‘By preserving the language, you reinforce communities’: a school saving one of Louisiana’s oldest dialects

Preserving Indian French, as community members call it, has taken on new urgency as climate-related hurricanes and coastal erosion threaten to displace the tribe

On a recent morning in the southern Louisiana town of Bourg, Cynthia Owens reviewed flashcards with her kindergarten class.

She held up an image of a crocodile. Caiman", she said, using the word for crocodile spoken by Indigenous tribes in the region. Caiman, her nine students repeated. Then: Crocodile", she said, using the French term. Crocodile, responded the chorus of fidgety five- and six-year-olds.