Joseph Rusling Meeker
Bayou Teche
Sandra Sarr is no stranger to the art of oral history. She’s collected the memories of countless hospice patients through the Story Catchers Program in Tacoma, Washington, which she founded. When she sought to tell stories of healing through her novel (The Road to Indigo), she found herself drawn to rural South Louisiana, into the intimate spaces of the area’s traiteurs, where she found again an urgency to collect the memories and experiences of lives lived in times rapidly fading beyond reach.
So when she met a woman, over eighty years old, who wistfully remembered walking down to the Bayou Teche with her laundry, scrubbing away the day into the clear water, she knew to delve deeper. “I live a few blocks from the Teche,” said Sarr. “When you look at that water, it’s the color of roux. How could you possibly do laundry in it?
“What has changed since then…what caused the water to turn brown?”
Sarr, now serving as the Executive Director of the Teche Center for the Arts, said that this is just one example of how the simple act of listening—of giving someone the opportunity to tell—can open unexpected doors to the history of a place and its people.
Through grants from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and St. Martin Parish Tourist Commission, the Center is embarking on a project of cultural preservation called “Elders of St. Martin Parish Bayou Towns.” Conceived by Sarr, the project will set out to capture the personal histories of fifteen St. Martin Parish elders (age 70 or older) through recorded oral interviews, portraits, and photographs from their private collections. “My hope is that these elders will paint a rich and deep composite picture of this place through their individual stories,” said Sarr. “How things have changed, how they are the same, what is the heart and soul of this place.”
Dr. Ray Brassieur, associate professor of anthropology at the University at Lafayette, joins a host of other local experts in the field of cultural preservation as part of Sarr’s “dream team” for the project. “What we are looking for is knowledge,” he said. “The Teche is often thought of historically, and it has a lot of major narratives. Most people are aware of the Evangeline story. But those narratives leave out so much. One thing this project hopes to do is to really explore the great diversity of experiences in the Bayou Teche region.”
In selecting the fifteen interviewees for the project, Sarr said that there will be great emphasis placed on capturing the full spectrum of life experience in the region. “There are so many facets to the culture here, so many nuances. We’ll look at geographic diversity, ethnic diversity, linguistic, gender,” she said. “We want to give voice to the widest range that we can.
"Most people are aware of the Evangeline story. But those narratives leave out so much. One thing this project hopes to do is to really explore the great diversity of experiences in the Bayou Teche region.”
“Some topics we hope to explore are occupations, languages, boats and wetlands, textile traditions, medicine—the way people healed in the absence of access to hospitals and doctor’s offices. Music and dance and foodways and how people adapted to the landscape and weather events.”
Author of Teche: A History of Louisiana’s Most Famous Bayou, as well as four other books about the South Louisiana culture and region, Dr. Shane Bernard says that he would have killed for this kind of resource when conducting research for his books. As the project’s historian, he said: “The idea is that future generations will have this to use for their own purposes. There’s a constant demand for history, but history relies on documentation, which is what we are aiming to do. Documenting the Teche as it is today, and as it is remembered today.”
“It’s so good to have a local institution like the Teche Center with this sort of commitment,” said Dr. Brassieur. “Because this is not going to finish. This is the kind of project that extends and expands in the future and should always be there. You won’t run out of experiences to understand and ways to help share that knowledge.”
The Elders of St. Martin Parish Bayou Towns project will culminate in a public exhibit presenting all fifteen interviews, portraits, and photographs collections at the Teche Center for the Arts in late 2019. Afterwards, the content will be preserved in the permanent Cajun and Creole Folklore Archives collections in the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Sarr says that imagining someone, fifty years in the future, listening to these recordings, absorbing these stories, gives her chills. “This will allow people to understand more about who they are, where they came from, who their people were,” she said. “And in their own words.”
The Teche Center for the Arts is actively accepting nominations for individuals to interview for the Elders project through June 1. Nominees must be seventy years old or older and be current residents—or individuals who have lived a significant portion of their lives—in towns and rural areas along the Bayou Teche, from Arnaudville to the north, stretching to St. Martinville to the south. To submit a nomination, visit techecenterforthearts.com or call the Center at (337) 366-0629.
