"Big Chief, Black Hawk" (2021)

What was your first cultural experience? The Masking Mardi Gras Indian culture has many origin stories, with some saying that it began as an homage to Native Americans giving refuge to escaped slaves, to others saying that it began as an offshoot of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and the Buffalo Soldiers exposure to Native Americans during America’s westward campaign. What we do know is that from the time that Americans decided to become a nation and to expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Native Americans were killed and moved from their land for the sake of capitalism. In New Orleans, the fears of the African American community are similar… that over time, the culture can slowly disappear, and what’s left will only be a memory of the people who suffered through pain and died to pass along traditions that can be traced back to Africa. In a city that still has a majority African American population, the influx of other races is changing the makeup of New Orleans. And although African Americans have been the majority of NOLA’s residents, they are minorities in wealth and ownership. That’s why the Masking Indians are so important. They challenge you to look into the past... to look at Indigenous cultures and the Masking Indians after them. To see the similarities to what has happened to culture, and what is happening now. Masking began out of protest. Masking was a way for African Americans to “parade” in their own neighborhoods, with their “kings” being “chiefs”. This culture is not something you can take away from the area. The food can be made and sold elsewhere, and the music can be played elsewhere, but the basis of the culture is not something that can be transferred, and as we lose the people who keep the history of this culture going, the question is… “what will happen to the culture of New Orleans when its people are gone?”. There will always be stories told of who we are. Some, we tell, some that are told about us. It’s up to us to find ways in which we can document ourselves, whether it be through a film, or through our suits. Through trying times, we have learned that we can look to the past to see our own way to the future. We learn to listen to the voice inside us, an ancestral voice, a voice that shows us the way if we can only have patience, look, and listen. We know that we can find the way and that it was inside us all along. We need to be reminded of where we come from and where we’re going. Over this pandemic, we have learned how to better express our experiences and those of our ancestors. We’re learning how to show the world through our own eyes, and how to express our joy, pain, & trauma through connecting. I can only hope that we will be to connect to audiences, specifically the African diaspora, and will be allowed to add these voices to the diaspora.