You can’t be a real Indian; you don’t have an Indian name like “Running Deer” or “Crazy Horse.” Your skin isn’t dark enough or your skin is too dark. Your nose is too small, your hair isn’t long straight and black, or you don’t live in a teepee.
Most of us have heard these statements before by someone responding to our identifying ourselves as Indians. We’ve been called “sabines, mullotoes, coonasses, or French-Indians”; but very few people outside our tribe accept us as what we are…HOUMAS INDIANS.
Here in Plaquemines Parish, away from the traditional Indian communities in Terrebonne and Lafourche, we have been forgotten despite the fact that Houmas have been down here since the late 1800’s and our community members over five hundred.
My goal is to see the Houmas of our area attack these issues as a united people rediscovering the benefits of the tribal relationship.