Culture

Culture and heritage are vital to the Natchitoches Tribe. We honor our history, ancestors, and our future descendants by holding fast to our cultural values. Our values center around generosity of spirit, collaboration, learning, and creating a sustainable future. We actualize this by actively seeking to restore and maintain our cultural heritage and legacies through the following:

Honoring our Elders

Respecting our Elders means making sure that our oral traditions, and stories of times past, help us to grow into our future with a better understanding of who we are, the struggles we had to overcome as a people, and our place in the future through the leadership of the younger generation.

Educating our Youth

Ensuring that our young people are provided every opportunity for educational success that instills within them the Tribal cultural values that will allow them to reach their potential and contribute back to society in positive and meaningful ways.

Collaborating Together

Building our future means centering collaboration—we honor this by always seeking Taysha (partnerships) to ensure the success of everyone.

Maintaining Traditions

Maintaining traditions through building community is one of our central goals. This means acknowledging our history, restoring practices, and memorializing the knowledge that we have.

Protecting our Natural Environment:

We follow the original instructions handed down to us from our ancestors to live in relationship with our lands, waters, plant and animal life, and like our ancestors we are committed to sustaining our human and non-human relatives. This is a covenant we have held since time immemorial and will continue  to maintain for the health and benefit of future generations.