American Indian Culture and Research Journal

We weave baskets of pine straw. We weave baskets of cane. Grandfather moves in pattern, flowing ever outward, claws offering earthen memory. And we dive and rise continuously from waters pushed from the Gulf of Mexico into the interior deltas. Our inherited blood brackish as these bayous . . . neither fresh nor sea-salt; yet natural in its inherent Louisiana topography. —L. Rain Cranford-Gomez, “Old Crawdad the Fisherman” As a child on the Gulf of Mexico, evacuation to higher ground for floods, hurricanes, and tornado warnings were common. It was a part of life, as much as getting up before school with my mother and father to fish for mullet and sheepshead for our evening dinner. The water was our sustenance, but we respected it and knew as quickly as it gave it could take. At the end of August 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the homelands of my 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 we seek to preserve our histories as Indians, Louisiana Creoles, and uniquely mixed-blood people in Louisiana.