| Summary: | Immersed in a world that echoes a sentiment of abysmal loss (disappearance of cultural diversity, global warming, etc.), the contemporary man’s quest is now to preserve this endangered heritage. From the perspective of an urgent ethnography, indigenous peoples offer the perfect image of the heir, one who possesses an ecosophic wisdom, which relates to the harmonious relationship to the land—a dimension that is often forgotten in today’s world. This perception is only partially correct. Moreover, this rather static attitude freezes the inventiveness of first nations in relation to their environment. The Houma Indians, people of the marshes of southeast Louisiana, have not inherited their current territory. Dispossessed of their ancestral land where they subsisted on agriculture, they have found refuge in this coastal area in the early nineteenth century. Thus deprived of their spatial cues and their traditional pattern of subsistence, they had no choice but to tame a hostile environment and to entirely reconstruct their material culture that was now dependent on water. Not only have they since become fishermen, trappers and gatherers, but also their worldview completely changed, switching its focus from the land to the bayous, the lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. This essay focuses on the dynamic mechanisms for understanding space and the gradual development of a new sense of place. Addressing the current environmental situation (ecocide), it ultimately demonstrates the limits that indigenous people now face in reconstructing and sustaining their identity on a territory that will soon vanish. Plongé dans un monde qui ne lui renvoie en écho que le sentiment d’une perte abyssale (réchauffement climatique, réduction de la diversité culturelle, etc.), l’homme contemporain s’est mis en quête de préserver cet héritage en péril. Dans ce qu’il convient d’appeler une ethnographie d’urgence, les peuples indigènes offrent alors la figure du parfait héritier, celui qui détient cette sagesse écosophique énonciatrice d’un ...
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