Monique Verdin is an art maker, wild gardener, story keeper, and a citizen of the Houma Nation. She supports the Okla Hina Ikhish Holo, network of Indigenous gardeners, as the Women's Earth and Climate Action Networks Gulf South food sovereignty coordinator. Monique is the primary steward of the Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange, facilitating community-built record-making, experiential education, research, and site activations celebrating the diversity of coastal communities and native ecologies present in the wetlands, swamps, and prairies of south Louisiana. Monique co-stewards Bvlbancha Liberation Radio and is a SwampNet collaborator - experimenting with autonomous and alternative communications that operate as archives and emergency channels for community connections.
Monique also co-stewards the Nanih Bvlbancha earthen mound on the Lafitte Greenway in New Orleans and is a Gulf South Open School collaborator in residence at the Neighborhood Story Project.
2025 : End of Summer update + Download
September 14, 2025
Hurricane Katrina forced me out of my cellular comfort zone in 2005, no calls could get out during evacuations - so we started texting out of necessity. 20 years later I'm working on autonomous and alternative communication systems...I think we were all still on dialup in 2005 and internet wasn’t integrated into our lives at that time. But a friend in Montana found my grandmother was located in Houston at the Astrodome after scanning a public Red Cross spreadsheet of people disconnected from families and homes. I didn’t have a Facebook account, instagram didn’t exist. I was still shooting film with medium format and 35mm cameras.
This 2025, season of 20 years post hurricane Katrina has conjured lots of lost memories and contemporary reflections; And I’ve had the chance to be in conversation with lots of folks to mourn what was lost, and share adaptations and responses and questions that continue to challenge how we live here at the edge of the Mississippi - Atchafalaya River Basin.
There is a quote in a Born After the Storm story, written by Joi and produced by Be Loud studios that says “holding on means letting go of who you were.” (I highly recommend listening to all the stories and following the work of Be Loud.)
I plan on spending less time here in the metaverse and will be more active on the World Wide Web at the sites below:
www.OHIH.net Okla Hina Ikhish Holo Network of Indigenous Gardeners in the Gulf South
But I wanted to share a little bit of a late summer download / update / things I’m excited about/save the date list….more info can be found at links listed above, highlights below
Bvlbancha Liberation Radio had a summer SwampNet intensive with Dr Jen Liu and the Indigenous Environmental Network here in Bvlbancha. We were able to get our communication system to send long range radio messages from Algiers Point to Bourbon Street and connected community gardens that can be activated as emergency communication sites. More about the project can be found at Swampnet.info and can be read about in our latest article Signals Through the Storm, published in ACM Interactions.
I had the chance to be in conversation with my brilliant comrades, friend/collaborator Nick Slie and my cousin playwright Lisa D’Amour, that we titled, We Come from a Place of Many Tongues for the international Critical Stages journal. Big thanks to the editors for the invitation!
The Neighborhood Story Project and the Land Memory Banks exhibition Botanica is still on view at the Louisiana State Museum Cabildo until 2026. Go see it if you can! It’s such a sweet spectrum of gardens and growers and so much more! Announcements coming soon regarding fall events.
No Matter the Water is a new podcast series produced by Rachel Nederveld that I am grateful to be featured in a suite of stories. You can listen wherever you get you podcast (please don’t use Spotify)
Bvlbancha Liberation Radio has been busy working to proof of concept our emergency communication hub. And super excited about our fall programming. Tune in to our live show on Tuesdays from 4-8pm cst.
The Nanih Bvlbancha will be hosting a plant, seed and clothing swap on the Lafitte Greenway, Saturday September 20th from 4-7pm!
SAVE THE DATES:
November 1, 2025
All Saints Day Public Altar hosted by the Neighborhood Story Project and the Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange
November 21, 2025
Happy 20th Birthday Southern Miss Medicine Wheel Garden
December 21, 2025
Nanih Bvlbancha Winter Solstice Celebration
