Culture not only depends on people in an area, it keeps people connected to that area, Lolis Eric Elie, author and Times-Picayune columnist, said at Loyola’s Jan. 19 panel.

“Culture is what keeps us here,” he said. “It’s damn sure not the climate.”

This first of four Arts and Sciences-sponsored forums on Post-Katrina New Orleans featured seven accomplished panelists whose cultural expertise varied from cooking and music to geography and history.

Rev. Kevin Wildes, S. J., university president, talked briefly to the crowd.

“Culture is part of who we are and who we must be,” Wildes told the packed Roussel Hall audience.

In addition to the importance of culture, the panel discussed necessary steps to maintaining culture; the stability of New Orleans’ culture; how our culture has been affected; and what our city’s cultural future will be.

According to Elie, culture has numerous qualities that bridge gaps, unite us and have intrinsic worth.

“Culture in a broad sense is a way of being in the world,” Elie said.

Most panelists agreed that people returning to New Orleans, especially those deeply involved in its culture, is key to its survival.

“Culture depends on the people living here,” said John Biguenet, author and Loyola professor of English.

Michael Crutcher, a University of Kentucky professor of cultural geography, agreed with Biguenet on the importance of people returning. “Neighborhoods are inseparable [from culture] and need to come back.” “We have something going on musically here that is nowhere else in the world…[it] can’t be duplicated,” said New Orleans musician Eddie Bo. “There is no other New Orleans. This is it.”Maintaining the city’s welcoming spirit can set the conditions necessary for people to make and maintain culture, according to Alecia Long, author of “The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans.” She said New Orleans is a place that still has diverse people and areas.

“New Orleans is a place where the weird turn pro,” Long said.

Focusing on the city’s food culture, Susan Spicer, chef and restaurateur, said people in the culinary community have “felt we were keepers of the flame.”

Likewise, Elie said writers are on a mission to remind the world that New Orleans is a special place-one that has given the world its culture and now needs help in return. Long said it will require work to get help.

“We’re part of this country. We have to argue for our rights. [The government] got it cheap 200 years ago. It’s time [for it] to make some capitol investment,” she said.

Both Elie and Biguenet said that national culture is the greatest threat to New Orleans culture. “[Unlike other places], in this city, personal takes precedence over the institution,” Biguenet said, while also referring to New Orleans as a separate country from the United States.

Biguenet said that the city will begin to recover physically and culturally. “New Orleanians aren’t very good at mourning. We’re about celebrating life, not mourning what we’ve lost,” Biguenet said.The next forum will be held on Feb. 2 in Nunemaker Hall. It will address the media’s coverage of Katrina.

Tara Templeton can be reached at [email protected].