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Dana David Gravot

Dana David Gravot received a PhD in Francophone Studies from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2000. She has conducted extensive research with faith healers in her native Louisiana and has collected linguistic data for the Dictionary of Louisiana French. A member of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars, she was awarded the Blanton Owen Award through the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center to continue research into herbal and home remedies used by treaters. 

 


Schedule

11:30 am to 12:30 pm

Capitol Park Museum, Auditorium

Louisiana Traditions: Subsistence and Healing

with Dana David Gravot, Helen A. Regis, and moderator Robert Mann

 

12:45 pm to 1:30 pm

Cavalier House Books Tent

Book Signing


“Je jongle au Bon Dieu quand je traite”: Traiteurs in Francophone Louisiana

“Je jongle au Bon Dieu quand je traite” highlights a local understanding of traitement, or treatment as it is called in English, a healing tradition specific to Francophone Louisiana. After the Acadian resettlement in Louisiana—a Spanish colony at the time—the Cajuns developed a unique, blended culture in response to both a physical environment (which included swamps, bayous, marshes, and prairies) and a social environment that mixed continental and Caribbean French peoples, Germans, Spaniards, Indigenous peoples, and African and Anglo-Americans. Sharing the need for medical attention, the practice of traitement—and the importance of traiteurs—was born.

In this work, in both English and French versions, Dana Davit Gravot explores the practice of traitement through her decades-long experience interviewing the traiteurs themselves. In particular, she explains the complex and often unspoken social rules that underpin the tradition, and notes a few of the common herbal remedies that often accompany a traitement. By combining years of academic study with highly personal and intimate interviews, Gravot underscores the significance of this local healing practice.