Speaking on Louisiana Creole History

The Evolution of Representation of Louisiana Creole Through the Lens of Laura Plantation.

Mark your calendars for an upcoming event on Speaking on Louisiana Creole History," with guest speakers from Laura Plantation. They will dive into the subjects of language, storytelling, cultural divergences, architecture, identity, and more!

Exploring Louisiana Creole Culture and Heritage
Louisiana Creole culture, flourishing prior to the U.S. acquisition in 1803, is a unique blend of European, African, and Native American traditions. It revolved around the French language and Catholicism, distinct from the emerging American culture. This culture was elitist, emphasizing family ties, and pragmatic due to isolation. Class divisions, economic reliance on slavery, and a strong attachment to tradition characterized Creole Louisiana. While global Creole cultures share many features, Louisiana remains the only U.S. representative. Recent shifts in meaning, influenced by English assimilation and varying Anglo definitions, obscure the culture's true essence.

This discussion aims to celebrate the beauty of our Louisiana Creole heritage! Join us during Creole Heritage Month (October) for this exceptional event.

Joseph Dunn 
For more than 25 years, Joseph Dunn’s understanding of Louisiana’s distinct culture, heritage languages and history has led him to work at the highest levels of the state’s tourism and cultural industries.

In his longstanding role as Director of Public Relations and Marketing at Laura: Louisiana’s Creole Heritage Site, Joseph participates in research projects and the construction of the interpretive narrative of the historic site.

He is a recognized thought-leader in matters related to the social, professional, and economic value of Louisiana’s French and Creole heritage languages, and he consults and collaborates on a variety of projects to that end. Joseph has served as Executive Director of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), is a past board president of the Alliance Française de la Nouvelle-Orléans and is currently a board member of the Conseil des sociétés françaises de la Nouvelle-Orléans.

He regularly contributes to articles and publications, and he can be seen and heard on French-language television and radio broadcasts in which he unceasingly defends and promotes the historic and contemporary diversity of Louisiana’s French and Creole- speaking populations that include people of Native American, African and European descent.

Joseph Dunn is a Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Mérite (France) and in 2022, he was inducted into the Ordre des Francophones d’Amérique (Québec). 

Katy Shannon 
Katy Morlas Shannon is a tenth-generation Louisiana native. She received her master’s degree in History from Louisiana State University in 2005. She has dedicated her career as a professional historian to uncovering the stories of enslaved people. She was instrumental in the early stages of research for Whitney Plantation and created a searchable online database of over 400 enslaved individuals at Evergreen Plantation along with biographies of enslaved people for the plantation's website. Currently she is the historian at Laura Plantation, where she co-curated an exhibit about the plantation's enslaved community. Her non-fiction biography Antoine of Oak Alley: The Unlikely Origin of Pecans and the Enslaved Gardener Who Cultivated Them was published in November 2021 and received the Phillis Wheatley Award for the best biography of 2022 from the Sons and Daughters of the Middle Passage.

Lawson Ota
Lawson Ota is the founder of Tours by Marguerite, a tourism company offering tours in French and English of historic places in New Orleans. He is also a teacher of French as a foreign language. He is trained in linguistics having graduated in 2012 in French, linguistics and German. He has devoted his career to the defence of the heritage languages ​​of Louisiana (that is, Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole).