Winter Solstice 2025:

Two years ago we gathered on the Lafitte Greenway to set intentions as a community to build the Nanih Bvlbancha and we celebrate Winter Solstice as the birthday for our neutral ground mound. 

The first Indigenous earthwork to be built in south Louisiana in hundreds of years, built by many hearts and hands; And we have been gathering there, building with community, and celebrating seasonally the winter and summer solstice and at the spring and fall equinox.

We are grateful to all of our partners and the people who have made the Nanih Bvlbancha possible.

This year, due to transitions and unfores circumstances, we have made the very difficult decision to not gather our community together this year. 

We are working very hard in hopes of inviting everyone together again at the Nanih Bvlbancha soon. In the meantime, we ask our beloved community to gift the Nanih with your words, testimonials, memories, stories of your time at the Nanih Bvlbancha that we can share on our website and social media. 

You can email your words, photos, field notes  or make a graphic for social media that we can archive and re-share to nanihbvlbancha@gmail.com.

Or submit a note to the Nanih here 

Mvto, yakuke, thanks to the community the Nanih has built around herself since. We wish you all warmth and light at this sacred turn of the seasons, and we'll see y'all again soon!

2024: 

We invite you to join us in tending to this special place in the months and years to come! 

Nanih Bvlbancha was built on the Lafitte Greenway between January and March 2024 with community members actively involved in the build process - hauling soil, clay, oyster shells, bagasse, and driftwood to the site, shoveling and stomping to compress the earthen materials into a mound shape. Intertribal community members embedded prayers, gifts, offerings, dances, and even a Houma language dictionary into its layers. 

We wove palmetto mats for erosion control, and drew “love letters'' to the mound, using paints made of native plant, clay and ochre pigments! We envision Nanih Bvlbancha as a neutral ground where we honor our Ancestors and yours, their stories and your stories as well, their unbelievable ingenuity and the ingenuity in each of us! We’ve gathered soils from along the Mississippi watershed, from all across this continent, and from other continents. We added those gifts of soil into our mound to honor the distant lands of many cultures and many peoples who call Bvlbancha | New Orleans home. We honor the powerful life force that is the Mississippi River, as she carries silt from other places to form the precious land we stand on, the nutrient rich soil that grows our food, and the water that nourishes the many beings of this place. 

Our Nanih calls attention to the lands and other mounds we are losing in South Louisiana, and the urgent need to protect coastal and tribal communities, marking the four directions, calling us into a balanced way of being, recognizing that the health of our world, and ourselves, depends on that balance. We welcome these teachings in these precarious times. Nanih Bvlbancha reclaims a place for Indigenous peoples in the heart of Bvlbancha and honors, not only our ancestral histories, but also, our contemporary realities. It anchors us in relationship, reciprocity, respect for all beings, and inspires opportunities to gather as a  culturally diverse community, educate in traditional ways that involve active participation, care and tend in more sustainable ways for our native plants, play ancient Southeastern ball games, and more! We invite you to be a part of Nanih Bvlbancha.

Join us Saturday, April 6 from 10am–3pm to engage with the space, its myriad stories, Indigenous crafts, food, and games. Prospect New Orleans extends a warm invitation to everyone to witness this transformative project, which bridges past, present, and future, celebrating the collective memory and ongoing narrative of our vibrant city.

For further details, please visit www.nanihbvlbancha.net and www.prospectneworleans.org. 

As the final chapter of this iteration of the Artists of Public Memory commission, Nanih Bvlbancha not only commemorates the historical significance of earthen mounds but also reignites a sacred space for dialogue, remembrance, and cultural exchange. This project embodies the spirit of rewilding, community, gathering/togetherness, education, and ingenuity/thrivance, offering a platform for traditional and contemporary expressions of identity and belonging.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, 

PLEASE VISIT: WWW.NANIHBVLBANCHA.NET AND WWW.PROSPECTNEWORLEANS.ORG

FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM: @NANIHBVLBANCHA, @PROSPECTNOLA, @NOLAGULF