Native American Roots and The Creole Culture

Louisiana Creole culture has benefited from the contributions of many cultural groups. One of the least known of these contributing groups are the Native American tribes and communities in the across the state. To discuss the Native roots of Creole culture program guests will include: Dr. Andrew Jolivette associate professor and chair of American Indian Studies at SFSU. He is the author of two books, Cultural Representation in Native America and Louisiana Creoles: Cultural Recovery and Mixed Race Native American Identity. His areas of interest include: the Urban Indian Experience, Critical Mixed Race Studies,and HIV/AIDS disparities in Indigenous and People of Color communities. Jolivette is the editor of a special volume of the UCLA AICRJ on Native people post Hurricane Katrina. He is currently the Tribal Historian for the Atakapa-Ishak Nation. Jolivette's ancestors include the Guillory, Guidry and Fontenot families of Opelousas, Mallet, Lawtell,Church Point, Rayne, Sunset, Eunice and the greater St. Landry Parish area. Prof.Rain Gomez (L. Rain C Gomez) is winner of the 2009 First Book Awards competition in Poetry from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas, for her manuscript, Smoked Mullet Cornbread Memory. Rain is a Mestizo of primarily Louisiana Choctaw, Louisiana Creole, and Mvskoke descent paternally and Canadian Sioux and CelticAmerican (métis) descent maternally. Prof Gomez’s are of study is Native American Studies and Gender, her research is concerned with Mvskogean Diaspora and Louisiana Creole Indigeneity as manifested in material culture ways and literature. Work includes “Brackish Bayou Blood: Weaving Mixed Blood Indian Creole Identity Outside the Written Record,” in the AICRJ special edition, and poetry in Ahani: Indigenous American Poetry. Prof. Gomez is Area Chair of Native/Indigenous Studies, SW/TX PCA Conference. Rain’s family has Creole and Indigenous roots in Natchitoches’, St Landry, Calcasieu, Allen, and Sabine parishes.