LAFITTE, La. -- Giovanni Santini has done just about all he could to prove he's an American Indian over the decades he's lived in his Louisiana bayou town -- even fighting with his fists to defend his bloodline with the Houma tribe.
"Every day at school they'd beat me up, bloody me up, for being indian," recalled the 80-year-old Santini, who has worked on tugboats, laid pipelines and built homes. "We became good fighters because they beat us up so much. Even teachers didn't like me. ... We earned our respect with fights."
Today the folks in Lafitte, a town of fishermen and oil workers, don't doubt that he's a proud member of the 17,000-strong tribe of Houma Indians scattered over south Louisiana's bayou communities.
Not so for the federal government.
For decades, efforts by the Houma to become a federally recognized American Indian tribe have failed. It's a story common across the nation for dozens of groups that have come up short while trying to prove that they should be treated as sovereign nations.
But that could change.
In June, President Barack Obama's administration hit the reset button on how a tribe becomes recognized by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The biggest difference is that a tribe now will have to prove its existence and cohesion starting only in 1900. Until now, tribes had to prove they'd been intact tribes -- with unique identities, cultures and governance -- dating to historical times. For the Houma, that meant tracing a history stretching back to 1682 when French explorers first wrote about them.
Besides the Houma, there are four other tribes alone in coastal Louisiana seeking sovereignty. And much is at stake: water rights, land rights, fishing rights, mineral rights and millions of dollars in federal aid. Sovereignty also brings taxation and lawmaking powers.
Places like Lafitte have been battered by coastal erosion, loss of fisheries and environmental assaults such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
"It's definitely a fight for survival," said Thomas Dardar, chief of the United Houma Nation. "The coast is being washed out. We just go from one disaster after another."
Facing such difficulties, the Houma tribe -- which has been recognized as a tribe by the state -- seeks to maintain its cohesion. It has a tribal council, sponsors cultural events -- such as summer camps and powwows -- and has a cultural center in Golden Meadow.
Lawyer Patty Ferguson, a member of the Pointe-Au-Chien tribe, hopes her tribe can at least have more power to save indian mounds, burial sites and other tribal areas eroding into the Gulf of Mexico.
"With federal recognition, we'll have more voice," Ferguson said.
The federal government now recognizes four tribes in Louisiana -- the Chitimacha, Choctaw, Chousatta and Tunica-Biloxi tribes -- though these were historically larger and intact tribes living farther inland.
The Houma tribe pushed for federal recognition starting before World War II. Rejected by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1994, the tribe has been appealing since. In the 1990s, Louisiana politicians even sought tribal recognition through Congress but failed.
It wasn't that the Houma tribe couldn't prove that it had American Indian ancestry. A Houma tribe was mentioned in French documents as early as 1682. The French said the Houma -- with a red crawfish as their symbol -- were living roughly where Baton Rouge is today and marked their territory with a "Baton Rouge," French for "red stick." Priests historically described the Houma as a rich culture with male and female leaders.
But the federal bureau argued that the tribe eventually became extinct because of intermarriage and disease. It also rejected claims that the Houma was an organized tribe, calling it an amalgamation of American Indian groups.
Many experts disagreed.
"They had a pretty strong case," said Mark Miller, a Southern Utah University history professor who wrote about the Houma petition in a book, Forgotten Tribes.
Miller argued that the Houma case reveals flaws in the tribal recognition process. He said the Bureau of Indian Affairs relied too much on written records, of which none exist for the Houma. The group's isolation in Southern swamps also hurt its chances.
Greatly disappointed, Houma leaders said they've been discriminated against by a federal government more keen on protecting Louisiana oil and gas development than defending tribes.
"There's too much involved," Santini said in an interview in a small wooden home that he built. "Too much land involved. They don't want to give the land back."
His front room exudes his American Indian spirit: Indian art is on display, a handmade spear graces the corner, and framed tribal documents and albums with ancestors' photos abound.
Like many American Indians, he said, his family was illegally forced off their land decades ago.
"The oil companies are the biggest ones to take our land," he said. With pride he added: "We're still indian. They can't take that from me."
A Section on 11/26/2015