Protecting Our Tribe’s Rights and Preserving Our History

Our purpose in all of this is to get back what rightfully belongs to this tribe, so our Great Great Grand Father Red Shoe, can lay in Peace knowing his rightful family is living the Dream he Dreamed for them. It’s our desire to make and keep the identity he was known to go by, A “Peace Keeper”.

My Life’s dream, since my mom had me bring out her old bible, where she kept family history, has been a journey with many adversaries and adversities.
One I intended to follow through till the completion was reached. That was to get back what was stolen from our family, their rights to their Federal Recognition through affirmation. I, along with others, have fought a long and diligent, courageous fight to accomplish this for our families at the Coushatta enrollment office in their court system, which the case was removed from – with never the case being completely heard in front of two judges, T.J. Davis and Pappy Little. Pappy Little is the last judge I went in front of for an updated hearing, that is when I learned the case had been removed. There was no longer a case. The case was and has not been heard as of yet.

I came home and began the process of going in front of the OFA Office 2009 as Flo Pete and Shirley Doucet told me to do at my last visit to their enrollment office in 2009.

My life’s dream was to be able to one day share all this journey with our wonderful family who came from the original Koasati Indians who settled in Indian Village in the 1700’s, who names the settlement after arriving there. I want them to know their history, the lifestyles, travels, and the things that makes us who we are today. Give back a heritage that is so rich and full of Ancestry History. We come from Historical Native Americans, Red Shoe, Seyho, Alexander McGivallery, and John Abbey/Abbot, through our Great Grandmother Camille Abbot/Abbey Bushnell. It’s important to know about who one is and where they come from, the struggles they went through so we could have the things they intended us to have and be proud of.

In doing this, we want to create and complete a history that will connect up to our past and well into the future our past generation of family left to us.
Our families from generations back are what has kept our family going, made this family one to be proud to be a part of.

This Red Shoe Tribe is from the Original Mother Tribe called Koasati, that travelled its way from Tennessee, to Mississippi, then on into Bayou Buff, Louisiana. After building and setting up the Nevil, Bushnell family at Bayou Buff, they were burned our once their identity was found out. They took the little goods, canoes, horses, and a buggy, the few things they could save, moved down the Calcasieu River, settled on the Bluff at Indian Village, as they so named it. This was so anyone coming into that area would know, this is Indian Land and Indian Country.

I am going to add that our family was accused by the Coushatta Tribe of taking their land. That is not true, was never true. Some of the family moved on in to Poke Country in Texas. The governor at the time gave them some land that did prove to be land that belonged to white people, then he corrected it by giving them 600 acres of land by the Alabama Indian Tribe. They was kin to the Alabama Indians through marriage into that tribe, so it was a good solution to settle the land grant that went wrong. This is well-recorded, it is in our history, correcting the accusation.

Whatever it takes, I will see this through as God gives me Grace, to the end.

Janet S. Laughlin
Chair