Karankawa Carancahua Carancagua Karankaway

Abstract

This chapter examines the process that poet, John Pluecker, and visual artist, Nuria Montiel, initiated to realize Karankawa Carancahua Carancagua Karankaway, a visual and sound poem installed at Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas in 2016. The installation was a meditation on language and memory in the context of colonial power structures that have attempted to eradicate one of the Indigenous cultures that inhabited Southeast Texas: the Karankawa. The project first emerged from Pluecker’s investigation into the archival documentation of the Karankawa language assembled by colonial settlers, explorers, and scholars in Southeast Texas; this research found a poetic form in Pluecker’s 2016 book, Ford Over). Collaboration with Mexico City-based artist Nuria Montiel led to dialogue and conversation with contemporary Indigenous residents of the Texas Gulf Coast. The dominant historical narrative in Texas contends that the Karankawa people were driven to extinction; however, members of the Texas Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe along with other Native Texans refute these accounts as they reclaim their own Karankawa ancestors, grounding themselves in the stories and lifeways of their own families. Through this sound and visual poem, we asked: Can languages be completely lost, or might they survive in ways that are both perceptible and imperceptible?