SPATIALIZING BLACK CULTURE THROUGH THE PLACEMAKING TRADITION OF THE RURAL LOUISIANA CREOLE BOUCHERIE

abstract

Before the advent of refrigeration and grocery stores, Louisiana’s rural Creoles—mixed-race French-heritage people who usually identify as black—supplemented their diets through self-provisioning activities such as the ritual of butchering of a hog and distributing its products amongst kin and neighbors. Called a boucherie, this activity continues in the state’s rural southwest and is deeply linked to present-day Creole identity. Collected through ethnographic and archival methods, this research argues that the boucherie gives spatial expression to Creole culture through reuniting family members, sharing intergenerational wisdom and memories, and, for some, meeting sustenance needs. I draw from research on black placemaking—conceptualized as the ways black Americans “create sites of endurance, belonging, and resistance through social interaction,” (Hunter and others 2016, 1)—ritualized commemorative practices, and spatializing culture. This study contributes to the burgeoning field of black geographies by demonstrating how boucheries serve culture-sustaining roles for black Louisianans.

Keywords:

• black geographies
• black placemaking
• cultural identity
• Louisiana Creoles

Notes

1. Though note the regional specificity of this definition, as New Orleans Creoles often do not consider themselves to be black, nor do those Creoles in the Natchitoches area of central-northern Louisiana.

2. The French influence on language endures through region-specific patterns of speech and turns of phrase in English, such as the use of “get down (from)” in reference to disembarking from a vehicle (Stanford 2016), possibly a literal translation of “descendre du/de la” meaning to disembark from (descendre means both “to go down” and “to disembark from”). French-language groups, both those whose members speak the more Africanized French (frequently termed “Creole” or sometimes called “kouri-vini”) along the Bayou Teche and those whose members are fluent in the French of the prairie region (often called “Cajun French”) (Waddell 1983) gather monthly to teach the younger generation the language. At the handful of La Creole Table meetings (a Creole language and culture preservation group) that I attended, though, all of the members were middle aged or elderly.

3. Respondents affirmed that Cajuns do hold boucheries, but often referenced the aforementioned large-scale public events as opposed to Creole family-centered boucheries. When asked about Cajuns hosting the type of traditional kin-based boucherie still prevalent in Creole communities, interviewees expressed uncertainty: “They still do it. I don’t know if it’s as often … ” (Mona Gobert-Cravins, 22 October 2016); “I believe so” (Wayne Singleton, 28 October 2016). The youngest respondent mentioned that she saw a white friend’s family boucherie photos on Instagram and expressed that “I was actually surprised … because I had never heard of anyone outside of Creoles doing it to be honest” (Charlotte Cravins, 25 September 2016). Their hesitation affirms the separate racial spheres that still have so much resonance in southwestern Louisiana. When asked about Cajun participation in boucheries, past and present, “Ed” could not answer the question, explaining that “We hardly have white people around here” (19 October 2016).

4. Curiously, though none of the publications mentions that black or Creole Louisianans also have a claim to the tradition, they do mention Native American, Spanish, and German influences.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [771-2016-0037].