An intertribal collective: Nanih Bvlbancha
On view: April 6, 2024
Installation view of Nanih Bvlbancha. Image courtesy of Prospect New Orleans. Photo by Alex Marks.
Nanih Bvlbancha, a profound project led and created by an esteemed intertribal collective of Louisiana Indigenous artists and creative practitioners, including Ida Aronson, Dr. Tammy Greer, Jenna Mae, Ozone 504, and Monique Verdin. This permanent work was unveiled Saturday, April 6th and is now open to the public located at Lafitte Greenway (1900 Lafitte Ave).
About the Installation
The intertribal collective has come together to write this statement discussing the importance of meaning behind Nanih Bvlbancha:
“We invite you to join us in tending to this special place in the months and years to come! Our mound was built on the Lafitte Greenway between January and March 2024 with community members actively involved in the build process - hauling soil, clay, oyster shells, bagasse, and driftwood to the site, shoveling and stomping to compress the earthen materials into a mound shape. Intertribal community members embedded prayers, gifts, offerings, dances, and even a Houma language dictionary into its layers.
We wove palmetto mats for erosion control, and drew “love letters'' to the mound, using paints made of native plant, clay and ochre pigments! We envision Nanih Bvlbancha as a neutral ground where we honor our Ancestors and yours, their stories and your stories as well, their unbelievable ingenuity and the ingenuity in each of us! We’ve gathered soils from along the Mississippi watershed, from all across this continent, and from other continents. We added those gifts of soil into our mound to honor the distant lands of many cultures and many peoples who call Bvlbancha | New Orleans home. We honor the powerful life force that is the Mississippi River, as she carries silt from other places to form the precious land we stand on, the nutrient rich soil that grows our food, and the water that nourishes the many beings of this place.
Our Nanih calls attention to the lands and other mounds we are losing in South Louisiana, and the urgent need to protect coastal and tribal communities, marking the four directions, calling us into a balanced way of being, recognizing that the health of our world, and ourselves, depends on that balance. We welcome these teachings in these precarious times. Nanih Bvlbancha reclaims a place for Indigenous peoples in the heart of Bvlbancha and honors, not only our ancestral histories, but also, our contemporary realities. It anchors us in relationship, reciprocity, respect for all beings, and inspires opportunities to gather as a culturally diverse community, educate in traditional ways that involve active participation, care and tend in more sustainable ways for our native plants, play ancient Southeastern ball games, and more! We invite you to be a part of Nanih Bvlbancha.
As the final chapter of this iteration of the Artists of Public Memory commission, Nanih Bvlbancha not only commemorates the historical significance of earthen mounds but also reignites a sacred space for dialogue, remembrance, and cultural exchange. This project embodies the spirit of rewilding, community, gathering/togetherness, education, and ingenuity/thrivance, offering a platform for traditional and contemporary expressions of identity and belonging.
About the Artists
An Intertribal collective of artists, educators, researchers, gardeners, herbalists, water protectors, land defenders and culture keepers are collaborating as one of the artist teams participating in the Artists of Public Memory commission. The collective and their networks have been working in collaboration with each other and their Indigenous communities to make visible the Intertribal histories and present realities across Louisiana and the Gulf South.
Ida Aronson is a citizen of the United Houma Nation (UHN), a member of the Houma Language Project and the Okla Hina Ikhish Holo network, and a founding member of the Bvlbancha Collective and Bvlbancha Public Access. Aronson is a multimedia artivist working across visual arts fields, lighting design and event production, and cultural crafts such as basket weaving.
Tammy Greer is a citizen of the United Houma Nation (UHN) and director of the Center for American Indian Research and Studies at the University of Southern Mississippi. She is a medicine wheel garden steward and a documentarian of Houma culture. Dr. Greer works with traditional plants used by Indigenous Peoples of the southeastern United States.
Jenna Mae is a mixed southeastern creature of Eastern Siouan, Mvskoke, and Cherokee descent. As a poet, parent, gardener, ethnographer, and community herbalist, Jenna Mae dreams in Ancestral futures with beloved community in Bvlbancha. (Okla Hina Ikhish Holo, Bvlbancha Collective, Bvlbancha Liberation Radio, Hachotakni Haco)
Ozone 504 is an East Tennessee Melungeon (Saponi, Monocan, and Lenni Lenape descent), who found himself magically transported to Bvlbancha through a trick of fate at the end of the 20th century. He resides in the 9th Ward. He is a social practice artist, producer/engineer of Bvlbancha Liberation Radio, and arts editor and design director of Bulbancha is Still a Place zine, among other liberatory plots.
Monique Verdin is a transdisciplinary artist and storyteller who documents the complex relationship between environment, culture, and climate in southeast Louisiana. She is a citizen of the Houma Nation, director of The Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange and is supporting the Okla Hina Ikhish Holo (People of the Sacred Medicine Trail), a network of indigenous gardeners, as the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network Gulf South food and medicine sovereignty program manager. Monique is co-producer of the documentary My Louisiana Love and her work has been included in a variety of environmentally inspired projects, including the multi-platform performance Cry You One, Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, and the collaborative book Return to Yakni Chitto: Houma Migrations.
Artists of Public Memory is funded by the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project with additional major funding from the Ford Foundation; the Lambent Foundation Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation; the Wagner Foundation; and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Learn more about the histories and legacies connected to Nanih Bvlbancha
WATCH
KEEPERS OF THE MOUND
Ceremonial site, burial ground, midden, gateway, lighthouse, high ground: there are countless theories and explanations for the purpose of mounds, earthen structures built by native peoples of the United States. Mounds hold more than just fragments of ancient life, they can teach us how ancient peoples settled, inhabited, and adapted to a rapidly evolving landscape. For the Native American descendants of tribes that inhabited the delta, these spaces also are spiritual centers. Hundreds of these ancient sites dot Louisiana’s coastline, and yet with rising sea levels, Louisiana is at risk of losing more and more mounds each year, and the wisdom they possess. But cultural heritage is not a renewable resource.
Bayou Grand Caillou is one such mound at risk. A giant mound on private property in Dulac, Louisiana, the mound at Bayou Grand Caillou is part of a rapidly changing ecosystem that is at risk of being washed away. Today, this mound sits on property owned by several local lawyers and developers, not by the United Houma Nation or the local Dulac community. Carla Solet, a member of the Houma and a Dulac local who lives next door to this mound, wants the mound protected from coastal land loss, but she also wants (legal) access to this sacred space. For now, Carla and her family visit the site without permission, collecting palms to make baskets and spending time on land that holds deep meaning to their identity. We follow the Solet family as they explore the meaning of the mounds in terms of their cultural heritage and reclaim the mound in a clandestine flag-planting ceremony.
Mounds were gathering sites for ancient peoples, a place to share knowledge and stories, and today they are a symbol for something that is in danger of being lost, both literally and figuratively, as Louisiana’s coast continues to dissolve. As land disappears coastal communities rich in culture lose spaces and rituals, opportunities for people to come together, share and collect stories and artifacts to honor the land and its people’s history.
KEEPERS OF THE MOUND was created with direct support from the Foundation from Louisiana and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Water/Ways program. Directed by Katie Mathews, Camera by Justin Zweifach, Sound by Lukas Gonzales, Edit Paavo Hanninen. Executive Producer Darcy McKinnon, Producer for LEH John Richie, for LEH Brian Boyles.
LISTEN
Tune into Blvbancha Liberation Radio to learn more about Indigenous earthen architecture of the Delta featuring member from the collective who created Nanih Bvlbancha.