We were lucky to catch up with Jeri Hilt recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jeri, thanks for joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

Some of my earliest memories are of stories, and me wanting to tell stories. I didn’t want to tell just any stories. The stories that mattered most to me were stories of place. More specifically, I wanted to share stories about where my family is originally from in Central Louisiana. I was amazed by the ecological environment from a young age. The tall pine trees, rivers, swamps, and bayous were mesmerizing to me. As a little girl, I was convinced that my grandparents and extended family lived in a magical place, and I wanted to tell everyone about it. I even remember my mother giving me a Dictaphone before I could write so that I could make up my own stories and record them.

My interests and sensibilities haven’t changed much. I’m still using art and narrative elements to tell stories about the regions of Louisiana and the coastal wetlands that I love.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a filmmaker, mixed-media artist, and founder/creator of Atchafalaya Fox—a boutique production company and platform that centers the Black Indigenous Feminine Consciousness.

My work reflects cosmologies, aesthetics, and cannons of thought from communities of color. Much of my film work is regionally specific to Louisiana and the state’s coastal Wetlands. I have been using film and photography to tell the stories of Black Native Women and communities in the South.

I create to establish, nurture, and create greater intimacy with our natural environments and ecological systems through ceremonial art, visual representation, and intentional presence with the land.

I am also a former lecturer of African Studies and International Development issues at Tennessee State and Dillard Universities. I have worked with research, development, and teaching projects in South Sudan, Kenya, Burundi, United Kingdom, New Orleans, and [most recently] the North Louisiana Civil Rights Coalition’s Oral History Project.
I am most proud of my work with other artists and women of color from my family and home communities.
My work has been featured by Afropunk, the Imago Mundi collection for NOMA, Soul Shifting Retreats, and Bitch Media, Boy.Brother.Friend., and more.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

“Bury ‘Em Deep: An Avalanche of Turquoise” is an arts-journalism documentary initiative designed to “mainstream the dialog” regarding the repatriation of Ancestral-human remains from “institutions of historical memory [museums]” to their respective homelands and communities of origin. This mixed-media initiative seeks to both inform and educate communities by using art to honor and memorialize Ancestors who have not yet been returned.

The resurgence of academic and international interests in the longstanding calls for the repatriation of African treasures and human remains is often credited to a speech given in Ouagadougou by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2017. The implications of President Macron’s speech were magnified by the commissioned publication known widely as the Sarr and Savoy Report [Sarr and Savoy 2018]. The specific use of the term “restitution” was viewed as public acknowledgment of the “rightful claims” of Africans for European nations to return: 1) objects of sovereignty, 2) sacred objects, 3) objects of belief, and 4) human remains.

While recent successes like the return of the Benin Bronzes by Germany have garnered public attention, unearthing the reasons that sacred objects and objects of sovereignty have been returned before human remains requires greater levels of truth and accountability from institutions of government, education, and historical memory (museums).
In an article for the Contemporary Journal of African Studies (2020) Ghanaian Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Wazi Apoh, calls for “Mainstreaming the Discourse on Restitution and Repatriation” through interdisciplinary approaches.

As a Black-Indigenous person, my deepest desire is to see these ancestors honored, memorialized properly, and returned. It is also my belief–and ontological orientation–that the return of ancestral human remains will have immeasurable psycho-social, emotional, and planetary healing impacts.

The ceremonial honoring and memorialization of “currently” unburied ancestors is our way of bringing these transformative milestones into a balanced, restorative reality through creative and spiritual practices. At its core, this initiative is rooted in the dispersal of liberatory mechanisms through digital art and art-based journalism.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me the most rewarding part of this work has been the process of bringing visions or ideas into reality. As a conceptual photographer, I am able to see something in my mind’s eye, and then arrange the outside world in a way that makes that vision a concrete image [reality]. The same is true with other mediums like film, writing, or mixed-media work. I love bringing stories and images to life, as well as getting to share that work with others. It’s a way to bring people into your world, which is a unique and deeply significant form of power.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @atchafalaya_fox

Image Credits
All photos taken by Jeri Hilt: first image (personal photo) features Jazmin Jernigan Other images are of Amelie Prescott, jodi, and masked Black Native woman.