Indigenous Identity, Global Colonization, and Federal Acknowledgement Explored in New Book

 Unlike most published authors in the world of academic presses, especially those who write about indigenous issues, Michael Dardar doesn’t hold any appointment at a university.  He doesn’t have collegiate letters by his name and doesn’t wake up to classes full of students each weekday morning.  Many days he finds himself literally submerged in the waters of his Houma people’s homeland in southern Louisiana.  A marine diesel mechanic by trade and traditionally raised as a fisherman and trapper by experience, he is a man who lives the daily life of the people and experiences what he writes about.

His community involvement is also long standing politically as he served from 1994 until his retirement in 2010 as a council member and later Vice-Principal Chief of the United Houma Nation. The few individuals who write so eloquently from outside of academia tend to be anomalies in the literary world of today.  This absence may be a key ingredient to his powerful stories of those who the mainstream radar tends to disregard or purposefully ignore.  He has an uncanny way of telling a victim’s loss without ascribing a victimization moniker to them.  

Under the Centenary College of Louisiana imprint Editions Tintamarre, Dardar has managed to make his latest and most timely work sing in this bilingual rendering (English/French).  The reality of the book becomes accessible to a much larger audience through this approach news worthy enough as a literary work emanating out of Indian Country.  The format of Istrouma: A Houma Manifesto is highly accessible, fully lived, thought provoking, and generous in scope.

I had the opportunity recently to speak with the author about his feelings on the book and its recent publication.

CS: Congratulations on your new book.  A huge accomplishment to be sure.

MD: Yakoke…Merci.

CS: How does it feel to be published through a university academic press?

MD:  It provides a sustainable format for these writings and insures that they will be accessible to many generations of not only our community members, but others as well.  I feel indebted and extremely grateful to those at Centenary College of Louisiana who believed in this work.

CS: Why is this book necessary?

MD: For me it was like a journey of self-discovery; one many Houma have experienced in the wake of the Hurricanes that devastated our communities and left 3,000 or our people homeless.  Many of the essays in the book come from the time period   following Katrina.  Through these I was trying to find context in all of this.  There are many realizations about what is occurring to indigenous people here and around the world and the similarities in our struggles.

CS: With that I would ask you how this book connects to Indian Country and indigenous communities outside of the Houma world?

MD: It puts the Houma struggle in context with other indigenous struggles.  We all face the same battles and generally we all face the same enemies.  I see it as an indigenous perspective from a common indigenous person.  I live in the field of this work.  I don’t study the field I am writing about as an outsider.  This is the reality of my life and the reality of my people’s lives.   

CS: What lingering effects have the lack of federal support after the hurricanes presented the Houma community?

MD: It is just a continuation of what we have always known.  We suffer all of the same discriminatory effects that other tribes experience, but we receive none of the services that federal tribes receive.  The Hurricanes only served to highlight to a national audience what we have generationally experienced.  It is my prayer that this book continues that narrative.  

CS: Why at this late date are the Houma even having to wait for federal recognition?

MD: How many different ways can you say the process is broken?  We could be here all day on that one.

CS: Any other thoughts?

MD: My hope is that it continues the conversation.  I need people to take a look directly from our eyes.

CS: Chipisalachigay

MD: Chipisalachigay

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The following are excerpts concerning the book Istrouma: A Houma Manifesto and its author Michael Dardar (Houma).

About the Book

Istrouma is at once a broad history of indigenous America and of colonized peoples across the world that repeatedly returns its focus to the Houma people, native to southeastern Louisiana.  Michael T. Mayheart Dardar of the United Houma Nation highlights state and federal challenges to being Indian in both historic and modern times.  Dardar’s Manifesto weavers together the forces of global colonization, national policies of federal acknowledgement, and local politics and politicians who promise justice while extracting ever greater resources from Yakni Houma – Houma country. 

Through well-researched essays, insightful commentary, and stirring poetry, Dardar shares with the reader a glimpse of what it means to be Houma.  Though rooted in their lands, the Houma are not a static people.  Their way of being has changed, even as the markers of modern indigenous identity demonstrate their determination to remain connected to their ancestors.  This is a volume that takes the reader to the heart of Houma identity.  Mr. Dardar’s Manifesto may be one of the most significant works published by Les Cahiers du Tintamarre.

 

About the Author

Michael T.Mayheart Dardar is the former Vice-Principal Chief and appointed tribal historian of the United Houma Nation. He had been a member of the UHN Tribal Council since 1994. He was inspired to Houma community service by the examples of his grandfather Jean Dardar and his aunt Helen Gindrat.  He was raised traditionally within the Houma community, and like his upbringing, he continues derive his family’s economy from his direct involvement with the industries of his homelands.   Through public talks and writings, Michael T.Mayheart Dardar is an outspoken advocate of Houma culture and political sovereignty. His writings also include "Houma Politics," "The Voice of the Houma," "Minority Status," "Leaves in The Wind: Life in Apple Logic," and "Women Chiefs and Crawfish Warriors: A Brief History of the Houma People."

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About the Publisher Centenary College of Louisiana/Editions Imprint

http://www.centenary.edu/editions

The Louisiana Purchase gave thousands of future citizens whose heritage found its roots in France, in French-speaking Canada, in Germany, in Spain, in Africa and in the Caribbean. By fate, these settlers, slaves and refugees became American yet still retained their culture on the Louisiana territory. On the contrary, they have left us in their newspapers, their books, their manuscripts and their songs a rich and varied account of their lives in the new world. This is the experience, expressed by means of languages which are less spoken today, that Les Cahiers du Tintamarre and Les Editions Tintamarre explore, and this with the people’s words, those people who lived it or are still living it.

Copies of the book can be purchased at Amazon.

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Cedric Sunray (MOWA Choctaw) can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.