, free(d) Africans, and alliances between them. For this conference, I will compare how Frenchmen understood space in comparison to indigenous peoples. To explain the European definition of space, I will use maps from the first half of the 18th century. To explain indigenous peoples’ purpose of space, I will overlap the film Te Ata (2016) and the following two watercolors.
* Grand Indian Ball-Play: A Digital Map Tour of Games
Jason Lewis, (Choctaw)A narrative of tragedy has long described the plight of the Choctaw who remained in their homelands after the removals initiated with the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830. The majority, considered full-blooded, were quickly displaced from their homes, and struggled for nearly two decades for their rights under the treaty. Around 1880, missionaries, and other agents of assimilation, eventually shed enough light on the remaining Choctaw for the U.S. Government to initiate a second effort of removal around the turn of the century. Yet, the period of 1845-1880 remains largely a mystery, with only a couple references suggesting lifeways revolving around farming, hunting, and social gatherings. Digitally searchable newspapers from the 1800s, on the website newspapers.com, are changing the view of this era. Poring through local gazettes and weekly clarions of the American South from the 1800s, it’s clear one activity helped the Choctaw of that period remain vibrant—stickball.
For this presentation, I have mapped the location of near fifty stickball games, from articles published between 1831 and 1924, and will provide a tour of the game sites using Google Earth. I will also share compelling details about the teams, venues, and games, as reported in the collection of articles. The series of games, a century’s worth, overlapping into the eras of historical visibility, create a narrative that broadens our perspective of the Choctaw in the face of the two great removals, and more importantly, help us see how active Choctaw communities negotiated space throughout their homelands, displaced, but not simply hiding out in swamps, struggling to exist in marginal lands. Details presented here will undoubtedly lead future research threads and should be of high interest to any fans of the pre-eminent Gulf South sport of the 19th century, often advertised as, The Grand Indian Ball-Play.
* Natchez Culture and Identity in the 20th Century: An Oral History of Diaspora and Survival
Noel E. Smyth, University of California, Santa CruzIn Oklahoma during the 1930s, the linguistic anthropologist Mary Haas recorded dozens of Natchez oral histories in the Natchez language. Many of the recorded stories are reserved for telling during winter months (when Haas was visiting Oklahoma) and others are meant for children. These winter stories are intended to teach Natchez culture and history to the next generations; however, the stories also give insight into the diasporic history of the Natchez since the eighteenth century. For example, while there are stories that are unique to the Natchez, there are also Creek and Cherokee stories—but told in the Natchez language. There are stories that seem to come from English folklore such as a Jack and the Beanstalk story. Other stories hint of contact with those of African descent, such as a Brer Rabbit story. The multicultural content in these stories provide an entry into understanding Natchez culture in the twentieth century and they also provide insights into Natchez history from earlier periods, particularly in regard to how the Natchez survived by living with multiple Indigenous, African and European groups since the eighteenth century. The paper ends with a discussion of how I work with the contemporary Natchez Nation in Oklahoma, which has allowed me to better translate and understand these Natchez oral stories. I will reflect on the value and importance of working with Native communities today for historical inquiry, and how oral sources, participant observation, and archival analysis can be used in conjunction to better understand the past and to develop ethical scholarly relationships with Native Americans today.
11:30 – 11:45
Break
11:45 – 12:45
Third Session: Dialogues
Moderator: Laura D. Kelley, Tulane University
Living History, Living Voices: Partnerships in Cultural Preservation in Native Communities in the South
This session demonstrates the importance of studying the interactions between the topics of public history/museums and Native communities in the South. Cultural commodification, NPS Section 106 Review, shifts in funding for state and federally recognized tribes, and the role and responsibility that public historians have in working with Native communities are some of the concerns illuminated by these presentations.
As the Director of Development and Programing for the Tunica-Biloxi Language & Culture Revitalization Program (LCRP), John Barbry will discuss the role of the Tunica-Biloxi Museum and the LCRP in communicating the historical relevance of the Tribe in state and regional history. The Tunica-Biloxi outreach and education programming is open to the public as part of local culture and geo-tourism and acts as a resource for perspective and interpretation of its own history and culture. Christina Lake with the Hilliard Art Museum and Texas A&M University specializes in Indigenous Studies, Public History, and Historic Preservation. She will highlight the roles of public historians and NPOs, fielding topics concerning the ongoing collaboration with anthropologists, linguists, historians, and advocacy efforts in the public and private sphere.
John Barbry, (Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana)
Christina Lake, Hilliard Art Museum at University of Louisiana, LafayetteCaddo Traditional Home Building and Sacred Mounds
Phil Cross, (Caddo Nation)
Jeffrey Williams, President Friends of Caddo Mounds nonprofit organization12:45 – 2:00
Lunch will be provided for presenters
2:00 – 3:15
Fourth Session: Roundtable
Introductions: Denise Frazier, NOCGS, Tulane University
The Chukka Auchaffi’ Natana program (in Choctaw) or Weaving Healthy Families program: Centering Culture in Healing
The pandemic has been devastating for tribal communities and has exacerbated family functioning, as well as family violence and alcohol and other drug (AOD) abuse. Given the chronic and acute stressors of the pandemic and natural disasters, culturally-based family prevention interventions that enhance wellness and resilience while simultaneously addressing violence and AOD abuse among Indigenous peoples of the Southeast are crucial, yet scarce. The purpose of this panel presentation is to describe bidirectional collaboration using community-based participatory research methods (CBPR) with Southeastern Indigenous communities (The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and the United Houma Nation) to develop the Chukka Auchaffi’ Natana program (in Choctaw) or Weaving Healthy Families (WHF) program. We describe the content and development of this culturally grounded program to prevent violence and AOD use in families while promoting wellness and resilience and showcase the cultural elements that are integral to the program including: traditional indigenous foods, health, and nutrition, the medicine wheel, the talking circle, the Framework of Historical Oppression, Resilience, and Transcendence (FHORT), culturally specific risk and protective factors, tribal values identified in preliminary research, and culturally specific forms of celebration, including traditional tribal cooking. We highlight the community and professional development of over 50 community health leaders who facilitate the program. Finally, we examine pilot results from eight tribal families who completed the program indicating promising positive results across cultural, community, familial, relational, and individual levels. The WHF program and its development simultaneously contributes to immediate (income), intermediary (learning about and engaging with culture, family skill building, violence and AOD prevention), and long-term (creating leaders for change and community solidarity) benefits for the community. Despite the necessary and intentional long-term commitment and resources needed for this work, culturally grounded, multipronged, bidirectional, and strengths-based, research is recommended.
Panel:
Maple Dynan, Tulane University
Tia Grisham (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians)
William D. Isaac, (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians)
Catherine E. McKinley, Tulane University3:15 – 3:30
Break
3:30 – 4:45
Fifth Session:
Settler Colonialism and its Effects on the People and the Landscape: From Slavery to Climate Change
Moderator: Jeffery Darensbourg, (Atakapa-Ishak Nation)
Panel:
* The Plantation-to-Petrochemical Complex: Settler Colonialism, Slavery, and Necropolitics in Cancer Alley, USA
Leila K. Blackbird, (adoptee of Apache and Cherokee descent), The University of ChicagoIncorporating interdisciplinary methodologies from anthropology, history, and spatial humanities, this paper examines land use and environmental racism over time. It argues Louisiana’s Cancer Alley is a direct outgrowth of settler colonialism and the plantation complex, forming what I call the “Plantation-to-Petrochemical Complex.”
Native lands along the Lower Mississippi River were forcibly taken – through warfare, enslavement, and other acts of genocide – divided and distributed through royal land grants to settlers, then developed into plantations dependent on enslaved Native and, increasingly, African and African American labor. This extractive exploitation of land and labor consolidated wealth and biopower into the hands of the white planter elite, creating the one of the most brutal slave societies in the Antebellum South. During the Civil War, Louisiana’s sugar parishes were exempted from emancipation, and plantations were allowed to remain operational well into the Postbellum period. Profitability then became dependent on newly developing coerced labor regimes. Control was maintained through the pervasive use of state-sanctioned racial violence. When Louisiana’s sugar plantations collapsed at the beginning of the 20th century, it coincided with the discovery the oil frontier along the Gulf Coast. Many former plantations were sold directly to emerging petroleum corporations.
Now one of the most toxic geographies in the nation, Louisiana’s sugar parishes form “Cancer Alley, USA.” This region’s petroleum and petroleum-derived industrial production facilities, pipelines, and shipping industries are an essential part of the US energy sector. But to facilitate it, Louisiana’s Black and Native communities must continue to be ravaged by poverty, incarceration, disease, and death, exemplifying a necropolitical present in which subjectivity and death are the roots of both the settler state’s historical sovereignty and its modern political economy. The Plantation-to-Petrochemical Complex reveals the hyper-complexity of global capitalist spatialities, linking colonial and neo-colonial strategies to maintain control over land, labor, and natural resources.
* The Role of Workforce Education for Indigenous Communities in Dealing with Climate Change
Carsten Schmidtke, Louisiana State UniversityClimate change is a multi-faceted, complex challenge that has no easy answers and requires much expertise to find solutions. The effects of climate change can devastate indigenous coastal communities and thus endanger cultural continuity and survival. In general, skills needed to address issues of climate change are given as livelihood and policy analysis, leadership and stakeholder engagement, negotiation, data analysis, incentive and benefit framework development, and others.
What is missing from this list, however, is what happens after stakeholders have been engaged, policies have been set, and incentives have been determined. Implementation of plans and policies to prevent and mitigate the effects of climate change require expertise in a number of technical areas such as forestry, wetland conservation, construction, alternative energies, pollution reduction, and other areas. If indigenous communities can train their own highly skilled technical workforces that can implement plans and conduct mitigation and prevention efforts, they will be able to take charge of their own futures, develop culturally appropriate solutions, and reduce their reliance on outside experts who may have their own agendas and may not have the best interest of indigenous communities in mind.
Therefore, the purpose of this presentation is to argue that in order to develop and implement strategies to fight climate change, indigenous communities need to overcome any reluctance to encourage young people to choose technical careers and develop their own highly skilled technical workforce. Having community members able to develop, direct, and implement prevention and mitigation efforts is a benefit to indigenous communities trying to take charge of their own destinies.
4:45 – 5:00
Closing Remarks
Judith Maxwell, (Etowah) Tulane University
5:00 – 6:30
Reception
Newcomb Art Museum
March 19th Day Two
The Program Committee curated the schedule for the second day of the symposium
8:30
Registration:
Coffee and Tribal Display
8:45
Welcome
Rebecca Snedeker, NOCGS, Tulane University
Territorial Acknowledgement
John Barbry, (Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana)
9:00
Opening Remarks:
John Barbry, (Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana)
9:15 – 10:15
Moderator: John DePriest, (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), Tulane University
Art and Culture:
The Hasinai Heartbeat: Art & Perpetuating Caddo Traditions
Chad “Nish” Earles, (Caddo Nation), President/Chairman of the Caddo Culture Club
Applying Fire to Earth: Contemporary Evolution of Caddo Ceramics
Chase Kahwinhut Earles (Caddo Nation)
10:15 – 11:15
History:
Moderator: Laura D. Kelley, Tulane University
The Role of US Boarding Schools in American Indian Dispossession
Brenda Child, (Red Lake Ojibwe), University of Minnesota
The Educational Experiences of Being Indigenous in Louisiana
Principal Chief Edward Chretien Jr., (Atakapa-Ishak Nation)
11:15 – 11:30
Break
11:30 – 12:30
Language Panel:
Moderator: Judith Maxwell, (Etowah) Tulane University
Sustaining Culture Through Language
Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, Koasati Language:
Eli Langley
Heather WilliamsTunica- Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, Tunica Language:
Elisabeth Pierite-Mora, Rebecca Moore, Teyanna Pierite-Simon
12:30 – 1:30
Lunch: LBC, Tulane
Lunch provided for panelists
1:30
Afternoon Opening Remarks:
Carolyn Barber-Pierre, Tulane University
A message from Andrew Jolivétte, (Atakapa-Ishak Nation), University of California, San Diego1:45 – 2:45
Contemporary Issues:
Surviving the Storms: Climate Change, Disaster and Indigenous Resistance
A film screening by the Tulane Center for Public Service
2:45 – 3:00
Break
3:00 – 4:00
Roundtable:
Indigenous Voices: Foodways
Moderator: Robert Caldwell, (Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb) Hampshire College and Brown University
Panel:
Lora Ann Chaisson, (United Houma Nation)
Cougar Goodbear, (Canneci N’de Band of Lipan Apache)
Loretta Barrett Oden, (Citizen Potawatomi Nation)4:00 – 5:00
Ongoing Projects: Research and Engagement Opportunities
Current Progress and Future Directions for Tulane Indigenous Students
Moderator & Presenter:
Lauren Wendelle Yowelunh McLester-Davis, (Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin) Tulane University Neuroscience Doctoral StudentBayou Lacombe Choctaws and collaborations with Bayou Lacombe Museum
Scierra LeGarde, (Bayou Lacombe Choctaw)
Karen Ducre-Raymond, President of Bayou Lacombe Museum5:00
Closing Remarks
Denise Frazier, NOCGS, Tulane University
5:15-6:30
Reception:
Kendall Cram, Tulane University
Bereavement Statement:
We would like to acknowledge all those who have lost loved ones recently. We recognize that there are many grieving from the death of loved ones whether from COVID, Hurricane Ida or the normal vagaries of life. Their absence is felt, and may their life be celebrated for the joy each has brought us.
Every year, we want to honor and acknowledge symposium organizers and previous presenters who have passed away. In May 2021, we lost Nathalie Clarke, a beloved Tulane student who died in a tragic accident. Nath aided in the planning of the first symposium and participated in it, simultaneously translating from French into English. Nath also presented their research in the 3rd annual symposium alongside their collaborator, Pete LeBoeuf (Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe). They are sorely missed by their family, friends, faculty mentors and the NOCGS team.
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Presenters & Symposium Organizers:
Organizers
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Laura D. Kelley
Laura D. Kelley is an immigrant and ethnic historian at Tulane University and the Program Director of Tulane’s Summer in Dublin Program. She is also the section editor for the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities KNOWLA Project and has published articles in Louisiana History as well as online collections. Her book, The Irish in New Orleans, released in October 2014, was the winner of the bronze medal in the Regional Non-Fiction category of the Independent Publisher Awards- IPPY- as well as a finalist for the INDIEFAB award. She is the recipient of numerous grants which have supported her research examining immigrant and ethnic communities in New Orleans as well as Indigenous communities in Southern Louisiana. Dr. Kelley has been researching the history of Native American Tribes of Southern Louisiana as well as working directly with them on a variety of projects for over a decade. Her fifteen-year collaboration with the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe, a community partner of Tulane University, has resulted in numerous projects with topics ranging from coastal erosion to foodways. She is currently completing her second manuscript on the Irish, “The Greening of New Orleans” as well as “We the People: Native Americans, Europeans, Anglo-Americans, and the Complex History of Southern Louisiana from Colonial Times to the Present.” For more information please visit www.lauradkelley.com -
Rebecca Snedeker
Rebecca Snedeker is the James H. Clark Executive Director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University. Prior to this position, she cultivated a body of narrative work that supports human rights, creative expression, and care for place in her native city, New Orleans. Works include Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas (co-authored with Rebecca Solnit, University of California Press, 2013) and several feature documentary films, including Land of Opportunity (producer, ARTE, 2010), Witness: Katrina (producer, National Geographic Channel, 2010), and By Invitation Only (producer/director, PBS, 2007). Snedeker has served on the Steering Committee of New Day Films and the boards of the New Orleans Film Society and Patois: The New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival. She graduated from Wesleyan University and is the recipient of an Emmy Award for “Historical Programming – Long Form” and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. -
Denise Frazier
Denise Frazier: An interest in Cuban politics and African Diaspora culture within Latin America led her to New Orleans where she received an MA and PhD in Latin American Studies at Tulane University. Frazier’s graduate studies in Cuba and Brazil aligned with her interest in contemporary music, specifically hip hop, and public performance. Frazier frequently plays violin with performance organizations and musicians around the city. She has performed with several local New Orleans musicians and performances artists. Frazier has taught several university-level courses, including: Spanish, Latin American Studies, and African Diaspora-related courses on the university level at Tulane University, Xavier University, Wofford College, and Southern University of New Orleans. She has lectured and presented seminars and workshops on diversity, African Diaspora culture, contemporary music and performance all around the country. She has also worked with various advocacy groups and non-profit organizations in New Orleans, for instance a college access and completion program organization called: College Track and Make Music NOLA, a music and performance program for local New Orleans students. Frazier is currently the Assistant Director for the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University.
Presenters-
Carolyn Barber-Pierre
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John D. Barbry
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Leila Blackbird
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Robert Caldwell
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Lora Ann Chaisson
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Brenda Child
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Principal Chief Edward Chretien Jr.
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Phil Cross
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John DePriest
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Karen Ducre-Raymond
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Maple Dynan
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Chad Earles
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Chase Earles
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Cougar Goodbear
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Tia Grisham
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LeAnne Howe
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William D. Isaac
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Andrew Jolivétte
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Christina Lake
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Eli Langley
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Scierra LeGarde
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Jason Lewis
Jason Lewis is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma but was born and grew up in California. He was active in the Native American community of Los Angeles, and served as Co-Convener for the American Indian Community Council of Los Angeles, 2008-2009. In 2009, he moved to Mississippi to learn the Choctaw language and in return has helped write grants for the Mississippi Choctaw Tribal Language Program; grant outcomes include a Choctaw language curriculum, proficiency assessment tools, and the language teacher certification course for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw (MBCI). Since 2016, he has helped with the implementation of daily Choctaw classes in the MBCI tribal school system. Recently, he helped develop Choctaw language classroom lessons incorporating traditional Choctaw games and activities such as baskata̱chi, achahpi/cha̱ki, oski lho̱pa ho̱ssa, and iti nipa pila. Currently, he is helping conduct Choctaw language interviews across the eight Mississippi Choctaw communities for an NEH Documenting Endangered Languages grant awarded to create a modern Mississippi Choctaw language dictionary. Jason lives in the Pearl River community of Choctaw, Mississippi with his partner, Rebecca, and daughter, Anna’Laiya.
Jason Lewis, ‘Bachi -
Catherine McKinley
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Lauren Wendelle Yowelunh McLester-Davis
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Rebecca Moore
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Loretta Barrett Oden
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Guillermo Pupo Pernet
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Elisabeth Pierite-Mora
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Teyanna Pierite-Simon
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Carsten Schmidtke
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Noel Smyth
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Kirstin Squint
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Heather Williams
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Jeffrey Williams
Program Committee
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Robert Caldwell
Robert Caldwell currently teaches U.S. History and Louisiana History at SOWELA Technical Community College. Prior to that he was a Library Digitization Specialist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Texas at Arlington where he completed his doctorate in Transatlantic History in August 2018. His wide-ranging academic and research interests include Native American and Indigenous Studies, cartographic history, foodways, labor and migration, as well as Empires and Revolutions. Robert’s first book explores the culinary culture of the Choctaw-Apache Community of Ebarb. His 2018 dissertation, “Indians in their Proper Place: Culture Areas, Linguistic Stocks, and the Genealogy of a Map” explores 150 years of thematic maps of American Indian homelands, languages, and culture. The manuscript is now under contract with University of Nebraska Press. -
Lora Ann Chaisson
Lora Ann Chaisson, a citizen of the United Houma Nation (UHN), is employed with Tribal Solutions Group where she is an Associate. Active in her community and throughout Indian Country. Lora Ann has been a member of the UHN Tribal Council since 2005. She currently serves on the Government Committee and Personnel Committee and has also served as UHN delegate to the National Congress of American Indians for twelve years and was the former Vice-Principal Chief of UHN.Lora Ann is a new member of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Native American Employment and Training Council. She has also worked with the Inter-Tribal Council of Louisiana/Institute for Indian Development, a regional Workforce Investment Board, for 25 years, and currently serves as a board member and representative for Native Americans. She is also a proud alumnus of the American Indian Opportunity Ambassador Program, a national organization that provides capacity building and leadership development for Native American professionals looking to grow their communities.
Lora Ann is the daughter of Theo and the late Betty Chaisson and is a part-owner of Isle de Jean Charles Marina, Inc. During her free time, she enjoys teaching friends and family about traditional Houma cooking and makes unique pieces of jewelry from the hide of the alligator and scales from the alligator garfish. She is also a proud traditional basket weaver. In 2019, was her 38th consecutive year exhibiting at the signature Louisiana event, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. She plans to be there again when it reopens in 2022.
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Jeffrey Darensbourg
Jeffery Darensbourg is a writer, editor, and storyteller who is an enrolled member of the Atakapa-Ishak Nation of Indians of mixed Indigenous, European, and West African ancestry. He is a founding editor of the zine Bulbancha Is Still a Place: Indigenous Culture from New Orleans. Jeffery is a Fellow of the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and a resident of the French Quarter. His 2020 film with Fernando López, Hoktiwe: Two Poems in Ishakkoy, is currently on display at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans.Photo credit: Benry Fauna -
Denise Frazier
Denise Frazier: An interest in Cuban politics and African Diaspora culture within Latin America led her to New Orleans where she received an MA and PhD in Latin American Studies at Tulane University. Frazier’s graduate studies in Cuba and Brazil aligned with her interest in contemporary music, specifically hip hop, and public performance. Frazier frequently plays violin with performance organizations and musicians around the city. She has performed with several local New Orleans musicians and performances artists. Frazier has taught several university-level courses, including: Spanish, Latin American Studies, and African Diaspora-related courses on the university level at Tulane University, Xavier University, Wofford College, and Southern University of New Orleans. She has lectured and presented seminars and workshops on diversity, African Diaspora culture, contemporary music and performance all around the country. She has also worked with various advocacy groups and non-profit organizations in New Orleans, for instance a college access and completion program organization called: College Track and Make Music NOLA, a music and performance program for local New Orleans students. Frazier is currently the Assistant Director for the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University. -
Laura D. Kelley
Laura D. Kelley is an immigrant and ethnic historian at Tulane University and the Program Director of Tulane’s Summer in Dublin Program. She is also the section editor for the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities KNOWLA Project and has published articles in Louisiana History as well as online collections. Her book, The Irish in New Orleans, released in October 2014, was the winner of the bronze medal in the Regional Non-Fiction category of the Independent Publisher Awards- IPPY- as well as a finalist for the INDIEFAB award. She is the recipient of numerous grants which have supported her research examining immigrant and ethnic communities in New Orleans as well as Indigenous communities in Southern Louisiana. Dr. Kelley has been researching the history of Native American Tribes of Southern Louisiana as well as working directly with them on a variety of projects for over a decade. Her fifteen-year collaboration with the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe, a community partner of Tulane University, has resulted in numerous projects with topics ranging from coastal erosion to foodways. She is currently completing her second manuscript on the Irish, “The Greening of New Orleans” as well as “We the People: Native Americans, Europeans, Anglo-Americans, and the Complex History of Southern Louisiana from Colonial Times to the Present.” For more information please visit www.lauradkelley.com. -
Jason Lewis
Jason Lewis is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma but was born and grew up in California. He was active in the Native American community of Los Angeles, and served as Co-Convener for the American Indian Community Council of Los Angeles, 2008-2009. In 2009, he moved to Mississippi to learn the Choctaw language and in return has helped write grants for the Mississippi Choctaw Tribal Language Program; grant outcomes include a Choctaw language curriculum, proficiency assessment tools, and the language teacher certification course for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw (MBCI). Since 2016, he has helped with the implementation of daily Choctaw classes in the MBCI tribal school system. Recently, he helped develop Choctaw language classroom lessons incorporating traditional Choctaw games and activities such as baskata̱chi, achahpi/cha̱ki, oski lho̱pa ho̱ssa, and iti nipa pila. Currently, he is helping conduct Choctaw language interviews across the eight Mississippi Choctaw communities for an NEH Documenting Endangered Languages grant awarded to create a modern Mississippi Choctaw language dictionary. Jason lives in the Pearl River community of Choctaw, Mississippi with his partner, Rebecca, and daughter, Anna’Laiya.
Jason Lewis, ‘Bachi -
Judith Maxwell
Judith Maxwell, Etowah Nation, Louise Rebecca Schawe and Williedell Schawe professor of linguistics and anthropology at Tulane, works on language and culture revitalization, bilingual education, pragmatics, and discourse, focusing on Mayan, Uto-Aztecan and Tunican languages. She is founder and director of Oxlajuj Aj, a Kaqchikel Language and Culture program; co-director of Kuhpani Yoyani Luhchi Yoroni, the joint Tunica-Tulane language and culture revitalization project, and consultant to the Ministry of Education Department and Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala. -
Christopher B. Rodning
Chris Rodning is the Paul and Debra Gibbons Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University. He received an A.B. magna cum laude in anthropology from Harvard University in 1994, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2004. He has published books and papers about the archaeology of the southern Appalachians and the Gulf South on topics such as the architecture and built environment of Native American towns, earthen mounds as monuments and persistent places within dynamic cultural landscapes, gender and status differentiation in Native American communities, and responses by native peoples of the Southeast to European contact and colonialism. His courses at Tulane include “Introduction to Archaeology,” “Ancient Societies,” “North American Prehistory,” “Southeast U.S. Prehistory,” “Archaeology of Cultural Landscapes,” “Disasters and Past Societies,” “Conquest and Colonialism,” and “Archaeology of Gender.” -
Rebecca Snedeker
Rebecca Snedeker is the James H. Clark Executive Director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University. Prior to this position, she cultivated a body of narrative work that supports human rights, creative expression, and care for place in her native city, New Orleans. Works include Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas
(co-authored with Rebecca Solnit, University of California Press, 2013) and several feature documentary films, including Land of Opportunity (producer, ARTE, 2010), Witness: Katrina (producer, National Geographic Channel, 2010), and By Invitation Only (producer/director, PBS, 2007). Snedeker has served on the Steering Committee of New Day Films and the boards of the New Orleans Film Society and Patois: The New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival. She graduated from Wesleyan University and is the recipient of an Emmy Award for “Historical Programming – Long Form” and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Parking
Options for Visitors
- Visitors may purchase one-day and multi-day parking passes in the Customer Engagement office in the Lavin-Bernick Center from 8 to 5 Monday through Friday or online at parking.tulane.edu This option allows you to print your parking pass from anywhere.
- Visitors have the option to pay to park on the ground level or in one of the numbered spaces on the second floor of the Diboll Complex.
- Parking meters are located throughout campus in the marked spots on the campus map. Parking permits are not required when guests park in timed or metered spaces, provided the time limit is obeyed and the parking meter is not expired. Maximum time limits for parking meters are posted on each meter.
- Utilizing the ParkMobile app is also an option at metered spaces along with specially marked spaces in the Claiborne Avenue lot. Consult our parking map for more information.
- Reserved all hour spaces are clearly marked and should not be used by visitors without prior approval.
Failure to comply with parking rules may result in a citation. For additional parking information call 504-865-5441. Disabled Visitors Visitors are welcome to park in a Tulane handicap space when displaying their state issued disabled permit. A visitor may wish to us prior to their arrival on campus or as their first stop on campus to request assistance. Our customer engagement staff can assist you in finding the most accessible parking near your campus destination. Please note: Your state issued permit is not valid at a campus metered space as it would be in a municipal metered space. For more information, please visit the Campus Services website.
Public Transportation:
For public transportation options please visit the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority website https://www.norta.com
Campus Map
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Covid Vaccination and Masking Policy Information
Please note that Tulane University follows the city of New Orleans regulations which means that on campus the following applies:
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Requirements:
All attendees 5 and older must show either:
- Proof of at least two doses (full vaccination) of vaccine (state’s verification app showing proof of vaccine; original CDC Vaccination Card; OR digital photograph/photocopy of both sides of CDC Vaccination Card)
- Negative COVID-19 test (paper or digital test results from a COVID-19 test indicating negative results within the past 72 hours) with the individual’s name, date of test, and result clearly visible on an official report.
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Masking:
- Masking is optional for all indoor events.
Contact
New Orleans Center for the Gulf South Tulane University Newcomb Hall Room 112 1229 Broadway St. New Orleans, LA 70119 504-314-2889
New Orleans Center for the Gulf South
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Sponsors:
Special Thanks:
Denise and Peter Byrne, for their memorial gift in honor of Nath Clarke.
Ashli and Todd Blumenfeld, for instigating the Rosenthal Blumenfeld Gulf South Food Studies program which hosts the Roundtable Indigenous Voices: Foodways session this year.Member participation from the following Nations:
Photo Credit: Laura D. Kelley
Carolyn Barber-Pierre is the Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs, Multicultural Affairs. Carolyn attended Bowling Green State University where she received a Masters of Arts in Education (‘79) in College Student Personnel and a Bachelor of Arts in Education from the University of Findlay (’77). Carolyn has more than 40 years of professional experience in the field of higher education, diversity and inclusion and has served in her current position since 2000 during her 34 years at Tulane. Carolyn with her husband Curtis Pierre, co-founded the group, Casa Samba, a local traditional Brazilian Drum & Dance troupe that has been teaching and performing in the greater New Orleans for more than 30 years. Additionally, she is an adjunct instructor in the Dance Department. She is passionate about sports, music, dance and spending time with family. 
John Barbry has served as Director of Development and Programming for the Tunica-Biloxi Language & Culture Revitalization Program (LCRP) since 2014. LCRP is dedicated to enhancing the presence and vitality of the Tunica and Biloxi languages and cultural lifeways for tribal members and targeted non-member communities. Barbry oversees the day-to-day administration of the LCRP including the development and implementation of education programs, cultural demonstrations, and workshops on Tunica and Biloxi history, languages, and traditional lifeways. Since 2016, John has also served as project director for a U. S. Department of Education demonstration grant that provides Tunica-Biloxi youth with the resources needed to stay in school, be college and career-ready, and graduate. John Barbry holds a B. A. in Music Education from McNeese State University and an M.A. in History from the University of New Orleans. Barbry assisted with the cataloging of the “Tunica Treasure” shortly after the collection was repatriated to the Tunica-Biloxi and prior to its return to the reservation from storage at the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans. He then served as Research Supervisor in the manuscripts division at the Historic New Orleans Collection. Barbry was the first Native American appointed archivist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian in 1993. Prior to his current responsibilities, Barbry worked 20 years in casino marketing and management in Louisiana and California. John has been chairman of the Tunica-Biloxi Pow Wow Committee since 1995.
Leila K. Blackbird (unenrolled adoptee of Mescalero Apache and Eastern Cherokee descent) is the Pozen Family Human Rights Doctoral Fellow of History at The University of Chicago. Her dissertation, entitled “The Middle Ground is a Shatter Zone: In the Wake of Settler Colonialism and Slavery on America’s Third Coast,” centers enslaved Native and Black-Native people at the core of US History. Leila is affiliated with the Newberry Consortium in American Indian and Indigenous Studies (NCAIS), the Johns Hopkins Center for Africana Studies, and the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies. She is a contributing author for What is History, Now? and Louisiana Creole Peoplehood: Afro-Indigeneity & Community.
Brenda J. Child (Red Lake Ojibwe) is Northrop Professor and former Chair of the Departments of American Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is a past president (2017-2018) of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). In 2021, she was the University of Minnesota’s recipient of the President’s Community Engaged Scholar Award. 
Edward Chretien Jr. is a native Louisianian who was born, raised and currently resides in the resilient city of Lake Charles. He attended Sacred Heart, Mill Street Elementary, Reynaud and W.O. Boston during his formative years. 
Phil Cross was raised on his family’s Caddo Indian allotted land within the former boundaries of the Wichita-Caddo-Delaware reservation in western Oklahoma. He is a member of the Caddo Indian Nation. Cross serves as the lead singer at Caddo ceremonies and social dances. He recently served as the Culture Preservation Officer for the Caddo Nation government. 
John DePriest (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is a songwriter, musician, linguist, and teacher based out of Bvlbancha, Louisiana. He grew up in Shukhvta Tvmaha (Possum Town), Mississippi, and after a stint in Nashville, moved to New Orleans in 2009. John earned a PhD in Linguistics at Tulane, studying the overlap of language and music in neurocognition, and currently teaches in Tulane’s EAPP Program. He is also the bandleader of the bluegrass country funk band Bogue Chitto, and in 2021 was awarded a Monroe Fellowship from the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South to create an album of new and traditional Choctaw Music. In addition to music and teaching English, he is actively working to expand the use of the Choctaw language, including teaching it to his children.
Karen Ducre-Raymond is a life-long resident of Bayou Lacombe, a fact that has fostered a love for the land and the community. As President of the Bayou Lacombe Museum and program director of Buchowa Village, a project to preserve and promote the history, culture and traditions of Bayou Lacombe Choctaw through exhibits in the museum, in the Lacombe Park, and eventually, a cultural center dedicated to that purpose, Raymond and a dedicated group of volunteers, under the tutelage of Tom Colvin, have recently completed the Buchowa Village, dedicated as part of the Native American Heritage Month celebration. To date, the exhibits include a chukka, a Medicine Wheel, and a Three Sisters Garden, with plans for an outdoor classroom soon. 
Chad “Nish” Earles is from Oklahoma City and a member of the Caddo Nation. Chad is a visual artist, designer, singer of traditional Caddo songs, and President/Chair of the Caddo Culture Club. He aspires to perpetuate Caddo culture and traditions for future generations. References of pottery designs, basketry, beadwork, Caddo dances and stories passed down can be seen throughout his artwork. Chad breathes new life into the geometric patterns and iconography created by his Caddo ancestors as well as creates new abstract forms of visual language based on their foundation. He makes use of a wide range of mediums including painting, drawing, digital art, and printmaking. In 2011, Chad founded Nishology, an apparel company where he designs and screenprints his artwork on t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, etc. for sale online and various retail outlets. 
From 800 AD to 1700 Caddo pottery was an incredible and well-known tradition in the North American Southeast, traded far and wide, even overseas. Knowledge of this cultural history disappeared as the Caddo Tribe was decimated from diseases and colonialism. Our last Caddo potter, a matriarch of my Tribal namesake, stopped making pottery around 1908 and our tradition was almost lost. I hope to bring that unsung ceramic legacy back to the light.
NectoāKudjā CacJoni, My name from Lipan meaning: Cougar Goodbear. I am the Nant’a (Chief/Chairman) of the Canneci N’de Band of Lipan Apache, Inc. based in Louisiana’s Lafayette area. I’m very active in my culture and Tribal community. Having the Lipan story that is part of Louisiana’s history kept alive and going is one project of many to the Canneci N’de.
I am Rez-Raised, a wife, mother of three. I work with children and youth every day and work with the Youth Opportunity Program in the Pearl River Community. I am a Community Health Representative for Weaving Healthy Families and work with our adolescents.
An enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Howe is the Eidson Distinguished Professor of American Literature in English at the University of Georgia. She is the author of novels, plays and poetry, and her awards include: the American Book Award, Western Literature Association’s 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award; the inaugural 2014 MLA Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures; and a 2012 United States Artists Ford Fellowship, among others. Her most recent monograph, Savage Conversations, Coffee House Press, (2019) is the story of Mary Todd Lincoln and the Savage Indian spirit that Mary claimed tortured her nightly. She is the co-editor of the anthology When The Light of The World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: Norton, 2020, along with Joy Harjo and Jennifer Foerster. Her most recently documentary film, Searching for Sequoyah, with filmmaker James M. Fortier is currently airing nationally in November 2021 on PBS.
William D. Isaac is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians who works with the Choctaw Housing Authority in Choctaw, Mississippi. He has been working for his people in the housing field as a Substance Abuse Counselor and a Residential Counselor since 2001. He believes that it takes the tribal community to heal its communities. With a holistic approach that embraces Indigenous culture, he believes a real difference can be made. 
Andrew Jolivétte is Professor and Department Chair of Ethnic Studies as well as the inaugural founding Director of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) at UC San Diego. The NAIS Program features a minor and graduate certificate in Native American and Indigenous Studies and will also feature an elder/culture bearer in-residence program. Dr. Jolivétte is a former Professor and Department Chair of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University and a Senior Ford Foundation Fellow. He is the author or editor of nine books in print or forthcoming including the Lammy Award nominated, Indian Blood: HIV and Colonial Trauma in San Francisco’s Two-Spirit Community, Research Justice: Methodologies for Social Change, Louisiana Creoles: Cultural Recovery and Mixed-Race Native American Identity, and Louisiana Creole Peoplehood: Afro-Indigeneity and Community. An enrolled member of the Atakapa-Ishak Nation of Louisiana, he is his tribe’s former tribal historian and is born of the Hiyekiti Ishak [Sunrise People] of the Tsikip/Heron Clan. He is a Louisisna Creole of Ishak, West African, French, Spanish, Italian and Irish descent. Professor Jolivétte is the Board President of the American Indian Cultural Center of San Francisco and the Board Chair of the Institute for Democratic Education and Culture (Speak Out) as well as the co-chair of the newly formed UC Ethnic Studies Council. A former Indigenous Peoples Representative to the United Nations Forum on HIV and the Law, he is active in both scholarship and community work. Dr. currently serves as an Advisory Board Member with the UCLA American Indian Culture and Research Journal, as a Ford Foundation Senior Fellow, as the Series Editor of Black Indigenous Futures and Speculations at Routledge, as a Chief Investigator with the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Indigenous Futures (CEIF), and as a Scientific Research Mentor for the IHART (Indigenous HIV/AIDS Research Training Program) at the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute (IWRI) at the University of Washington in Seattle. 
Eli Langley is an enrolled member of the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana and a fluent speaker of Koasati. He is a recent graduate of Harvard University, receiving an AB in Government and History in 2021. Eli led efforts to change Harvard University’s undergraduate language requirement to include recognition of Native American languages, and was the first graduate of Harvard College to have an indigenous American language on his transcript. He currently lives in New Orleans, where he works as a writer, storyteller, cultural preservation activist, and host of the ‘
Scierra LeGarde is a citizen of the Bayou Lacombe Band of Choctaw located in St. Tammany Parish Louisiana. She is a life-long resident of Bvlbancha, commonly known by its colonial name “New Orleans,” where she volunteers at schools, museums and other venues across the state of Louisiana. As an educator, she works to decolonize our education system by challenging the way many non-Indigenous people learn about American history; integrating contemporary Indigenous issues from Native perspectives in her discussions. Presently, Scierra is learning the Bayou Lacombe Choctaw style of basket weaving from Mr. Tom Colvin so that she can continue this rich tradition for the next generation. She is thankful to her family and friends who have supported her and would like to give special thanks to Dr. Laura Kelley and committee members for the opportunity to serve as speaker for the 4th Annual NOCGS Indigenous Symposium.
Dr. McKinley is an Associate Professor at Tulane University who is honored to work with Indigenous peoples of the Southeast and cross-nationally for over 10 years to develop and test the culturally grounded “Chukka Auchaffi’ Natana: The Weaving Healthy Families Program to Promote Wellness and Resilience and Prevent Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence (1R01AA028201-01; PI, McKinley).” A board member of the National Academy of the Sciences, Engineering, & Medicine Gulf Research Program’s (GRP): Enhancing Community Resilience (EnCoRe), she has worked in collaboration with tribes to develop the Indigenous-based and ecological Framework of Historical Oppression, Resilience, and Transcendence (FHORT). 
Lauren W. Yowelunh McLester-Davis is an enrolled member of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin and a current graduate student at Tulane University. Prior to being awarded a Louisiana Board of Regents Fellowship to pursue her doctorate in Neuroscience at the Brain Institute, she received the Center for Native American Youth Champion for Change award, the United National Indian Tribal Youth “25 Under 25” award, announced as a weRnative Ambassador, and was featured in Patricia Ann Loew’s Native People of Wisconsin for her charitable works on and around the Oneida Reservation of Wisconsin. While obtaining her B.A. in neuroscience and biochemistry from Lawrence University, she was the president of the Native American student organization, chair of the University Committee on Diversity Affairs, and involved in recruitment and retainment of diverse students, specifically in STEM fields. Her involvement in laboratory research, the McNair Scholars Program, and the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students laid the groundwork for her research in Suriname’s indigenous populations’ neurodevelopment under Dr. Drury’s mentorship. She is currently funded by a National Institutes of Health Diversity Supplement to research the relationship of biological aging and cognitive performance in middle aged American Indians and African Americans to advance Alzheimer’s disease research for minority populations. 
Rebecca Moore is a recent doctoral graduate of the Linguistics Program at Tulane University in New Orleans. She also earned her Master’s in Linguistics from Tulane and a Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology with a Spanish language minor from Loyola University. Her academic and professional interests include studying and working to help maintain indigenous languages of the Americas, specifically the Kaqchikel Mayan language in Guatemala and the Tunica language of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana. At present, Rebecca works together with her team at the Language and Culture Revitalization Program (LCRP) of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe in Marksville to advance community proficiency of the Tunica language while developing a standard language teaching/learning curriculum. 
Loretta Barrett Oden, is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and owner of Corn Dance Enterprises in Oklahoma City. She is the food consultant for the exciting new First Americans Museum (FAMok.org) in Oklahoma City. Loretta is an EMMY Award winning chef and was the owner of the renowned Corn Dance Cafes, fine dining restaurants featuring the Indigenous foods of the Americas that operated in Santa Fe, New Mexico for 10 years. She also hosted the EMMY Award winning five-episode PBS series, “Seasoned with Spirit – A Native Cook’s Journey”. Her extensive ingredient list includes pre-European contact foods from “Nunavut to Tierro del Fuego” utilized in menus that are cutting-edge but deeply rooted in tradition. She now travels extensively doing cooking demonstrations, lectures, and programs relating to Indigenous cuisine and culture, as well as health issues while introducing audiences to a world of revitalization and an awareness of Indigenous foods systems.
Guillermo Pupo Pernet is a Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Arkansas. For his dissertation, Guillermo is doing a comparative work between Louisiana and the Orinoco basin during the early 18th century. He wants to analyze the representation of racial discourses, biopolitics, and geopolitics in travel literature and maps. He has a bachelor’s degree in foreign languages (English, French, German) and a master’s in Online Education and Hispanic Literature
Elisabeth Pierite-Mora is a language and cultural lifeways instructor for the Tunica-Biloxi Language and Culture Revitalization Program(LCRP) where she is responsible for facilitating learning of the Tunica and Biloxi languages and culture. Elisabeth collaborates with Tulane University linguists in the Kuhpani Yoyani Luhchi Yoroni (Tunica Language Working Group, KYLY) developing Tunica language foundational resources including linguistic texts, manuals, curricula and pedagogical materials. She participated in the Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang) during 2016 and 2018, a bi-annual training workshop in field linguistics and language documentation for linguistic students, professors and members of indigenous language communities. Growing up in the Tunica, Biloxi and Choctaw traditions of her family, Elisabeth has spoken Tunica since she was a child.
Teyanna Pierite-Simon is a member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana and a Language Apprentice for the Tribe. She works with four other Tunica Language Apprentices, two Tunica Language Instructors, and a Linguist Anthropologist. Teyanna studies the Tunica language and she also teaches the Tunica-Biloxi Tribal youth the Tunica Language as well as Tribal crafts such as beaded medallions, moccasins, and pine needle baskets; just to name a few. Growing up, she participated in Tribal summer camps and workshops where Mrs. Donna Pierite would teach the Tribal youth the Tunica Language. Teyanna has worked with her Tribe for over 5 years; previously working as Human Resources Assistant. Today, Teyanna is a Beginner II Tunica language speaker and is working with her colleagues to reawaken her Native Tunica Language. 
Noel E. Smyth (Ph.D. UC Santa Cruz) is an adjunct instructor at UC Santa Cruz and Cabrillo College. He teaches Native American and American history. He is currently working on his first book on Natchez history after 1731 and he has two articles pending publication about Indigenous slavery in the Caribbean.
Kirstin L. Squint holds the Whichard Visiting Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities at East Carolina University (2019-2022), where she teaches for the English and Gender Studies programs. She is the author of LeAnne Howe at the Intersections of Southern and Native American Literature (Louisiana State University Press, 2018), a co-editor of Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies (Louisiana State University Press, 2020), and the editor of Conversations with LeAnne Howe (University Press of Mississippi, forthcoming 2022). She is also a contributor to Appalachian Reckoning: a Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy (West Virginia University Press, 2019), winner of the 2020 American Book Award for criticism. 
Jeff Williams is currently serving as President of the non-profit Friends of Caddo Mounds. President since 2015, Jeff was active in raising funds for the building of an authentic traditional Caddo grass thatched house on the grounds of the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site in Alto, Texas. The Friends worked with Caddo Elder Phil Cross who at the time of the 2016 grass house build was the only known living Caddo who retained the knowledge, skills, and experience to lead the construction of a traditional Caddo grass house. The objective of the design was to provide an authentic experience for visitors while having a tangible and functional space for educational programs. Jeff is a retired geospatial scientist who specialized in remote sensing and landscape level GIS applications development for natural and cultural resource detection, monitoring, management, and sustainability.