Atakapas say culture still alive (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Sept. 16, 2007, 9:07AM

Atakapas say culture still alive

By MIKE D. SMITH Beaumont Enterprise
© 2007 The Associated Press
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5139005.html

BEAUMONT, Texas — Thousands of years before Southeast Texas was even a
concept, strong men and women fished its waters, hunted its game, walked
its forests and thrived off raw nature. They were the Atakapas, the group
that history says traded with colonists and helped them fight wars before
vanishing in the early 1900s.

But Texans and Louisianans claiming to be of Atakapan descent who say the
culture is alive and well are mounting an effort to scratch their ancestral
name off the federal government's extinct cultures list.

The Atakapas were hunters and gatherers who occasionally roamed from
present-day southern Louisiana, through Southeast Texas to Matagorda Bay,
said Pam Wheat, executive director of the Texas Archaeological Society.

"What's pretty amazing is that they did what they did and survived as long
as they did by using their natural resources," Wheat said.

The Smithsonian Institute sent linguist Albert Gatschet to the Gulf Coast
during the late 1800s to write an Atakapan language dictionary before the
last known native speakers died, McNeese State University history professor
Ray Miles said.

Gatschet found a native speaker in Lake Charles, La., but gave up after he
couldn't trace the language's origin. The project stalled until
anthropologist John Reed Swanton came along in the 1930s.

"By the time he (Swanton) came here, he claimed there was only one person
left that could speak the Atakapan language," Miles said.

Swanton finished the dictionary that today is in the Smithsonian in
Washington, D.C.

"He basically said they were an extinct people," Miles said. "That was the
perception in Washington, D.C., and that perception is going to be very
difficult to break down."

Revival

The Atakapa-Ishak Nation has about 400 active participants across Texas and
Louisiana, said Chief Michael Amos, who lives in Port Arthur.

That's the tip of the iceberg, as many more can possibly claim strong
genetic links, Amos said.

The group's Web site boasts a showing of 80 people at a June gathering in
Lafayette, La., that included talks on ways to preserve tribal artifacts.

Prayers at gatherings are done in the Atakapan tongue and there's talk of
building museums in Texas and Louisiana, he said.

In February, the group filed a letter of intent to become federally
recognized by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Now the hard work begins — collecting family histories that date back as far
as records go. A positive result will be worth the work, Amos said.

"It will give us our identity back and we can do things for our people and
bring back our culture and heritage," Amos said.

Other recognition benefits include the possibility of purchasing tax-exempt
reservation territory with allocations to run a government.

But Amos said the group would focus on uplifting Atakapan descendants.

"It can help assist some kids as far as attending college, with grants and
stuff like that," Amos said. "As things go, maybe we can get grants to help
older people."

Long road ahead

If the Gulf Coast group is successful, change could be a while away.

The letter begins a seven-step process such requests undergo, U.S. Bureau of
Indian Affairs spokesman Gary Garrison said.

A group must show that the tribe in question existed at the time Europeans
arrived.

The group also must show that Atakapas have existed since 1900 and been
recognized by the regional community as a distinct group.

"And that's where they may stumble," Miles said.

The Atakapas never signed any treaties with the federal government or
foreign countries. They didn't leave any written histories behind and were
diluted by surrounding cultures as time marched on, he said.

"Many people genetically are Atakapa, but culturally, it'll be hard to prove
that," Miles said.

And there's a line of people ahead of the Atakapas. The bureau only has a
nine-member staff to handle such claims, and its plate already is filled
with 10 requests, and 10 more behind those, Garrison said.

Figure up to 25 years just for a decision and Atakapan hopefuls have some
waiting to do.

A silver lining: overall requests have dropped. The bureau got one last year
compared to 43 in 1978 — the year its Office of Federal Acknowledgement
opened, Garrison said.

Amos said the group is in it for the long haul. In the end, the Atakapas
will get the recognition they deserve, he said.

"They may say we're extinct, but that's not true," Amos said. "How could
people just vanish from the face of the Earth? Think about it. It doesn't
make sense."