LL&E was stopped from cutting.

Well, that's over here.

Cemetery's right here.

- Yeah.

And then, just Canal Warren is this.

Yeah.

Yeah, the big oak tree - it's right on top of the cemetery right there.

They actually had people who were buried in this mound, like as late as the 50s, I think.

Cemetery's right here.

See, they were running straight across.

They were going to run right - cut right through it.

Not too long ago, there was an oil and gas company trying to cut through one of our cemeteries.

Are you on the cut?

This is where it would have been right here, yeah.

Then we filed a lawsuit stating that this land is our aboriginal land.

The judge there said, Well, we're going to wait to see what the federal government says as to whether or not you should be federally recognized.

Federal recognition would give us support to be in the Louisiana master plan and to protect our land and our resources.

This land is a reflection of us, our ancestors.

And that's why in the song it says My heart is in the land of my people because this is who I am.

(singing) Heya, heya, Les Indiens de Pointe au Chien.

We have been seeking federal recognition since the mid-90s.

What the federal government is saying is you need to prove that you're an Indian.

To be federally recognized means that the government recognizes that you are an indigenous community and that you have a government to government relationship with the United States.

That is what federal recognition allows you to do.

It allows you to have that seat at the table.

If there's a storm, for example right now, everything goes through the parishes or the state.

And basically Pointe au Chien is an afterthought.

I remember telling my friends how we were so close and how we'd get hit by hurricanes and we'd flood.

And I'd tell them, One day we're going to be the islands out there and you're going to be us.

And it seems like that's what's happening.

To put it up this high you know how much water they had?

Pointe au Chien is what we now refer to as a frontline community, the buffer.

Climate change is affecting all of us.

What happens to Pointe au Chien happens to us.

And it's in our interest to have them succeed.

Pointe au Chien is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the state of Louisiana.

Our ancestors have toiled this land.

They've lived here.

They're buried here.

This is part of who we are.

But the federal recognition process is a really long, time-consuming process.

One of the themes that you see happening through the documents is that of land, and different ways of trying to dispossess the tribe of their land.

That is part of the federal recognition story because it is about reclaiming what is theirs.

Okay.

You want to go first, Donald?

Um-hum.

Okay.

I didn't even use my feather.

You don't even need it.

The wind's blowing.

No, the wind's blowing good, huh?

Yeah.

Okay.

Do you need a feather?

No, you're good.

I'm good.

Okay.

Fala.

Edmond Couteau.

Bayou Lucien.

Couteau Margaret.

Okay, Fala.

You want to go to Fala?

Fala, yeah.

Some of those old pictures have Fala.

There were still people living here because there was a baby shower I think in the 70s, that people came to for someone.

Some of the people from here went to Bayou Lafourche, huh?

Yeah.

When I was young, they had a bunch of houses on this side.

And they had a couple of them on this side.

Oh, my gosh.

Fala n'est plus là.

It's no more there.

Nothing left.

Now, what's next, Patty?

Bayou La Ville.

This is part of Alexander Billiot, no?

I think they just try to claim it.

Bayou L'esquine, right now.

This is L'esquine.

We had a lot of people who lived here, too.

Yeah, Patty, we got 40 acres on this side and then it crosses over on this side.

About 80 - Yeah, but that's supposed to be ours, too.

It's supposed to be, yeah.

According to that map, they had little squares all along Pointe au Chien Bayou right here and when Louisiana Land come take the land they didn't take where the people were living.

They just took everything else but not the little square where they were staying.

That's Louie Chasson's camp.

Louis.

Louis?

He wasn't a Louie?

Not Louie.

Why?

Isn't it in French, is Louie?

You can call him 'Louie' I guess.

But it was 'Louis'?

Louis.

And Felix was on this side.

Oh, Felix was right here.

Theresa's grandpa.

Okay, yeah, let's get that because then we can - They had the camp right across from his house.

Okay, so this is Louis Chasson.

Yeah, on this side.

Louis Chasson has some posts, still.

Felix.

Jean.

And then Louis Chasson's cow pen.

Felix was a Billiot, right?

Felix Billiot.

Hey, guys.

So pretty, huh?

Hey, Bo.

They're just like us, they adjusted.

Patty, you remember how many mounds they had over here?

Seven or eight of them?

Yeah, here's one right here.

- There's a cluster of mounds over here, too.

There's one right there.

There's one right here.

There's one behind there.

And I think there's one right here.

You can tell because it's where it's green.

That's one right up here around the water's edge, right here.

That's a big one.

And there's one - I think one back there.

You can tell people lived here because that's where they used to throw their oyster shells.

They used to eat oysters.

Oh, yeah.

Look at the house blocks.

See, they have posts right here.

Where they used to live, they probably had it fenced in because they had cows running loose all over.

Sydney Verdin.

People planted down here, too.

Could you imagine?

This was all hard.

They planted all this.

Places where people used to live places of importance places for the tribe where certain things happen that's part of the community's memory - We're submitting the whole area as a landscape.

Then if they're trying to get permits, they would have to look to see how these sites would be impacted by the work that is proposing to be done.

It doesn't mean that they wouldn't approve it but we would know about it and we should be able to have a say.

I mean, that's our goal.

This area is historically Chitimacha, Washa, and Chawasha.

So when the first Europeans came to Louisiana, this was inhabited.

The Mississippi River deposited into different tributaries.

So Bayou Lafourche, when the French first came was called Lafourche de Chitimachas.

And fresh water would come through the bayou and then we would have topsoil redevelopment.

So it was very fertile.

You could catch food to eat.

You made your houses from the palmetto for the roofs wood for the sides of your house.

Or you could have a mud and moss house and you could have a mud and moss chimney.

But your houses were on the ground.

There wasn't a great risk of flooding.

You had fresh water, so people had big gardens.

You were able to provide fresh water for your cattle.

Everything you needed you had available to you.

So Pointe au Chien was a self-sustaining community.

That's my son-in-law right there, Ryan.

That's our pile driver, drive piles and make the nets with, right there.

Look at that alligator right there in front of us.

Oh, he went down.

I like when they say, That's a tree-shaker!

They make them shake though, man!

You catch an alligator when you pull on them, he's gonna roll everything out.

My dad and them used to kill them things with a hatchet.

They used to call it a casse-tête, a hatchet.

When they come out there, pop!

Split his head.

Like they do, shoot them and all that, that's a bunch of bull.

They make money: That's a tree-shaker!

There was a cemetery there.

If we read these oral histories from some of our elders - People caught what they could eat and then they would share.

Or if they killed a pig, cook it and they share it for people or they bring it over and share it with people.

People down here, lower Pointe au Chien - It just so happens the line between the parishes is our bayou.

This side is Terrebonne, the bayou splits us and the other side is Lafourche.

Pointe au Chien is the center of our community.

And even though everyone descends from Pointe au Chien not everyone lives here.

We have about 850 tribal members.

I don't have to call someone and say You mind if I come over?

We don't do that here.

We go to someone's house - Come, let's have some coffee, let's talk.

My grandma raised her own cows.

We'd go to her house on Saturdays, and my brothers and uncles would go in the chicken pen.

And she'd point out what chicken she wanted.

They'd run around, catch that chicken.

And the next day, that was our lunch.

We have Billiots, and Verdins, Dardars.

And then from the island, there are Naquins.

Alexander Billiot was chief of the Chitimachas and he lived further down in Pointe au Chien.

We call it, En bas.

He had 12 children and a lot of people from Pointe au Chien descend from one of his children.

I grew up doing it.

Watched my relatives, elders, they all have done it.

Lived off the land.

My great aunt used to tell me how they used to almost jump across the bayou.

And then they started shrimping.

My uncle owns the shrimp shed.

My parents' house.

This community was built on hardworking people.

Didn't have a lot, but they built it up.

One of the big issues for the tribes in Louisiana is that there's not a lot of good research that has been done on primary documents.

They've jumped from the early French colonial period to after Louisiana was purchased by the United States.

So there are gaps in that history.

There's a whole dynamic that's at play in this thing that we call the Louisiana Purchase.

Which, if you stop and think about for one moment - Napoleon doesn't sell actual title to land.

What he does, he sort of sells the idea that you can now go onto this land and try to claim it for your own.

So they're sending surveyors out, 1830s, 1840s to mark certain features, but also people.

Oftentimes, when you look in this part of Lafourche and Terrebonne they call it the trembling prairie, trembling land.

And with almost no waterways even noted.

So the surveyors went so far and then they were like Oh - I'm not going any further.

They just didn't go far enough to capture that early history which is what the federal government is looking for.

Yeah, we've got about a 20-minute boat ride before we get to the first trap.

My whole family, some stuck with it, some came back to it.

I don't see too many younger ones, like the generation after me.

You got to have a love for it.

This was actually a growing basin.

So when my grandparents were growing up we had topsoil redevelopment.

On one end you could saltwater fish, which was a few miles down.

And on the upper end like in this area over here you could freshwater fish.

They had fruit trees of any kind.

And so the landscape was different because it was being supplemented by the right nutrients that would come naturally.

And it would provide for the survival of people.

That's a shrimp boat, shrimping.

This is the time of the year where your water levels get low.

Your migration of your seafood starts.

So everything leaves out of the shallow water to get into that deeper water.

And then when springtime starts again, your seafood starts showing back up on the inside in the shallows and the marsh area.

And when you don't have that estuary for them to go and just protect and reproduce it dies off slowly.

Like my boy, the same marsh that I'm fishing in today is not going to be there when he's ready to do it.

It's kind of hard to believe, just in a generation how your land went from cattle roaming grazing land to marsh.

Some areas, you can see the land change on a yearly basis.

It's not just over time or after a big storm.

There's nothing out there.

There are a number of factors which have caused the erosion and land loss in Pointe au Chien.

The first is the leveeing of the Mississippi River - that decision.

They knew there wouldn't be any topsoil redevelopment.

The second is the discovery of oil and gas in Terrebonne Parish in the 1930s.

See all these pipelines?

Back in the 50s and all, it wasn't that wide.

Just over the years, they ate up.

There was just I guess what I would say, a great exploitation of discovery and cutting, boundary markers by different oil and gas companies.

They dug these little traînasses, the little waterways that were probably just wide enough to put a chaland, or like a little boat to bring things.

But it was never closed up.

So these little narrow waterways became wider and wider and wider.

Then your land is in pieces, which makes it much easier to erode.

I can't say, like, Oh, when they created these canals it was a malicious thing to erode the land.

But they definitely didn't have any care or accountability, even now to go back and say, Hey, let's backfill those canals and fill those in.

They just come through here and put pipelines down.

Messed everything up.

They talk about the wetlands, they don't care.

Well into the 20th century people in Pointe au Chien are living in palmetto houses by choice.

This tribe can continue their traditional life and then all of a sudden, this land that wasn't so valuable for huge plantation economies became very valuable.

Here, lower Pointe au Chien, is not where we began.

We began past that.

Alexander was a sugarcane farmer - enough to harvest and to bring to New Orleans to be processed.

And so to us, it's still our land.

That's - that's our ancestral land.

Alexander Billiot.

Felicity Island Canal.

Yeah, that was in the 1850s, at least, when they were selling sugarcane.

Bayou Traverse.

Right, it goes all the way to Golden Meadow?

Um-hum.

That's all you needed.

Make sure you got no nails on them boards.

Oh, look how pretty these are.

Got some berries over here, too.

Oh, okay.

Cactus.

Yeah.

Don't stick yourself with that.

Are these like desert plants?

Like a yucca?

They're sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp.

Yeah.

Yeah, Patty.

this is a new cut we gotta close up.

Oh, my gosh.

While it's still small.

They got a mound right here along the bayou side.

Right here.

Right there, yeah.

Uh-huh.

Just starting to wash that one out, too.

Listen to the birds.

There's a bird nesting place right here so we're not going to disturb the birds.

What is this, Donald?

What is all this stuff?

Take a picture of it and your phone's going to tell you what it is.

Oh, my gosh.

Look at that.

You see that, Donald?

I see it.

A post!

If there's one post, there has to be more.

Somebody was here.

Pretty solid.

They say they used to walk all the way to the Gulf?

Yeah.

They was able to.

Along the bayou.

This is where old lady Felicity lived?

Yes, ma'am.

On this island.

You know, Donald!

That's gotta be a mound!

Look how high it is.

This is the tippy top, right here.

Oh, my gosh.

This is high.

And it slopes down.

You can see somebody coming from any direction.

Nobody knew you was here.

Plus, you had everything you needed.

Yeah, because you didn't see no water.

Like over here, the lake would have been maybe 30 miles that way.

You'd be able to find some rabbits over here.

Patience, huh.

Like greens?

If they didn't have mustard, they used to eat that stuff right there.

Patience.

They had an orange tree right here too, but - Oh, yeah, it's still there.

Oh, yeah, it has flowers.

Good, sweet oranges, too.

Wow.

I bet this is going to be a good shrimping spot, too.

Shrimp's going to come across here.

Oh, yeah.

Look right here.

I might come check that out in the near future.

En bas la pointe - the ridge - they grew sugarcane over here.

And they would paddle to sell it.

Patty Ferguson-Bohnee is a member of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe.

She's also the director of the Indian legal program at Arizona State University.

Patty, today, is going to talk about the larger consequences to tribal nations when you do not have federal recognition.

I am a tribal member and I'm also one of the attorneys for the tribe.

In the 1930s, which was about the same time as oil and gas development our people were not allowed to attend school.

So there were schools for African-Americans and there were schools for whites, but they did not have any schools for the native kids.

The Terrebonne Parish school board said, No, we are not going to accept Indian kids into our public schools.

So we had to fight to go to school.

This is a letter from David Billiot, one of our tribal leaders who advocated for education even though he could not read or write English himself.

Children of Indian race have no school over here.

Over a hundred children can't have no school.

If you care to hear the amount of decent Indian children I will gladly take the name of all of them.

Please excuse me.

I can't speak so well.

We are not educated more than animal.

The agency by tribal members seeking support for their tribe, their community - You witness it in these letters.

President Roosevelt, Dear Sir - Kindly look into this matter.

It has come to that it's very hard for us to make a living.

The people here do not treat us just.

Instead of regarding us to our race they are trying to pass us as colored.

Those that are Indian are not allowed in the same school with the white nor can they go into any public place, either.

Do you think that is right?

Please answer, no matter what the results may be.

David Billiot, Indian, Pointe au Chien.

But finally there was the Baptist missions that opened a Baptist school for the children in Pointe au Chien.

And what's really interesting is they're teaching in English, not French.

So a whole 'nother reality for the children who went to school there.

And it wasn't until the late 50s that Lafourche Parish opened a school.

So when my mom went to school, after seventh grade she had to cross the bayou in a boat, catch a ride in a car, drive to Grand Bois and then catch a bus from there to go to Larose-Cut Off.

And then when she went to high school, they were very racist to her.

She was spit on, she was called derogatory names.

She got in fights.

So it's another story of the civil rights movement in a very recent time.

In 1968, Louisiana changed to allow educational instruction in French.

They could have been learning in French.

But here they punished kids for it.

My mom was put on her knees on rice - that really hurts.

Like, it's okay for these other people to speak French in these other parishes you know, for maintaining their culture and language.

But not you Indian kids, you need to speak English.

These are the seven criteria for federal recognition.

You have to be identified as an Indian entity.

Be a distinct community socially.

You have to have a political community.

You have to have a governing document to say how your tribe is organized and runs.

You have to have a distinct membership.

Descend from a historic tribe.

And you could not have been terminated.

One of the very first tribes to get federally recognized under the seven criteria were the Tunica-Biloxi.

They kind of thought, Put things together, turn it in then be federally recognized.

It was envisioned to be six months.

Very quickly the process got - in through the 1980s got to be very slow moving.

Where you start, what's required.

What kind of evidence?

How much evidence?

You have to let them know that you have the intent to enter this process of federal recognition.

You need historians, anthropologists genealogists, attorneys.

Since the time the federal acknowledgment process started, 52 petitions have been resolved.

18 have been recognized, and 34 tribes have been denied.

The Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe, they're notified... (Audio montage of overlapping dialogue) You don't just turn in transcripts of interviews.

You have to do some kind of analysis...

Cite to the evidence... Oil field leases...

The evidence is good, strong evidence for you... (Audio montage with chaotic sound and music continues) It takes them about a year usually to evaluate all the evidence...

If you don't tell us why these help meet the criteria we're not going to look at it... All of these companies have libraries, a genealogy of the land...

The relationships are kind of tenuous, but they're there...

The Black Prince...and that's 100 years.

They enhanced it to be: We need conclusive proof.

It's an all-or-nothing process.

You meet all seven criteria, or you don't get it.

When you've got gear coming up that looks like this if you love the water, there's nothing else you'd want to do.

Throw us a scoop, if you don't mind.

I did a couple other things, oil fields for a little while.

But I always came back to my roots.

I learned most of it from my old man.

Patterns that the seafood takes.

What time of the year you fish certain areas.

How to set the gear.

A lot of our tribe, that's what they had to fall back on because of the lack of education.

So this, maybe some of them didn't want to do it.

It's what they had to do.

We're pulling it in with a rake.

We ice them, keep the crabs alive.

They're chilled out.

And they ain't going to tear you up when you're sorting through them.

And if you leave your crabs upside down like this, they'll die.

You can grab them, they ain't pinching you.

And we separate them.

Males from the females, the small from the big.

Look, there's a virgin in here.

That's an immature crab and it's illegal to have any on the market.

That's a mature crab.

If you put them on the market without them reproducing you're killing off your population.

Sometimes they'll be pink and blue.

They're about to change shells.

Yeah, our demand for the seafood this time of year especially blue crabs really goes up because the northern states that produce them they freeze up or they shut down.

They call Maryland the blue crab capital but they're getting Louisiana product.

What time it is, probably about 9:30?

9:14.

We could go run another 200!

My youngest loves to be out here.

He told me the money he makes when he comes with me he's saving it to buy him a boat.

He don't want a four-wheeler, he don't want a dirt bike.

He don't want none of that, he wants to buy him a boat.

What do I say to someone who says people shouldn't live here?

If people didn't want to stay here, you wouldn't see people here.

And you wouldn't see all the sports fishermen trying to come in and buy camps because it's a really great place to fish.

I think I was an undergrad - I was researching federal recognition and someone showed me this bill that's going to Congress that was introduced by Billy Tauzin to recognize another tribe in exchange for all land claims.

Which would have included our land claims.

Because it includes anyone who descends from any of their shared progenitors.

And I thought, Oh, my goodness, this is not good.

Maybe they don't want us here because it'll just be a sportsman's paradise to go fishing.

But this is our land.

Even if there's not a ton of it left.

We're basically offshore here.

You have your northern shoreline, what's left of our coast.

And then when you look to the south, there's absolutely nothing left.

There used to be islands out there, just from what my dad used to tell me.

The stories of how they used to have closed-in lakes out there.

I don't have anything in this one, I dropped it in the wrong spot.

Oh, it ain't fun anymore.

So the tribe sent a letter to say we oppose this legislation.

The government has a long history of trying to take indigenous land.

1850s, you get the Swamp Land Act, that Oh, you have all this land where people don't live and therefore government can do with it what it pleases.

And that is then used later to dispossess with oil and gas.

The dams that they built eroded out.

The water flow just kept getting worse and worse.

Made shrimping down this canal a whole lot worse.

The Swamp Land Act was meant to drain the water.

You'd have it become where you could grow crops, have a house.

All of it, ignoring the fact that there are all these people that are living there.

These first peoples of this land who were here before 1492.

I teach at Tulane, courses about tribes of Louisiana.

I teach about Louisiana history.

And January 2005, Patty Ferguson reaches out and my role was to help do the research for the history section for federal recognition.

I was originally attracted to Louisiana because it was technically American history, but it was the most un-American history that I could think of.

A history that was different than the 13 colonies.

All those different tribes and all the different nations.

(audio montage with music) So, Heya heya is considered a call to our ancestors.

Mon coeur est dans la terre de ma famille.

My heart is in the land of my family - or in my family's land.

Mon coeur is your heart.

We felt that it was time that we start bringing back culture to our community.

Just to show them how our people lived and what kind of homes they lived in.

Okay, everybody found an oak tree?

Yes!

This is actually the leaf.

And then when you look at the flower, that's also how you can tell if it's the elderberry or not, is because the white flowers, they are tiny.

You know, this one doesn't have the berries yet - Yeah, it's just blossoms.

- but, it can be used to make wine.

And some people use it to make syrup.

Sure.

Woo-hoo!

See the leaves, how they're different?

Julianne Hotard.

Marie Seraphine Dardar.

It's an ancestor report!

See, go home and ask your parents and grandparents to help to write a little bit about them.

They will know, they will know.

Joseph Naquin.

Who is that?

I know, who is it?

You have to tell us.

Eva Marie Falgout.

I love culture camp because it provides an opportunity - Forrest Billiot.

- for the young tribal members - Samuel Dardar.

- to interact - Jean Victor Naquin.

- with people of different generations - Jeanne Marie Naquin Billiot.

- which they may not get to do especially if some are moving out because of hurricanes or flooding.

Okay, so watch.

See how you don't have it all right here?

Uh-huh.

What are we going to do?

Real hard.

Real hard.

Real hard, okay?

Like that.

Let's go.

Look, now you see?

It came out.

Right here, right here, you're still not done.

Back and forth, back and forth, with the grain.

The start is the hardest part.

Like this?

Oh, my gosh.

You're good.

So the willow tree is very flexible.

You can twist it.

So you can use this to weave baskets - I'm going to grow me one!

And come underneath with this one.

- and when it dries, it stays really firm.

And so it's really very good for building structures.

Yeah.

And then that other one's going to go behind.

Yeah, you're gonna come back around.

This is one of the plants that have salicylic acid which is used to make aspirin.

Oh.

Planting it will help reduce land loss.

Just to try to instill pride in them as to who they are that they can be proud of being Indian - Yeah, that's the one you need, that's the elderberry.

Some of it changes, life isn't static.

Indians aren't static.

No cultures are static - I got elderberry!

- but to be forced to have to change that because you don't have the access to the fresh water or the land makes a difference and is something that they should be aware of.

I remember them.

When you were growing up, there were trees?

Right.

Oak trees, like a forest over here.

What do y'all think caused that?

When they leveed off the Mississippi River.

Yep, very good.

No more fresh water coming down.

So sooner or later, this will be all water.

What do you think?

Yeah.

What's down here, y'all?

Anybody know what's down here?

Didn't they have their crops?

Yeah, what kind of crops were over here?

Sugarcane, yep.

Sugarcane.

When y'all sing that part of the song - That was here - Grandpa Alexander.

And I think there's three cemeteries over here, Donald.

Three?

We have numerous sacred sites.

Some are mound complexes with plazas in the middle.

Some of them have been cut through.

You can see them.

Who's buried there?

Who's buried there?

Indian graveyard.

Grandpa Guillaume.

Grandpa Guillaume is over here.

And then there's a couple more further down.

Because of that cut, this mound was falling into the water.

Oysters are going to grow in there, and make his own reef.

That way, he's going to have - going to do his own protection.

Y'all see all the oysters?

That's cool, huh?

Yeah.

They went all the way up.

That was from a nonprofit who had restaurants in New Orleans save their oyster shells for us.

Two 18-wheeler loads here.

Put them in the boats drive them to the mound, and drop them to try and stop the erosion.

(singing) On peche les crabs, on peche les chevrettes aussi.

(singing) Heya heya, Les Indiens de Pointe au Chien.

Look at place names the next time you drive down a highway.

Alabama, Biloxi, Pascagoula, Opelousas.

Those are all tribes.

When it comes to What does it mean from the heart about this area?

It's about the preservation.

And the preservation of - what it means to you begins by how it was given to you.

And that comes from the generation before you.

That comes from your parents that comes from your grandparents.

And if you're fortunate, even your great grandparents.

Or you speak to a stranger and they were told a story about where you come from.

The federal recognition process demands paper sources.

So many of these letters are by the colonials that are here.

By the post commanders.

You see: this is where the villages are.

This is where they're growing their crops.

This discussion about respecting hunting grounds.

Members from different tribes come into a post and they're like, Hey, y'all are encroaching.

You're, you know, you're looking at setting up a house.

And that's on our hunting grounds.

And the post commander saying I'm sorry, we'll make sure to move that.

Members of these first nations are very freely and easily going out and within the very narrow world of French Louisiana, Spanish Louisiana.

Of Creole Louisiana.

It was mostly la petite nation, small tribes.

And they spoke different languages.

Indian French is an older dialect of French from the 17th and 18th centuries, with a mixture of Indian words.

So it's not Cajun French.

Cajun is separate from Indian French because we had French people who weren't Cajun who intermarried with our tribe earlier on.

Non-native men with indigenous women in different tribes.

You have to show family trees of all your tribal members and how they all link back.

You got tax receipts, letter from grandma - That's what they are, sometimes; they're not organized at all.

So I went to just about every archive you could think of.

French in France has evolved.

I had a French professor and I was translating.

And she goes, How do you know this word?

I'm like, I don't know how I know this word.

I go, Why?

She goes, This word does not exist in French today.

I was like, It exists in Louisiana, down the bayou!

(laughing) Every semester we ultimately end up doing, sort of, these different projects.

So one of the projects in the spring of 2010 was to collect recipes.

One of the things that was most striking is how much shrimp was in everything and how much crab - everyday dishes.

Shrimp etouffee, in French meaning smothered down with different vegetables.

And then we have two different kinds of pot fried crabs.

We have some without onions and we have some with onions.

But in the end of April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill happened.

And Pointe au Chien was pretty much ground zero for that.

It was like cutting the artery of Mother Nature.

So, immediately we contacted the government to say Hey, we want to protect our sacred sites.

And they said that they could not consult with us because we're not federally recognized.

Burial sites, village sites - The oil spill caused faster erosion.

Near Fourchon, we know that there were indigenous human remains and other artifacts that were washed up because the landowner called us.

We wanted a tribal monitor to participate in the process but they actually brought in tribal people from other states.

So there was a push to exclude us from those conversations of what is going to happen with those remains because they reburied them, like not too far away in an eroding coastline.

Those recipes, because they were collected before the spill - You know, BP couldn't refute them.

They couldn't say, Well, nobody eats this amount of shrimp.

Nobody eats this much crab.

But actually it was like, here's the evidence beforehand.

We said, Okay, if we wanted to make this dish with crab but we have to buy the crab now how much will it cost versus if we are catching the crab?

It went from, like, $2 per serving to $43 per serving.

But also just giving, with regards to your social interactions which couldn't happen because of that.

So you could see a change and a change in people's moods, I guess because they weren't able to share in the same way.

You know, a lot of things are going away.

People from Pointe au Chien voted for this sales tax for the library system.

Because there are a lot of hurricanes and storms people need access to a library.

But I don't think anyone realized, Look, if we pass this tax you're going to build a big library nowhere near us and they closed the library in Pointe au Chien.

So that was, you know, one thing down.

In 2015, under Obama, the regulations were changed to make it more transparent, to make it fair.

But I do need to gather the documents.

So, yeah, 50,000 documents coming across mentions of direct lineage, actual ancestors was raising some goosebumps.

So you're going to say We met with the French consulate a couple of years ago - This one is harder.

He said he hasn't had a meeting like that in Louisiana - the whole community speaking French and engaged in French.

So we have a real opportunity here - Everyone stand.

to maintain the language.

And it's actually good for kids to know more than one language.

It's actually really beneficial to their education, to their future.

Great, great, great grandma.

And it would help instill pride in these kids that their language is respected.

We have filed two petitions for French immersion with Terrebonne Parish school board, one in 2018 and one in 2020.

The school board has a duty under the law to contact the parents, to ask them if they're willing to send their kids to a French immersion program.

And they never did that.

Then the teachers were told that the school would be closing.

And that was before it was even voted on in a committee.

They could do something positive by working with us for French immersion and they failed to do so.

Why are you against kids learning their native language?

It doesn't matter how many kids are in that school they still need to be educated in their community.

If it's taken away, that's one less reason for people to even think we're here.

We don't even have a school.

This is a continuation of assimilation, of discrimination.

Would they do it if it were a 70% white school?

It's like, same battle, different time.

The 1930s, we see this active desire to have a school put in.

Really fully getting it in the late 1960s and now fighting to keep their school open.

And then there was an application for sports camps on the island.

Whenever, you know, all the people are being told, You need to resettle, there's not going to be any services.

We're not going to do X, Y and Z in your community.

But you know what?

If you have sports people, want to be there, that's okay.

Schools, churches, libraries provide resilience and social networks for people within the community.

Let me get a bag of corn and feed them birds.

He asked me where I was going.

I said, We're going to the back.

Hey, quit it!

Oh, look at the doves, Johnny.

Big oak trees, all dead.

I was nine foot up in the air.

Nine foot, two inches up in the air.

We never had a storm like this before - Let's see if we can get in.

The reporters were saying that it hit west of Grand Isle.

But they never said Pointe au Chien, but we knew - we knew they were talking about Pointe au Chien.

Sassy!

That's the hardest, when you lose stuff like that.

That's Madeline, Reese, and Monk.

That's Little AJ when he was little.

Two of our boys right there.

What are you doing, son?

You think that table's still good?

You got a kitchen sink!

(laughing) She had so many dishes, man.

Yeah, table's broke on the end right here.

Broken?

Yeah, man, maybe I can fix it.

Change the board on it.

It's getting all mildewed, too.

Getting all mildewed?

Had a few big alligators in the canal right here.

Kids toy telephone - the little girls used to make like they'd call me.

Cousins, everybody would come.

Cook a lot of stuff.

One of my sons used to collect ducks, all along there.

Maybe I can save some of them.

Whew, it's starting to smell.

Yeah, they ain't all bad.

Look at that little bitty one.

This was nothing but sheetrock.

We had a hurricane and I went, bought me a whole bunch of paddle boards I sanded them all down, cut them.

It took me about seven months to put them all in there like that.

House shifted.

I'm gonna have to cut the piling right there.

I'm gonna try, you know.

It'll take a while to come back.

If I live to see it.

We're gonna try.

We'll live up there in front.

That thought did come through my mind, like - Am I crazy to still plan on coming here?

And then after I had the cries - I had my cries - I had my cry on Wednesday when my sister came back home and I stayed with my parents in Mississippi.

I was by myself and I thought, you know, um - I need to come back.

I do.

Because if I don't come back like I planned I don't want someone to say Well, Christine's not even going to follow through with her plans.

Come on, Sassy.

Got this ladder right.

Whew!

This is crazy.

Whew!

My grandpa and them used to plant corn all up in here 50 years ago.

We ain't going nowhere, might build me a little pavilion over here.

If we clean it up so we can barbecue and all that, in the front.

But no trees, though.

No trees.

Look at all the trees, that fall down.

You want to buy it?

(laughing) Boy, that insulation is nasty, huh?

I don't see that camp that was over there, Pierre.

How can you relocate when your job is right outside your door?

You get in your boat and you go trawling.

You go crabbing, and you go check them.

How can you do that when you live somewhere else in town?

You can't do that.

How can you come and sit out here and see this view?

Why're there so many camps down here?

Because they see the same thing we see.

There's a reason why people come here.

And I don't want to be someone who's not going to come back.

The marina stood pretty good.

Yeah.

I think that was more than a category four, though.

It had to be a five or better.

That side is all sports, mostly.

And it's all family on this side.

They're trying to run us off so they can sell it to the sports.

But as long as a few of us stay, I don't believe they're going to do it.

There's Bernice and them, right there.

That's Shirley's house.

And Rodney's mama's house, Justine.

That's Freddy's place.

He's gone.

That's Bebe and Bernice.

Now, this guy here, Richard, he's a young guy.

He'll probably move back.

That's Brent's boat.

It sunk.

That's Mr. Wilson, right there.

Everybody, everybody.

It's a ghost town now, man.

I don't believe a ghost would stay down here now.

(chuckling) We're gonna go up a piece by the last one up here, turn around.

You want to check a crab trap?

Sure!

Oh, man.

Whew, ain't got a crab in there.

They ain't no good to eat anyway, look at the water.

It's like a root beer color.

It's still dirty.

The other day when we came back, they had a - the shrimp was jumping out the water.

And the crabs, all swimming on top.

The water was, I mean, pretty bad.

That's Donald's mama's house.

Putting a roof.

They take care of the old lady.

Where I'm gonna live when I come home, huh?

Oh, it could be worse.

Nobody got killed.

Thank God for that, man.

We ain't lost no lives down here.

Look, that old pelican was way over there.

He's got a broken wing.

Whenever you ask me what's the reason for this sign that's right behind me - Climate change sucks.

It is because having to be forced to make a decision to relocate - That is way too much to hold against any individual or community.

This basin, the Terrebonne Basin is the fastest-eroding basin in the United States.

It is that way for a reason.

People have made decisions about who should be protected, when they should be protected.

You know, Maybe these people should just move.

That's my three little queens, there.

Precious, man.

They're beautiful.

Aunt Theresa!

What?

I love you.

I love you, too.

Y'all don't have insurance, huh?

Who?

On the house.

Unh-unh.

No, he had insurance on it but then after that, when he went to renew the insurance because of the tree here and the tree in the back, they didn't want to insure the house.

I don't know how it look - I mean, it don't look good in there.

No?

Nothing looks good in there.

Wow.

Oh, my gosh.

Pungent.

Do you think y'all's house is fixable?

I'm - - probably so.

Our parents, they didn't go through storms like just happened.

And then our grandparents, when they were growing up the land was still growing.

And someone should be accountable for that because the land has changed around us and made us more vulnerable.

And we didn't contribute to that.

Not only materialistic, it's taken a toll on our community.

Emotionally, it's taken a toll.

For so long, we've been made to feel like we are less.

Less of a people.

Every storm we have, we lose people.

They leave and they don't come back.

And we really want to stop that.

We know exactly what we need to do in order for the land to stop disappearing.

We need to rebuild our barrier islands, which means that we need to start bringing rocks in here.

My mom and all used to grab water out of the bayou to wash our clothes, because it was fresh water.

Let's get some fresh water diversions coming over here.

Rebuild this land - it's time for us to push the saltwater back out into where it should be.

We're going from a place where when my mom was born they were living in palmetto houses on the ground.

We're about 75 years later - People have adapted over time but you have to have the resources to do that.

Today, just today, we had people from the Cajun Navy we have two young women from New Orleans we have people who brought in gas.

Gas, food, flashlights.

I am good, how about you?

Hey, we got somebody who likes you a lot!

How are you doing?

I'm good, I'm good.

Where's our government?

You know, it's not that we wait around for our government before we start.

You know, we cleared the roads ourselves so that the people can come home.

You see, over here, we don't have the government coming.

We have family that came from Mississippi to help us.

You know, where is our government?

Where is our parish president?

Where is our governor?

Because this is the hardest hit place after this storm.

We are a community.

We've been here since the year 900.

Artifacts have been found here that dated as far as that.

So we've been here a long time.

Them amaryllis, them long green ones - Oh, yeah, yeah.

I took that from mama.

After she died, I took them.

And when I came home that day - They were blooming... - there were big 'ole red and white flowers.

Oh, yeah, that's...

I told Bebe, I said, mama's making my flowers grow.

The Native Americans and the land was working in a relationship that's one.

One worked the other one, one gave to the other one.

The world taught Indians that in the little space where they live, that's where you belong.

So whenever we finish with you, go back home where you belong.

Could I take these shoes off?

Yeah.

Whatever you want.

Absolutely.

Now, you know, because this is how - This is how I - When I'm here, I'm no shoes!

Oh, yeah, that's fixable, Paul.

Oh, no, that's not fixable.

Yes, it is fixable!

It was my mom, my dad - Don't step on no nails!

- my three brothers and my two sisters.

Me and brother will grab it.

Yeah, yeah.

All right.

Where y'all want this?

Across the road.

Who ever wants their childhood home that you would take a pirogue to get to school sometimes, to catch the bus - No one wants their childhood home to be destroyed like mine is right now.

Sabrina.

Trevor.

I've got goggles.

In August, we had projects set up what we were going to do, and we pivoted.

What was needed was boots on the ground.

Can you believe that only 14 houses in this whole community survived this hurricane.

My mom and my dad always believed in us traveling.

So we've had people from France.

We've had people from New York, Canada, Belgium come and stay there with us.

Okay.

My uncle could come over and at 9:00 at night he would knock on the door and they'd sit down and have a pot of coffee.

They had a little drawbridge right here little kind of bridge that kind of swayed like this.

We'd walk over.

We all were dressed alike.

For Easter, for Christmas, you know, like, we always - my mom made our clothes.

We didn't wait for people to give us things.

We worked hard for what we had, from working at a crab factory, shrimp factory.

And my brother hated the smell because I don't know if you've ever been around a crab processing plant - It stinks, it reeks.

And so he would throw us soap and towels outside, and our clothes.

And so we'd bathe at 1:00, 2:00 in the morning, outside.

It'll always be our property because that's the one thing that all five of us that remain want - It's our tribal lands.

One reason I'm glad it's being done, it kind of gives room for me to put a building so I can come back to Pointe au Chien.

Hopefully, Christine will build something and it'll have a new life.

But to tear it down, it's a - it's a sad, happy day.

The memories are there, but - I still have the memories, even though the house isn't there.

The Natives, we were all pushed to the ends of the bayous.

It's very important to own land down here because this is where we're from.

But people started moving out and they would sell their land not realizing that they should have kept it because it would have such wonderful meaning at one point in time, in our lives.

Like now, you know, we're trying to be federally recognized.

They built that last summer.

And I said, Man, that's gonna all wash away for Hurricane Ida.

Man, it stood up very well.

They dug them and then they matted them and they planted grass on top of them.

They should do that all over - build them little islands.

There's two crab docks down here and that's the other dock.

I own one and they own one.

I got like six or eight of them that sell to me.

Different boats - I buy their crabs, their catch.

Tyler put them too full!

A crate weighs about seven.

They got about 70, 73 pounds of crabs in them.

The way we put them in.

161.

Got three on the ticket?

How much bait you had this morning?

You know, we're gonna have to see what Bo has.

He likes that fish!

Today, it went up: $1.25.

$1.25?

79.

He's strong.

Yeah, I'm throwing a foot over my head!

They go up to Baltimore Alabama, Carolinas, as far as Seattle.

They'll be gone by 3:00 this afternoon.

10,000 pounds worth of it.

Is this Noella?

Noe?

Oh, it's right here.

Noe Hotard.

N-O-E. Noe.

Did he have a store?

Yeah, he had two stores.

Where was his store?

Noe had a store?

I thought it was in Montegut.

Dada.

- Dada.

I thought you just said he was a Billiot.

Yeah, she's a Billiot.

Her name's Dada.

- Dada Billiot.

Dada Billiot.

Okay, okay.

Okay.

We added two people here on the Lafourche side, Patty.

Oh, okay, here we go.

Felix Billiot, Jean Billiot.

Louis Chasson.

But that was before the 60s.

Oh, okay.

Maybe so.

It was a little earlier.

This is - What's that?

Felix Billiot.

Oh, no, that was in the 50s.

Patty, go turn the wheel to this side.

This way?

Yes.

Let Patty be the Capitan, there.

This way?

Go straight into the wind.

The federal recognition process is a long process and the Government Accountability Office has found that it's been burdensome and time consuming.

All right.

Ready to shrimp, Patty.

All right.

Going down.

There have been a number of hearings on the time it takes for petitioners and tribes to submit for recognition and the time it takes for the bureau to review those petitions.

If we had federal recognition with this hurricane we would be dealing strictly with the federal government.

For us to go to any healthcare place is at least 30 to 40 minutes away.

We don't even right now have a fire department.

Just things like that, that we need in our community we could get if we were federally recognized.

This is a living, working bayou.

And if you don't have a school that also factors into whether people are going to live there.

It would have been so easy for Terrebonne Parish school board to get a French immersion class going here.

They closed the school.

Why not allow us to open up French immersion school there?

It's not being used, the school, at all.

It would be great if they could go out into the world and say This is what's happening in my community.

And start connections with other people, companies, whoever.

If they want to come back here and help, you know they could go to college, become engineers or major in French themselves and come back and teach at the school.

We want Pointe au Chien to stay and we want them to still be there when we're gone.

Having access to that education is powerful.

That's why David Billiot was writing those letters, because he knew that people who didn't have education didn't have the same opportunities.

It all locks in together.

You have a school, you build the right houses that can sustain hurricane winds.

We can bring industry.

You start bringing back people who are from here.

I think federal recognition would do that.

I believe it's a very strong petition - all these years and all that research.

In an ideal world and they receive federal recognition they can mitigate all the damage that was done.

And then we start to listen to each other.

There are stories here.

There is knowledge here about the land, about healing.

Processes that we could all benefit from.

The State of Louisiana the parishes of Terrebonne and Lafourche the federal government have an opportunity to do something to not only protect a community but a whole life way for future generations.

French people are very surprised when they see how people here kept the French.

For us, it's very, very moving, you know.

It's like - and to fight also to fight to keep this identity and this language.

We feel great sympathy for you.

And we would try the best we can to help you.

In my district, there was a school, a blue ribbon award winner and then the school board decided that they were going to close it for efficiency matters.

This is a bill where I'm honestly trying to right what I believe to be an extreme wrong.

So the idea is to make it a French immersion school and hopefully it starts attracting students from up the bayou to go back down the bayou to get their education as well.

So my name is Will McGrew.

We view it as the best investment the state could make in terms of having a chance for Louisiana French not to die in our lifetime which is the current trajectory.

It would make the most sense for us to be able to become a state entity because then the entity would exist as soon as July.

We're from Pointe au Chien.

We're asking for support for École Pointe-au-Chien.

Who's the sponsor?

Tanner Magee.

Okay, well, good deal.

It'll do fine.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much.

- Good to see y'all.

It would establish a special state school in lower Pointe au Chien for French immersion.

Yes.

So we're asking for your support for House Bill 261 - Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe.

Pointe au Chien!

Okay, Pointe au Chien, yes, sir.

I think it's going to be a big day.

I think we're going to have good news.

I don't really see anybody being against it, to be honest with you.

I have the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe from Terrebonne Parish.

These members represented the hardest hit part of Terrebonne Parish after Hurricane Ida.

They persevered.

Most of them didn't sleep for at least a month, taking care of one another.

They ran community needs out of their homes.

And I hope y'all welcome them to the capital.

Thank you.

For virtually all of my life there have been efforts to get Terrebonne Parish to have immersion classes.

Well, I commend you for bringing this.

I appreciate you.

Thank you, Representative Horton.

Having a daughter that teaches French immersion in New Orleans I'm happy to have this school in my district and I'll support the bill.

Thank you.

People who are younger than me really don't speak it except in certain communities like Pointe au Chien.

I think it's a great bill.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello.

How's it going?

Hi, Senator Fesi, how are you?

Going alright.

Donald and Theresa are here.

Well, I've got the - I got the amendment to put on Magee, so - Yes!

The wheels in all of this stuff they spin and sometimes they grind.

All you need is a little bit of lubrication to make them spin a little bit better and - you know, y'all did the hard work.

Back to the bill, basically I want to move for a favorable passage on it to be able to put this French immersion school into business.

Members, vote your machines.

Illg, yes.

Vote your machines.

Coussan, yes.

You through voting?

Close it up.

32 yays and 0 nays.

- 92 yays, 0 nays The conference committee report stands adopted.

We appreciate you.

Okay.

- Alright.

Thank you so much, sir.

We'll be in touch soon.

Alright!

Good morning.

Hey, Governor.

You doing okay?

Doing alright, how are you?

I'm well, thank you very much.

Good morning, Governor.

Chuckie.

How do you do.

- Hello, Mr.

Governor.

You are Pointe au Chien and I count.

Yes, sir.

Yes, you do.

I'm the cultural heritage and resiliency coordinator for the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe.

Did you ever go down to Turtle Cove?

Yes, sir.

I worked there a couple times.

That's where I'm from, that area.

Good morning, thank you so much.

Good to see you.

My name is Christine Verdin.

- It's so good to be here with you.

I hopefully will be the principal of this school.

Well, good!

So the teachers, they come from France, Belgium - Canada.

- Canada.

Africa.

- Africa.

Any French-speaking nation.

Governor, I got to get a picture of this developed.

The storm passed right here on top of us.

For the first time in a long time, we feel like we count.

Somebody's taking an interest.

And we appreciate that.

Thank you.

One of the major obstacles that we had back then was everybody talked French - Sometimes some of the kids had trouble, we were looked down on for talking French.

We were - some were punished for talking French.

And that's what makes this here so special.

We ready?

Ready.

Alright, House Bill 261 is signed.

I've already spoken with a lot of people who would want their kid to be enrolled in a French immersion school.

...with liberty and justice for all.

And it's not just the Native population.

You will have people from everywhere in Terrebonne Parish knocking at the door, wanting to come in our school.

And I would be very proud that it came from the little town of Pointe au Chien.

My wish also would be that we start a big seafood market.

Why are we not processing our own seafood over here and shipping it out?

We can be self-sustaining.

I like to play with blocks.

You like to play with blocks!

Like, you build everything.

Okay, that's nice.

What do you build?

Build a tower.

A tower's nice.

The young kids can say, I can be a trawler.

I like being healthy.

You like being healthy, good job!

Or I can be a crabber when I get older.

Fish oysters when I get older.

And that they'll have pride in it make the money they need to but also they can send their kids to college.

You know, we got our first doctor.

We have two doctors, in fact, in our tribe right now.

We have accountants.

We have biologists, teachers.

30 years ago, we had one teacher.

But if we let it continue to go where it's going - - it'll be called, Sportsman's Paradise.

And that's not what we want to be known for.

Everybody sees the land as family property, as Indian land, and certain families have rights to live certain places based on custom and tradition.

The Swamp Lands Act did not extinguish aboriginal title.

With federal recognition, that would make a difference.

You don't have a community if you don't have a place.

So where is the place?

This building right here survived because of the shape of it.

And Christine is going to build a house like the building right there.

There are two homes I'm looking at, built for 160-165 mile an hour winds, which is what we have to look at now.

I'm hoping that when we become federally recognized we can rebuy some of our property and make room for young people.

Do y'all hear the beat?

- Yes.

Okay, look.

- Follow the beat.

Yeah, we have to dance with the beat.

You can do like this.

Shongay nongaday.

Ou qui a bay, non ga day ah ay.

And you do that whole thing twice.

These guys here are good.

They can play in my band anytime!

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To find out more, visit btnep.org.

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