Rendez-Vous de l'Alliance with Janie Verret Luster

Native Stories: Houma People, Basketry, and Access to Culturally Significant Plants in the Southeast 

Event Details

🗓 Date: November 5
🕡 Time: 6:30 PM
📍 Location: 1519 Jackson Avenue

Event Description

Join us for an insightful presentation on the traditions of Houma Tribe. Basket weaving stands as a testament to the enduring cultural heritage of southeastern Indigenous Peoples. Houma basket weaver Janie Verret Luster explores the artistry and significance Houma basketry has in cultural preservation and how environmental protections play a crucial role in the safeguarding and continued revitalization efforts of this ancient craft.

Featured Speaker

Janie Verret Luster 

Biography: Janie Verret Luster is a Houma palmetto basket weaver, jewelry artisan of both bead and alligator garfish scales, and cultural preservationist from the coastal community of Bayou DuLarge, LA. In the early 1990s, in partnership with Richard Conn - former Chief Curator of Native Arts at the Denver Art Museum in Colorado - she is widely renowned throughout her tribal community for her successful restoration efforts of the coiled half-hitched basket, an intricate weaving technique lost to the Houma for two generations. Janie served on the United Houma Nation Tribal Council for eight years representing the lower Dulac and lower Bayou DuLarge communities, and is also fluent in the Houma French language still spoken in her tribe. Her work highlights the cultural importance palmetto has on coastal Indigenous communities as well as why Native stewardship is key in facing the many challenges to the Gulf Coast’s fragile ecosystems and vanishing traditional lifeways. Janie’s dedication to her People, their Land, Water and Culture has earned her the respect and love throughout lower coast Indigenous communities.

Links

https://www.louisianalife.com/weaving-a-connection/
https://64parishes.org/crafting-to-scale

Join us for an evening of learning, discussion, and community connection!