The Chitimacha, the 1,000-member tribe known as "the People of Many Waters," are heirs to an unbroken 8,000-year past. Living off the bounty of Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin, one of the richest inland estuaries on the continent, this indigenous nation persists and rejuvenates its culture despite gradually losing its ancestral territory to environmental and man-made forces. NATIVE WATERS: A CHITIMACHA RECOLLECTION journeys into sacred places of the Atchafalaya Basin with author Roger Stouff, the son of the last chief of the Chitimacha Indians and a keeper of his family's oral tradition. Stouff shares native stories, beliefs and perspectives about this often overlooked people. An avid fly-fisherman, Stouff laments the certain demise of the river basin, the depletion of its sacred fishing and hunting grounds and the painful "vanishings" of the time-honored Chitimacha way of life.
