Still Here - Rosina Philippe

Rosina Philippe lives in Grand Bayou Indian Village, a community that is entirely based in water. The homes, along with the church, can only be reached by boat. This was not always the case. “We had solid ground beneath our feet,” she recalls. “We had garden spaces. We had fruit trees. We had lots of land where you can walk for miles.”

The Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha are a subsistence tribe, and have long relied on the bounty of the land and water: harvesting seafood, foraging for persimmons and wild celery, growing vegetables, hunting deer, ducks, and rabbits. Always, they’ve been guided by an ethos of taking only what they needed. “There was no such thing as overharvesting or just taking and hoarding away,” Rosina says, “because the life around us makes us possible. And as long as they were here, then we were here.”

They are still a subsistence tribe. But with much of the land gone, some of their traditional foodways have become difficult or even impossible to maintain. Disappearing wetlands also means less protection from storms. Most tribal members have moved away, returning to Grand Bayou with their families for holidays.

But Rosina remains, along with about a dozen other households. “I say that we're placemarkers,” she says. “A table is here and it's set and we're like a place card holding the place for others to come. I stay because of my love for my life, my life choices, my lifeway, for the ways of being with this place. I stay because I believe that the Creator in his infinite wisdom has placed my people where we belong. This is our place. This is where we were supposed to be.

“And I stay because I feel that I can make a difference. if I just inspire one person, and that one person can inspire somebody else, and so on, then we continue our inhabitation.”

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