Former Fiscally Sponsored Project
The National Performance Network (NPN) is no longer the fiscal sponsor for this project. We are honored to have worked with the artists and will continue to follow their artistic practice and accomplishments.Unrecognized Stories

Jeffery Darensbourg, photo: Benry Fauna 2020; Hali Dardar, photo: Claire Bangers
The Unrecognized Stories project documents the voices, artwork, and experiences of living members of Louisiana’s non–federally recognized tribal nations. The federal government formally recognizes only four tribes in Louisiana—the Chitimacha, Coushatta, Tunica-Biloxi, and Jena Choctaw—but there are many other tribal nations in the state, including the Houma, Atakapa-Ishak, Avogel, Adai, Clifton Choctaw, Bayou Lacombe Choctaw, Isle de Jean Charles Band, Choctaw-Apache Tribe of Ebarb, Pointe-au-Chien. Members of these tribes often feel a burden to prove their Indigeneity, and they do not enjoy the same access to targeted grants and institutions for cultural preservation and documentation as federally recognized tribes. Unrecognized Stories collects oral histories to be published online and in a print monograph, as well as deposited in an archive to preserve for researchers in perpetuity. The project celebrates Louisiana Indigenous identity for internal community building and as well as for outsider reading.
Google map
https://www.bvlbanchapublicaccess.com/
Hali Dardar
United Houma Nation
Ida Aronson
United Houma Nation