Please join the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and Northwest Louisiana History Museum as Dr. Shane Rasmussen, Director of the Louisiana Folklife Center and Professor of English at NSU, interviews Ms. Gauthier about her traditions and her work.
An Adeasonos and member of the Choctaw- Apache Tribe of Ebarb, Louisiana, and president of Ho Minti Society, Inc., Rhonda Gauthier grew up outside of Zwolle. As a young girl she began learning traditional arts from the women in her immediate and extended family, including crochet, embroidery, hand sewing, quilting, cooking, baking, and animal tending. Her grandmother taught her midwifery, the use of natural herbs to treat common ailments, and herb gardening.
After earning a BA in anthropology and history from NSU, she pursued a successful career in historical interpretation and cultural preservation at various sites across northwestern Louisiana. After her retirement, she has continued to volunteer. In 2005, she produced the film Maize to Masa, which documents the Choctaw-Apache process of nixtamalization, a traditional maize preparation process in which dried kernels are cooked and steeped in an alkaline solution, usually water and food-grade lime, to make hominy. The Choctaw- Apache community still uses this process to make tamale dough.