Hand Painted Prairie des Femmes Ceramics

​

PDF Wiki

​

Prairie des Femmes

​

My mom likes to pick wild cherries

​

Jazz Fest Folklife Village

​

Ashlee Wilson of Prairie des Femmes

 Ashlee Eastin Wilson is an artist, musician, writer, Cajun radio announcer and teacher from Ville Platte, Louisiana. She is an autodidact in Louisiana (Cajun/Creole) French and is known for her documentation of the folklore of her native Evangeline Parish and the locale Prairie des Femmes in Saint Landry Parish where she lives.

Ashlee Wilson was raised in Ville Platte, Louisiana and graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in Secondary English Education. An anglophone by birth, she became fluent in French by attending University Saint Anne in Nova Scotia. She is a diarist and draws endless inspiration from hundreds of handmade seasonal journals and books that she creates. She taught English literature and French for over a decade in the Louisiana public school system, namely Beau Chêne High School and the Academy of the Sacred Heart at Grand Coteau. With grants procured by her French student’s work, she was able to furnish her classroom with sets of the Dictionary of Louisiana French as well as other cultural titles. 

Ashlee dedicated years to careful documentation of the radio program La Tasse de Café on 92.5 KVPI, transcribing stories, local folklore, word play and herbal remedies, as well as modern commercials and snippets of modern Louisiana French life. This work culminated with being hired by KVPI as the youngest female host to announce the news in French, the Tasse de Cafe Radio Program, and even hosting the world-famous Saturday morning French broadcast from Fred’s Lounge in Mamou. The written and recorded documentation from these years serves as the source for her current work in self-taught folklore. Additionally this work prepared her to act as the French announcer for “Bonjour, Louisiane” a morning French music and news program at KRVS in Lafayette, Louisiana. She replaced the long-time host Pete Bergeron who initiated the program and held the position for 40 years. 

She served on the board of directors for the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) from (2009-2012) and as a Louisiana ambassador to the Centre des Francophonie des Ameriques in Montreal in 2010.

In 2012 she began the Prairie des Femmes blog that became an early online resource for authentic information about Louisiana language and culture. The blog began as daily documentation of the place known in French as Prairie des Femmes (Women’s Prairie) and research on the origin of this place name. It grew to include photography, memes, writing, French transcriptions, recordings, folklore, music, lessons, and more. It was one of the first websites to offer visual media in Louisiana French and incorporate local folklore and music lyrics into modern media for a younger audience wishing to learn.  Ashlee uses her knowledge of modern American culture and blends it organically with the archaic knowledge found in Louisiana French. She has served the community by providing bilingual announcements at the Lafayette Regional Airport, translating the Opelousas Travelers Guide to French, appearing on radio and podcasts such as Louisiane en Vers and Charrer Veiller, and by hosting the monthly French table in Opelousas as well as the Arnaudville French Table at Nunu's. 

As a writer she has created hundreds of hand decorated journals in Louisiana French, as well as dozens of niche zines. She has published as a guest columnist in local papers such as the Advertiser, Advocate, The Current, Les Bonnes Nouvelles, New Orleans Magazine and Acadiana Profile. Her work has been featured in 64 Parishes, Bitter Southerner, Oxford American, Country Roads Magazine and the New York Times. She published her first work ‘Ô Malheureuse’ on UL Press in 2019, a first of its kind collection of modern Louisiana women’s writings in French. The collection began on the PDF blog and was published by UL Press and released in time for the 2019 Festival Acadiens and Creole dedicated to the contributions of women in Louisiana music.

As a photographer, Ashlee has self published three books, The Plains of Mary, a photo book of Marian yard shrines, Prairie des Femmes: Portraits of a Place, a collection of surreal photographs from the countryside of Acadiana, and finally A Prairie des Femmes Field Guide, a collection of art and writing from the PDF blog. Her work has been featured in Louisiana Cultural Vistas, 64 Parishes, and she has shown her photographs with photographers Denny Culbert and Jo Vidrine. She had thirty of her photos shown as part of Frank Relle’s New Orleans in Photographs exhibit in Moscow in 2014. Her work has also been recognized by photographer Zack Smith’s project « My Louisiana Muse » as well as Nick Slie’s « Cry You One. » In June 2024 her land work, as well as her work with the rare medicinal plant vinéraire was featured in Monique Verdin and Rachel Breunlin's Botanica exhibit at the Cabildo in New Orleans.

Her family and home were featured in the Home and Garden Section of the New York Times in 2012. As recently as 2021 her work was featured by National Geographic and in a documentary that won the CreateLouisiana culture grant, Intention, by Olivia Perillo and Syd Horn. It is a film project that seeks to explore the untold feminine narratives of Cajun and Creole artists and healers.

She is a musician, well known in south Louisiana as a professional triangle player. She also sings and writes in Louisiana French, incorporating modern music with that from the Cajun and Creole archives. Her first original song ‘Maison Blanche’ released on The 78 Project in 2014, and in 2020 Nouveau Electric Records released her ‘Trois Rangs’ on 45rpm vinyl, remixed by Korey Richey (LCD Soundsystem). She has played triangle on the recent PBS documentary American Epic.

In 2024 Ashlee's work for the Prairie des Femmes was included in the exhibition Botanica at the Louisiana State Museum at the Cabildo in New Orleans. In 2025 she showed her paintings, journals and plant research with the medicinal known as vinéraire in Prairie Stories, a collaborative show at the Acadiana Center of the Arts in Lafayette, Louisiana. Prairie Stories  featured a collection of artists and their work on the folkloric and environmental realms of the Louisiana Prairie.  She has spoken at the Louisiana Folklore Society meeting on the Prairie des Femmes Blog and digital folklore, as well as at the Bayou Culture Collaborative meeting where she spoke on her ethnobotany research. Most recently in May 2026 she presented in the Folklife Village's Past to Pixel tent which featured digital folklore
at the New Orleans' Jazz fest.

As of 2023 Ashlee is the lower school French teacher at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. In August 2024, she began leading the Arnaudville French Table at Nunu's Cultural Center. 

Ashlee raises her sons in the Prairie des Femmes. 

Articles 

Je suis la Prairie des Femmes

​

La pluie tombe sur ma reineaume 

Mes larmes font une prairie tremblante 

La terre ondule en bas de mes pieds 

Je suis la Prairie des Femmes 

La Prairie a une Mémoire

 The Prairie Has a Memory

Ashlee Wilson, 2024

La prairie a une mémoire. The prairie has a memory.

The prairie has a memory. Places retain une souvenance of what was before. There is memory in the presence of the plants that remain, the seeds in the ground, and if we are present enough it is revealed. In our stewardship of this environment we are invited to remember. The indigenous tribes of Louisiana were masters at management practices such as prairie burning and worked with the seasons and cycles of the year to maximize productivity with minimal impact. In colonial times settlers traveled by ship across oceans and made linguistic parallels between the prairie landscape and the open sea. Despite the decline of this habitat, the prairie retains its memory and so do we.

The feminine imagery displayed across the Cajun Prairie in the form of Marian grottos is a visible symbol of our reverence for the feminine as well as the deeper indigenous matriarchy that permeates our cultural memory. Cultures over the world recognize water goddesses as protectoresses over long voyages. In South Louisiana perhaps the most visible of these is Our Lady of the Assumption, known in Acadian culture as the Maris Stella or Star of the Sea, but also in Yemayá, the Yoruba water goddess. 

The prairie has an outer and inner life. On the visible outside the folklore is French, American, Cajun or Creole, but underneath the deep-rooted grasses there are native seeds, as well as sacred indigenous relics that remain. Research of the origin of the name Prairie des Femmes (Prairie of the Women) has led to the story of it being a place where indigenous women stayed when their men left. This research has also manifested on a personal level into a tangible reverence for the land and recognition of the fragility of the loss of not just the prairie soils, but also the stories and the languages that existed here. 

My act of restoration for the prairie has been to inhabit the Prairie des Femmes and act as a scribe for her folklore as well as a steward by encouraging her native flora and fauna. One of the proofs of this work has been the appearance in my overworked sweet potato field of the native medicinal pseudognaphalium obtousifolium, fragrant rabbit tobacco, known locally as vinéraire (vulneraire). I found it by its fragrance in the back of my prairie in 2011, and in a similar way to the gathering of Prairie des Femmes origin stories, I have begun to share this medicine with locals who have memories and need of it. 

Ashlee Wilson, a native of Ville Platte, Louisiana, is a teacher, artist, and self-taught Louisiana French speaker. She is widely recognized for her writing, photography, and visual journals documenting her journey in learning Louisiana French, as well as her work with native plants and folk herbalism. Ashlee created the Prairie des Femmes blog in 2012 to chronicle daily life on her historical prairie. She is also the author of The Plains of Mary (2014) and the Ô Malheureuse collection (2019, UL Press). She currently teaches French at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau.

The Prairie Has a Memory pays homage to her home, La Prairie des Femmes, in St. Landry Parish. This historic prairie, documented in records from the mid- to late 18th century, lies near the boundaries of the Attakapas-Ishak and Opelousas territories, just east of the sacred hills of Grand Coteau. Once a sweet potato farm, the land has become a site of restoration under Ashlee’s care. For over 20 years, she and her family have cultivated native plants, reintroduced traditional land stewardship practices such as periodic burns, minimal mowing, and abstaining from chemical herbicides, all in an effort to restore the prairie’s natural balance and preserve its memory.

Prairie des Femmes at Botanica

Life Everlasting | Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium

Ashlee Wilson, 2024

Installation

In "Café des Exiles," George Washington Cable reports,

"An antiquated story-and-a-half Creole cottage sitting right down on the banquette, as do the Choctaw (women) who sell bay and sassafras and life-everlasting."

What was this old herb the Choctaw women sold while sitting on the banquette in New Orleans? Used by traiteurs in down the bayou communities for centuries, life everlasting known also as fragrant rabbit tobacco and vinéraire is revered for her healing properties, as well as a distinct syrup smell. Indigenous people of this land used her as a sweat lodge and funerary herb, smudge, lung and skin healer, as well as psychological aid. She is a spirit plant and integral part of smoking blends of the Americas. In Creole culture, she was used as a remedy for fever.

Living in southwest Louisiana, I was told that vinéraire was a "lost" plant, her absence a sign of the impact of saltwater intrusion and habitat destruction. But in 2011, a patch appeared at my home, Prairie des Femmes (Prairie of the Women), in St. Landry Parish. I first realized vinéraire was growing by smelling its fragrance. I often say she's smart like a chaoui (racoon). If you leave food out and make a habitat for it, she will follow you around. A mid-successional species, she can appear when a prairie begins to heal, coming back to its original vitality. The quest to identify and grow her has given me what feels like a secret wink from the universe.

From the first three volunteer plants, there are now over 200. I celebrated every new plant, complimented her, called her "darling," manicured the caterpillars, cleared the weeds and protected her from poison as well as from man's cruel blade. The plants multiplied and they got bigger. In addition to making medicines, I save the seeds and share them with native women, and all those who need it, in an effort to return this important healing herb to the land and people of south Louisiana. 

edited by Rachel Breunlin

The Prairie Has a Memory Ashlee Wilson, 2024

Ashlee Wilson is a Ville Platte native and self-taught Louisiana French speaker. She is a teacher and artist known for her writing, photography and visual journals that document her acquisition of Louisiana French, as well as native plants and folk herbalism. She is the creator of the Prairie des Femmes blog (2012), an online space that documents this historical prairie's daily life, as well as The Plains of Mary (2014) and the Ô Malheureuse collection (2019 UL Press). She teaches French at the Academy of the Sacred Heart at Grand Coteau.

The Prairie Has a Memory is an homage to her home, La Prairie des Femmes (Prairie of the Women), in St. Landry Parish. Found in records since the mid to late eighteenth century, the land is located in an area of high native traffic near the boundaries of the Attakapas-Ishak and Opelousas territories, just east of the sacred hills of Grand Coteau. A former sweet potato farm, for more than twenty years, Ashlee has cultivated plants and knowledge of the prairie with her family as an act of restoration- planting native species, and implementing a plan to minimally mow, periodically burn, and forgo poison on the land.

Herbal healing and historic plant lore are highlighted in 'Botanica' at New Orleans' Cabildo

Ashlee Eastin Wilson

 Ashlee Eastin Wilson is an artist, musician, writer, Cajun radio announcer and teacher from Ville Platte, Louisiana. She is an autodidact in Louisiana (Cajun/Creole) French and is known for her documentation of the folklore of native Evangeline Parish and the locale Prairie des Femmes in Saint Landry Parish through her bilingual commonplace books.

Ashlee was raised in Ville Platte, Louisiana and graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in Secondary English Education. An anglophone by birth, she became fluent in French by attending University Saint Anne in Nova Scotia. She is a diarist and draws inspiration from hundreds of handmade journals and books that she creates. She taught English literature and French for over a decade in the Louisiana public school system, namely Beau Chêne High School and the Academy of the Sacred Heart at Grand Coteau. With grants procured by her French student’s work, she was able to furnish her classroom with sets of the Dictionary of Louisiana French as well as other cultural titles. 

Ashlee dedicated years to careful documentation of the radio program La Tasse de Café on 92.5 KVPI, transcribing stories, local folklore, word play and herbal remedies, as well as modern commercials and snippets of modern Louisiana French life. This work culminated with being hired by KVPI as the youngest female host to announce the news in French, the Tasse de Cafe Radio Program, and even hosting the world-famous Saturday morning French broadcast from Fred’s Lounge in Mamou. The written and recorded documentation from these years serves as the source for her current work in self-taught folklore. Additionally this work prepared her to act as the French announcer for “Bonjour, Louisiane” a morning French music and news program at KRVS in Lafayette, Louisiana. She replaced the long-time host Pete Bergeron who initiated the program and held the position for 40 years. 

She serveed on the board of directors for the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) from (2009-2012) and as a Louisiana ambassador to the Center des Francophonie des Ameriques in Montreal in 2010.

In 2012 she began the Prairie des Femmes blog that became an early online resource for authentic information about Louisiana language and culture. The blog began as daily documentation of the place known in French as Prairie des Femmes (Women’s Prairie) and research on the origin of this place name. It grew to include photography, memes, writing, French transcriptions, recordings, folklore, music, lessons, and more. It was one of the first websites to offer visual media in Louisiana French and incorporate local folklore and music lyrics into modern media for a younger audience wishing to learn.  Ashlee uses her knowledge of modern American culture and blends it organically with the archaic knowledge found in Louisiana French. She has served the community by providing bilingual announcements at the Lafayette Regional Airport, translating the Opelousas Travelers Guide to French, appearing on radio and podcasts such as Louisiane en Vers and Charrer Veiller, as well by hosting the monthly French table in Opelousas as well as the Arnaudville French Table at Nunu's. 

As a writer she has created hundreds of hand decorated journals in Louisiana French, as well as dozens of niche zines. She has published as a guest columnist in local papers such as the Advertiser, Advocate, The Current, Les Bonnes Nouvelles, New Orleans Magazine and Acadiana Profile. Her work has been featured in 64 Parishes, Bitter Southerner, Country Roads Magazine and the New York Times. She published her first work ‘Ô Malheureuse’ on UL Press in 2019, a first of its kind collection of modern Louisiana women’s writings in French. The collection began on the PDF blog and was published by UL Press and released in time for the 2019 Festival Acadiens and Creole dedicated to the contributions of women in Louisiana music.

As a photographer, Ashlee has self published three books, The Plains of Mary, a photo book of Marian yard shrines, Prairie des Femmes: Portraits of a Place, a collection of surreal photographs from the countryside of Acadiana, and finally A Prairie des Femmes Field Guide, a collection of art and writing from the PDF blog. Her work has been featured in Louisiana Cultural Vistas, 64 Parishes, and she has shown her photographs with photographers Denny Culbert and Jo Vidrine. She had thirty of her photos shown as part of Frank Relle’s New Orleans in Photographs exhibit in Moscow in 2014. Her work has also been recognized by photographer Zack Smith’s project « My Louisiana Muse » as well as Nick Slie’s « Cry You One. » In June 2024 her land work, as well as her work with the rare medicinal plant vinéraire was featured in Monique Verdin and Rachel Breunlin's Botanica exhibit at the Cabildo in New Orleans.

Her family and home were featured in the Home and Garden Section of the New York Times in 2012. As recently as 2021 her work was featured by National Geographic and in a documentary that won the CreateLouisiana culture grant, Intention, by Olivia Perillo and Syd Horn. It is a film project that seeks to explore the untold feminine narratives of Cajun and Creole artists and healers.

She is a musician, well known in south Louisiana as a professional triangle player. She also sings and writes in Louisiana French, incorporating modern music with that from the Cajun and Creole archives. Her first original song ‘Maison Blanche’ released on The 78 Project in 2014, and in 2020 Nouveau Electric Records released her ‘Trois Rangs’ on 45rpm vinyl, remixed by Korey Richey (LCD Soundsystem). She has played triangle on the recent PBS documentary American Epic.

In 2024 Ashlee's work for the Prairie des Femmes was included in the exhibition Botanica at the Louisiana State Museum at the Cabildo in New Orleans. In 2025 she showed her paintings, journals and plant research with the medicinal known as vinéraire in Prairie Stories, a collaborative show at the Acadiana Center of the Arts in Lafayette, Louisiana. Prairie Stories  featured a collection of artists and their work on the folkloric and environmental realms of the Louisiana Prairie.  She has spoken at the Louisiana Folklore Society meeting on the Prairie des Femmes Blog and digital folklore, as well as at the Bayou Culture Collaborative meeting where she spoke on her ethnobotany research. Most recently in May 2026 she presented in the Folklife Village's Past to Pixel tent which featured digital folklore at the New Orleans' Jazz fest.

As of 2023 Ashlee is the lower school French teacher at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. 

Ashlee raises her sons in the Prairie des Femmes. 

Articles 

• Woman of the Prairie, Country Roads
• The Women Shaping the Louisiana French Revival Movement
• Bonjour Louisiane
• New York Times
• Prairie des Femmes Mardi Gras
• Prairie Noël
• National Geographic
  
• Les Carnets Nord Sud
  
• The Current: Louisiana French in the Pandemic
  
• The 78 Project
  
• Intention Film
  

Trois Rangs

 Trois Rangs (three rings)

Ashlee Michot/ Soul Creole

Si tu crois et mais si t’es croyant
If you believe and if you are a believer

Si tu aimes avoir un bon temps
If you like to have a good time

On va faire comme c’était dedans temps
We gonna do like they did in the times

Ouais ça c’est en trois rangs
And that’s in threes (three rings)

On peut aller ouais on et on
We can go on and on

Et en ronde en ronde en ronde
And round and round and round

Y’a du monde qui s’appelle ça le trinité
Some people call it the trinity

Homme et femme et là leur petit enfant
Man and woman and their little baby

T-fer violon accordion
Triangle fiddle and accordion

Ouais c’est les trois rangs
Yea that’s the three rings

On va jouer les on et on
We gonna play them on and on

Et en ronde en ronde en ronde
And round and round and round

Fait trois tours de la table ronde
Make three rounds around the round table

Ouais ça c’est let trois rangs
Yea that’s the three rings
Un deux trois dans la table ronde
One two three for the round table

Et ça c’est les trois rangs
Yea that’s the three rings

Fait trois tours de la table ronde yall
Make three tours around the round table y’all

Ouais ça c’est les trois rangs
Yeah that’s the three rings

On va jouer le on et on
We gonna play them on and on

Et en ronde en ronde en ronde
And round and round and round

Et en ronde en ronde en ronde en ronde en ronde en ronde en ronde

credits

released October 10, 2019

La Tête de Branchu

Il est plus beau qu'une tête de branchu

Et plus farouche dans ses plumages

Mais son coeur c'est une sabre à canne

Et il tire tout ça qu'il 'oir.

Son coeur est un luth suspendu;

Sitot qu’on le touche il resonne.

– De Beranger

“His/her heart is a poised lute;

as soon as it is touched, it resounds”.

Cajun Spell

 

CAJUN SPELL

Coeur de cèdre

Feuille de pin

Le cri d'Amédé Ardoin

Eye of round

Sans d'oseille

Bayou Noir 

la 'tite jambe caille

Can de Rotel

Burn it down

Make three rips 

Around my town

Les idées dans ma cervelle 

Mêle dans une choquelle

Ca c’est ton Cajun spell

New Orleans Magazine

 “Prairie des Femmes” is another space that is both real and virtual, where a new generation of Franco-Louisianians is developing an authentic voice. Its creator, Ashlee Michot, recently launched a project, “Ô Malheureuse,” where she threw out a sort of message in a bottle, calling on Louisiana women to submit texts in prose or poetry. The extraordinary response has revealed amazing creative voices. New Orleans Magazine 2019

Opelousas Road

Evangeline Parish Moonrise, Ashlee Michot 2015

Opelousas Road

Qui a pendu les cornes de la lune 
Sur l'Opelousas Road? 
J'suis parti ‘oir un cœur si noir et 
Bleu comme l'indigo 
Quand la demie lune sourit 
C'est dessus la terre de Tate Cove 
Et j'suis parti 'oir un un cœur si noir 

Comme le chemin àyou j'rode

We drive that parish highway 
After we've had a few 
And if you can see clearly 
The caution light will wink at you 
J'rentre dans ma paroisse 
Là-bas la lune me semble si proche 
Quand la Plaisance est à ma doigt 

C'est la Prairie Ronde qu'est à ma gauche 

Who hung the horns of the moon
On the Opelousas Road?
J'suis parti ‘oir 

Les yeuxs si noirs

Gros comme des socos

La lune est bien trop croche  

Je passe le chemin de Zydeco

Et j'suis parti 'oir et 

 -guette vos guard 

Thinking about Dewberries

J'suis parti après des mûres
Dans le bois de la Prairie des Femmes

Les plus grosses mûres sont
En haut d'une serpent

La mûre la plus douce
Elle goute comme du vin

Y'a un serpent congo
Sur l'aire, je le sent

Mes pensées après trainer
Comme traînent les éronces

Les éronces après trainer
Comme le traîn de ça je pense

Avril, 2016
Ashlee Michot 

Orion

Quand j'étais jeune

J'ai cherché pour quelqu'un 

J'ai cherché sur la terre et aux nuages

Et comme femme j'ai guetté autour du monde

Pour un homme pour faire une vie en hommage

Mais dans le bleu de l'horizon;

Quand la lune est pleine à l'anse

Quand la terre tourne en ronde dans l'espace

Je t'aperçois au loin, au large

Sous-marin, une image

Un ensemble des étoiles, Orion

Toutes les femmes 'près espérer pour un homme

Ç'après chercher dans la terre et aux nuages

Et moi je cherche l'espace profonde

Pour une étoile filante 

Mais t'es fixé sur mon idée, Orion

Ashlee Wilson, 2016

Prairie Ronde

J'étais pour te 'oir à la maison 

mais quand j'suis arrivée là bas 

j'avait pas personne
Je te suivre après jusqu'à la fin du monde 

ou au moins l'autre bord de la Prairie Ronde
 
Oh boy mais toi garçon
Tu connais tous les tournes de toutes les chansons
Quand tu joues la belle Valse de Gueydan
J'après 'oir le vent sur la prairie tremblante

Prairie des Femmes

This blog is documentation of the landscape of La Prairie des Femmes, Louisiana, an unincorporated community in south Louisiana. In this nearly hidden place, you will find photographs of the prairies of Louisiana, collected theories and documentation of the origins of the place name Prairie des Femmes, pictures of Mary statues of Acadiana and beyond, herbal remedies, original writing and French music, homages to the triangle or t-fer, French memes and ecards, clips from La Tasse de Cafe Radio Program out of Ville Platte, La., as well as other information on my experience as a young person with a real, living Louisiana Francophone culture. I am a mother, wife, Evangeline Parish native and resident of la Prairie des Femmes, Louisiana.