{"id":9562,"date":"2015-11-27T09:03:09","date_gmt":"2015-11-27T17:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/native-americans-in-louisiana-swamps-seek-tribal-recognition\/"},"modified":"2015-11-27T09:03:09","modified_gmt":"2015-11-27T17:03:09","slug":"native-americans-in-louisiana-swamps-seek-tribal-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/native-americans-in-louisiana-swamps-seek-tribal-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"Native Americans in Louisiana swamps seek tribal recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAFITTE, La. \u2014<\/strong> Giovanni R. Santini has done just about all he could to prove he\u2019s an American Indian over the decades he\u2019s lived in his Louisiana bayou town \u2014 even fighting with his fists to defend his bloodline with the Houma tribe.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day at school they\u2019d beat me up, bloody me up, for being Indian,\u201d recalled the 80-year-old Santini, who\u2019s worked on tugboats, laid pipelines and built homes. \u201cWe became good fighters because they beat us up so much. Even teachers didn\u2019t like me … We earned our respect with fights!\u201d<\/p>\n

Today the folks in Lafitte, this town of fishermen and oilfield workers, don\u2019t doubt he\u2019s a proud member of the 17,000-strong tribe of Houma Indians scattered over south Louisiana\u2019s bayou communities.<\/p>\n

Not so for the federal government.<\/p>\n

For decades, efforts by the Houma to become a federally recognized native American tribe have failed. It\u2019s a story common across the nation for dozens of groups that have come up short while trying to prove they should be treated as sovereign nations.<\/p>\n

But this could change.<\/p>\n

In June, the Obama administration hit the reset button on how a tribe becomes recognized by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA. It\u2019s a sea change that\u2019s expected to make it much less difficult for many tribes \u2014 including the Houma \u2014 to achieve tribal status.<\/p>\n

The biggest difference is that a tribe now will have to prove its existence and cohesion starting only in 1900. Until now, tribes had to prove they\u2019d been intact tribes \u2014 with unique identities, cultures and governance \u2014 dating to historical times. For the Houma, that meant tracing a history stretching back to 1682 when French explorers first wrote about them.<\/p>\n

Besides the Houma, there are four other tribes alone in coastal Louisiana seeking sovereignty. And much is at stake: water rights, land rights, fishing rights, mineral rights and millions of dollars in federal aid. Sovereignty also brings taxation and law-making powers.<\/p>\n

For south Louisiana\u2019s native Americans, obtaining federal recognition could be a major step for impoverished American-Indian communities in their struggle to survive and hold onto ancestral lands disappearing along the Gulf. Traditionally, these communities lived off the riches of the marshes \u2014 fishing, trapping and foraging.<\/p>\n

Places like Lafitte have been battered by coastal erosion, loss of fisheries and environmental assaults such as the catastrophic 2010 Gulf oil spill.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a fight for survival,\u201d said Thomas Dardar, chief of the United Houma Nation. \u201cThe coast is being washed out. We just go from one disaster after another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facing such difficulties, the Houma tribe \u2014 which has been recognized as a tribe by the state \u2014 seeks to maintain its cohesion. It has a tribal council, sponsors cultural events, such as summer camps and pow wows, and has a cultural center in Golden Meadow.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s far from clear what federal recognition would do for tribes pursuing claims over coastal lands rich in oil and gas. Most of south Louisiana is in private hands. But legal experts agreed that it was unlikely that Louisiana\u2019s coastal tribes suddenly would be given any large tracts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think ConocoPhillips will have to turn all its lands over to the American Indians,\u201d said Mark Davis, a Tulane University law professor and expert on Louisiana\u2019s coastal issues.<\/p>\n

Lawyer Patty Ferguson, a member of the Pointe-Au-Chien tribe, hopes her tribe can at the least have more power to save Indian mounds, burial sites and other tribal areas eroding into the Gulf.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith federal recognition, we\u2019ll have more voice,\u201d Ferguson said.<\/p>\n

The federal government presently recognizes four tribes in Louisiana \u2014 the Chitimacha, Choctaw, Chousatta and Tunica-Biloxi tribes, though these were historically larger and intact tribes living farther inland.<\/p>\n

The Houma tribe pushed for federal recognition starting before World War II. Rejected by the BIA in 1994, the tribe has been appealing since. In the 90s, Louisiana politicians even sought tribal recognition through Congress but failed.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t that the Houma tribe couldn\u2019t prove they had native American ancestry. A Houma tribe was mentioned in French documents as early as 1682. The French said the Houma \u2014 with a red crawfish as their symbol \u2014 were living roughly where Baton Rouge is today and marked their territory with a \u201cBaton Rouge,\u201d French for \u201cRed Stick.\u201d Priests historically described the Houma as a rich culture with male and female leaders.<\/p>\n

But the BIA argued the tribe eventually went extinct amid intermarriage and disease. It also rejected claims the Houma were an organized tribe, calling them an amalgamation of native American groups.<\/p>\n

Many experts disagreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had a pretty strong case,\u201d said Mark Miller, a Southern Utah University history professor who wrote about the Houma petition in a book, \u201cForgotten Tribes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller argues the Houma case revealed flaws in the tribal recognition process. He said the BIA relied too much on written records, of which none exist for the Houma. The group\u2019s isolation in Southern swamps also hurt its chances.<\/p>\n

Greatly disappointed, Houma leaders said they\u2019ve been discriminated against by a federal government more keen to protect Louisiana oil and gas development than defend tribes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s too much involved,\u201d Santini said, interviewed in a small wooden home he built. \u201cToo much land involved. They don\u2019t want to give the land back.\u201d<\/p>\n

His front room exudes his native American spirit: Indian art is on display, a handmade spear graces the corner, and framed tribal documents and albums with ancestors\u2019 photos abound.<\/p>\n

Like many native Americans, he claims his family was illegally forced off their land decades ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe oil companies are the biggest ones to take our land,\u201d he said. With pride he added: \u201cWe\u2019re still Indian. They can\u2019t take that from me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LAFITTE, La. \u2014 Giovanni R. Santini has done just about all he could to prove he\u2019s an American Indian over the decades he\u2019s lived in his Louisiana bayou town \u2014 even fighting with his fists to defend his bloodline with the Houma tribe. \u201cEvery day at school they\u2019d beat me up, bloody me up, for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-9562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9562"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}