On Thursday, Oct. 15, Principal Chief Lora Ann Chaisson of the United Houma Nation hand-delivered a supplement to her tribe’s petition for federal recognition to the Interior Department’s Office of Federal Acknowledgment. It is a petition the Houma people first set in motion in 1979.
“Our people never needed a government to tell us who we are,” Chaisson said in an announcement the Nation published in the Houma Times. “We knew who we were. We had our language, our culture, and our communities on the bayous of Louisiana. Federal recognition does not create our identity. It acknowledges what has always been true.”
Two former principal chiefs, Brenda Dardar Robichaux and Thomas Dardar, went with her, along with members of the Nation’s legal and research team, including Arlinda Locklear, Heather Sibbison and Josh Pitre. Chaisson called the filing the Nation’s most solid petition ever. “We carried this petition in for every generation that has waited,” she said.
Thirty-two years under a “proposed” no
The Houma timeline, as the Nation tells it, is a long one. Tribal leaders Helen Gindrat and Delores Terrebonne began the work in the 1960s after attending a National Congress of American Indians meeting. The Nation filed its letter of intent in 1979, submitted its petition in 1984, received a proposed negative finding in 1994 and filed its rebuttal in 1996.
The 1994 finding, published in the Federal Register on Dec. 22, 1994 (59 FR 66118) and signed by Assistant Secretary Ada E. Deer, did not question that the Houma are Indian people. It found that since 1900 the community had been “identified consistently by anthropologists, state and Federal government representatives, residents of south Louisiana” and others as Indian, and that about 84 percent of members had Indian ancestry. The Department still proposed to deny acknowledgment. It said the petitioner had not shown a social community or political authority before about 1830, and had not shown descent from the historical Houma tribe or any other historical tribe.
That proposal was never finalized. Interior’s petition page for the United Houma Nation (Petitioner #056) still lists it as waiting for the petitioner to supplement its documented petition, with no comment period open. In the meantime, two other Louisiana groups split off and filed petitions of their own, numbered as offshoots of the Houma case. One is the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe, most of whose members were part of the United Houma Nation in 1994, according to Interior. The other is the Biloxi, Chitimacha Confederation of Muskogees. Interior issued proposed findings against both in May 2008, and both are also listed as awaiting supplements.
Why the 2015 rules matter here
The Houma chose to proceed under the acknowledgment rules Interior rewrote in 2015, according to the Department’s petition page. That choice changes the question Interior has to answer.
Under the 1994 rules, petitioners had to prove community and political authority from first sustained contact with Europeans to the present. That is where the Houma case broke down: the 1994 finding turned on the lack of evidence for an ancestral community before 1830. Under the current rule, 25 CFR 83.11, a petitioner must show it “existed as a community from 1900 until the present” and “maintained political influence or authority over its members as an autonomous entity from 1900 until the present.” The 1994 finding had already credited the Houma with outside identification as an Indian community since 1900.
The 2015 rules did not erase the hardest part. Criterion (e) still requires that members “descend from a historical Indian tribe (or from historical Indian tribes that combined and functioned as a single autonomous political entity).” That descent question was a central reason for the 1994 finding, and the new supplement will have to answer it. The current rules also tell evaluators to “take into account historical situations and time periods for which evidence is demonstrably limited or not available,” and say that evidence or methods found sufficient for one petitioner will be sufficient for another.
The Department’s next step is set out on its own website. Once a petitioner listed as supplementing “submits additional materials and declares that its submissions are complete,” Interior reviews them and moves the petition onto the Register of Documented Petitions. The Nation’s announcement does not say whether it has declared the petition complete, and Interior has not yet posted the new narrative.
California tribes are in the same line
The Houma are not alone in this holding pattern. Interior’s list of petitioners that plan to supplement their petitions includes two California tribes: the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation (#082) and the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, Acjachemen Nation (#084A). Like the Houma, they have “no time limit.” The same list includes the Duwamish Indian Tribe of Washington and the Meherrin Tribe of North Carolina.
For the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, the comparison is pointed. The Houma could move their decades-old petition under the 2015 rules because Interior never issued a final decision. The Muwekma did get one. Interior’s final determination against Petitioner #111 took effect Dec. 16, 2002, even though the Department agreed the Tribe had “unambiguous previous Federal acknowledgement until 1927.” Under the 2015 rules, that “no” was meant to be permanent.
It isn’t anymore. As the Muwekma Times reported this week, a 2025 rule lets tribes denied under older standards ask permission to petition again, if they can plausibly show that today’s rules or new evidence would change the result. Tribes denied before Feb. 14, 2025, including the Muwekma, must file that request by Feb. 14, 2030. The same rewritten standards that may help the Houma are the ones the Muwekma could ask Interior to apply to their own record.
What the Houma show
The Houma case is a reminder that recognition is rarely won in one filing. It is won, when it is won, over generations: by elders who started with a trip to an NCAI meeting, by leaders who kept the case going for 30 years after a 1996 rebuttal, and by lawyers and researchers who stay on a case for decades.
It is also a reminder of how slowly Washington moves. A tribe that the federal government’s own reviewers found in 1994 had been identified as an Indian community since 1900 is still waiting in 2026 to learn whether the United States will deal with it as a government.
“We are proud of this petition,” Chaisson said. “It tells the true story of the Houma people, and we are confident it will be heard.”
Sources: United Houma Nation announcement (Houma Times, Oct. 16, 2026); Federal Register, 59 FR 66118-66119 (Dec. 22, 1994); Interior Department Office of Federal Acknowledgment petition and status pages for Petitioners #056, #056B and #111, and its “Petitions in Process” list; BIA press release on the Pointe-au-Chien amended proposed finding (May 30, 2008); 25 CFR 83.10, 83.11 and 83.49.
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