Louisiana Creole peoplehood : Afro-indigeneity and community

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 who have been negated and 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.

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 who have been negated and 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.

"Louisiana Creole Peoplehood is a multivocal and collectively structured volume that intervenes against the erasure of Creole Indigeneity while foregrounding Black/Indian cultural sustainability. Divided into sections focused on sacred history, land, language, and cultural practices, contributors engage themes as varied as foodways, queer identity, health, historical trauma, gender, language revitalization, and diaspora. Offering up an understanding of Creole community identity formation and practice at the intersections of both African and Indigenous diasporas, the book combines scholarly analysis with interviews, essays, and autobiographic contributions-including integrating the perspectives of community members in response essays. Louisiana Creole Peoplehood explores the vital ways Afro-Indigenous peoples are asserting their right to exist amidst the backdrops of settler colonialism, anti-Black racism while promoting communal dialogue and community reciprocity"-- Provided by publisher 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. Introduction. Ayou Komensé: Louisiana Creole Land, Community, and Recognition PART 1: SACRED HISTORIES: FROM KINSHIP TO CULTURAL RESURGENCES PART 2: LANDBASE: FROM HOMEL ANDS TO FOOD AND HEALTH PART 3: LANGUAGES: LITERACIES AND BODIES PART 4: CEREMONIALS AND CULTUR AL PR ACTICE: FROM TESTIMONIALS TO ACTIVISM conclusion. Nouzot Kréyol: Louisiana Creole Peoplehood or all our Relations Resisting Settler Violence and Indigenous Erasure In memoriam. Reflections on Janet Ravare Colson, Cane River Creole Matriarch Appendix. Louisiana State Legislature Resolution and Certificate of Special Recognition from the Governor of the State of Louisiana in honor of Janet Ravare-Colson List of Contributors Index