LSU Bachelor's of Architecture

Forty-four hundredths of a percent, or around one-in-227, is a ratio representative of the American Indian demographic for LSU’s spring semester. I bring this up not necessarily as a statement about the school’s admissions policy, of which I’m uninformed, but to present a snapshot of a human ecology in which we are presently embedded; something almost invisible and under constant threat of erosion. I don’t feel I’m equipped to relay a true, learned American Indian history—there are Indian mounds meters from my grandparents’ home on Bayou Dularge that I never knew were there—but the story I can tell is comprised of a few verifiable facts, faint images and recovered memories, near-and-farness of home, unconditional love. My grandpa, who worked in life as a contract welder, was a United Houma Nation tribe member. He attended a private Native American school through 8th grade; there were no public schools in the parish for Native American children until 1953.  He smoked heavily and was an avid hunter. He passed away before I could understand him intellectually, but I understood his heart expertly. He sat in a white plastic lawn chair near the front door to drag. From the view of someone playing in the yard, his silhouette was cast seriously against a fence of morning glories, but his warmth rasped out in mischievous laughter as you inched closer and he had an old joke handy.

 

One American Indian symbol for change is a storm cloud with rain, which looks conspicuously like two mounds. Would that a storm could be a positive force for the Native communities I grew up around. Barring that—you and me.