Episode Details

What if the story of the American cowboy is bigger than the version most of us were handed?

In this episode, Noëlle sits down with Drake LeBlanc, a Creole cowboy from Louisiana, filmmaker, and cultural preservationist. The conversation that unfolds is about history, identity, and what it really means to live a culture rather than wear it.

Drake was raised in a community where horses are not a hobby or an aesthetic. They are Sunday trail rides, music in the air, food cooking by trailers, land passed down through generations, and families riding together. They are belonging.

Together, they explore the untold history of Black cowboys, how the image of the American cowboy was reshaped through media, and what was lost when culture became costume.

This conversation is not just about the past. It is about how the stories we are handed down, the way they shape how we see ourselves, and who we believe belongs in the horse world.

In this episode you will learn:

• Creole identity and language in Louisiana
• Haitian Creole cultural parallels
• Native American symbolism in Western fashion and saddle design
• The history of cattle herding practices rooted in African tribes
• The book Drake would read to the Horse World - Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500-1900

About Drake LeBlanc: Drake LeBlanc is a Lafayette, Louisiana-based filmmaker, documentarian, and photographer. He is one of the most compelling cultural voices working today in the preservation of Creole heritage and black cowboy history. His documentary Footwork has brought international attention to the Louisiana Creole cowboy tradition and the Louisiana trail rides that keep black cowboy culture alive every weekend across the American South.

You can find Drake on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lovebenoir/

Drake's film work can be found here https://filmfreeway.com/FootworkLA

Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to Dear Horse World wherever you listen, leave us a review — it genuinely helps more people find these conversations — and share this episode with someone who needs to hear the real story of cowboys in America.

This episode is generoulsy sponsored by:

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Chapters:

00:00 Introduction & the moment on the Atchafalaya Basin that set the tone

03:00 "I know my community" — why deep roots change everything

04:00 What is a Creole cowboy? Defining Creole culture and Louisiana's gumbo pot

07:00 What is a parish? Louisiana's Napoleonic Code explained

08:00 The vulnerability of introducing yourself as a Creole cowboy

10:00 Why Drake feels called to educate even when it's exhausting

12:00 The real history of black cowboy culture Hollywood erased

14:00 Why "1 in 4 cowboys were Black" is actually an undercount

15:00 "Cowboy" was a derogatory term — the truth about who built the West

17:00 What Hollywood took from Black cowboy culture and what it missed

19:00 Why money can't