Byinvini to jou Jòrdi

Reconnecting Creoles: What we have forgotten & what we found

There is no single path to reconnecting with Creole heritage. These stories show how people can become separated from parts of their culture and community, but also how they find their way back. It is easy to imagine a reconnecting Creole as someone who knew nothing about the culture, discovered a distant ancestor, and suddenly decided to become Creol

Regarding the English language, many people do not consider it a heritage language, reasoning that our heritage languages must have been spoken widely in Louisiana before the territory was integrated into the United States and given official statehood. Though this seems like a reasonable definition to attribute to language, many of us forget that Louisiana was in fact a colony of the United States

Alligator Hunt: What we bring back 

As my great-grandmother puts it, you did what you had to do. For her, having the choice to leave some of that life behind was progress. Maybe that is why she finds it so strange that, generations later, many of us choose to go back. It’s true that some Creole families never stopped hunting and fishing. Other parts of my family did. But some of us return because we understand that when people stop practicing something, the knowledge doesn’t necessarily wait around for them.

From Louisiana to Houston: How Creoles built the Bayou City

Frenchtown, on the northern edge of Houston’s Fifth Ward, became one of the city’s most important Louisiana Creole communities. According to the Handbook of Texas, approximately 500 Creoles of French, Spanish, and African descent organized the four-square-block neighborhood in 1922. These Creoles of Color were part of a broader movement from Louisiana into southeastern Texas. They did not arrive in a single migration or establish every Houston Creole community at once. Frenchtown is the best-documented early concentration, not a complete map of every place where Creole families later lived.

Kouri-Vini is not “Broken French”

There are racial ideas and language that are outdated, but his observations show how the Creole and French language were treated differently. Broussard experienced Black and white creole speakers in St. Martinville, Breaux Bridge, and New Roads. Some children grew up speaking Creole but were encouraged to use “good French” instead and that same phrase is still being used and something modern speakers plus language activists challenge to this day.