Jason Pitre preserves Native American culture stories with his oyster crop at Bayou Rosa
Growing up in a segregated Louisiana that denied Native Americans access to education, Bayou Rosa owner Jason Pitre’s grandfather, a descendant of the United Houma Nation, turned to the water to feed himself and his family, pulling oysters and crabs from shallow canals. Oystering is in Pitre’s blood, but the heritage flowing in his veins began pumping long before his grandfather was born.
“The mounds my people built more than 1,000 years ago contain oyster shells, evidence of our relationship with them for centuries,” Pitre says. And yet, for years, he pursued other work at the insistence of his parents. “My grandfather worked the water his entire life, and thrived most of it, but coastal erosion began making it harder, and my family didn’t me want in it,” he says. While working as a travel nurse in California, he discovered off-bottom oyster farming, giving him the solution he needed to return home and follow in his grandfather’s footsteps.
“Grandpa and I transitioned his fishable leases to farm leases and put seed in the water in 2017, creating Bayou Rosa,” Pitre says. Now, Pitre farms seven acres using floating cages, and Bayou Rosa fans find them at hot-ticket restaurants like New Orleans’ Porgy’s and King Brasserie. Last year, Hurricane Helene wiped out half of the farm’s just-put-out seed, yet Pitre found a silver lining. “It gave me some time to move Bayou Rosa from being just a farm to a cultural preservation vehicle.”
Today, Bayou Rosa raises oysters and needed conversations, sharing Native American culture stories with its crop. “Our parish holds Native American summer camps, and we participated, working with the kids to make traditional mud and moss ovens to roast oysters the way our people once did,” Pitre says.
Storms continue to threaten all oyster farms, and Bayou Rosa’s spot in open water increases the danger. “Erosion changed our site, and we’re unprotected now, so little storms can have big impacts,” Pitre says. The damage from Hurricane Ida in 2021 almost ended the farm. “For a few hours after, I was thinking, ‘We’re done.’” But then Pitre looked at his five-year-old son. “I realized this is bigger than me,” he says. “We’re doing something important down here, and I’m not gonna let my family tradition die on my watch.”
“Our oysters have medium salinity with a bit of a vegetable broth note. And they’re a little creamy, too.”
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Jennifer Stewart Kornegay
Freelance writer and editor Jennifer Stewart Kornegay lives in Montgomery, Alabama, and writes about food, food culture and variety of other lifestyle topics for national and regional publications including Garden & Gun, Southern Living, The Local Palate, Conde Nast Traveler, Modern Farmer, The Bitter Southerner and AllRecipes.com.