Elder-led initiatives meant to empower the next generation.

Ishak elders are the first to lead our community into the future. By sharing stories and traditions, they pave the way for younger generations to come.

Ishak Culture Surviving and Thriving

Ishak in Arts:

One Louisiana art form often associated with the Ishak is ZYDECO music. Not only do many zydeco musicians recognize their heritage in the tribe, but the geography of zydeco generally overlaps with traditional tribal lands. Some scholars, such as Rain Prud’homme-Cranford, have noticed traditional Gulf South Native American musical and dancing forms within zydeco culture. This heritage led Hubert Singleton to title his monograph about the Ishak, The Indians Who Gave Us Zydeco.

Contemporary Ishak poets and playwrights include Jeffery U. Darensbourg, Carolyn Dunn, Rain Prud’homme-Cranford, Andrew Jolivétte, Maaliyah Papillion, and Tanner Menard. The works of all these writers focus in some way on mixed Indigenous identity.

Ishak baskets are preserved in several prominent museums, including the National Museum of the American Indian. Contemporary Ishak descendants who also continue to bring the arts of basketry, shell-work, and beadwork into our living cultural practice include artists such as Tee C. Shawnee, EL Kiki Shawnee, Carolyn Dunn, Papa Lyles Prudhomme-Cranford, and Honokee Dunn Anderson.

The Ishakkoy Language

The language of the Ishak is properly known as Ishakkoy, “Ishak talk,” or Yukhiti Kóy, “the talk of the sort of people we are.” It has been incorrectly known as Atakapan, in a way similar to the misnaming of the Ishak themselves. The language was described by Albert Gatschet and John R. Swanton of the Bureau of American Ethnology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Contemporary linguist David V. Kaufman has both developed a new orthography of the language and published a revised and reorganized version of the Gatschet and Swanton dictionary, making the materials more accessible. A revised grammar of the language has been published by Geoffrey D. Kimball. Contemporary narratives in the language have been composed by tribal member Russell Reed based on these new materials. New poems and songs have been composed in Ishakkoy by Tanner Menard, Joseph B. Darensbourg, Carolyn Dunn, Rain Prud’homme-Cranford, Maaliyah Papillion and Jeffery U. Darensbourg.