His ancestry is Chitimacha Native American, as well as Spanish and French.
The Chitimacha brought suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana in July 1977 (complaint amended July 1979) claiming a large tract in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.
However, a number of specialists on Muskogean languages, including Mary Haas and Pamela Munro Munro (1995) have regarded the hypothesis of a Gulf family of languages as promising; Haas thought the closest language to Muskogean would be Natchez, followed by Tunica, Atakapa, and, rather dubiously, Chitimacha.