FROM SURGE TO OIL… AN ENDANGERED PEOPLE
by Joel Waltzer and Patty Ferguson, tribal lawyers, Pointe Au Chien Indian Tribe
Much of southeast Louisiana’s remaining Native Americans reside in two centuries old communities in the southern-most ends of bayous running to the coast in Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes. The people of Pointe Au Chien and Isle Jean Charles are a proud and self-sufficient, people who take what nature gives, an amalgamation of the last vestiges of Louisiana’s “Petite Nations.” In these sleepy, modest fishing towns, French-Indian is most often heard, and generations of smiles and laughter almost always accompany a good pot of jambalaya or plate of fried soft shell crabs. Today, these unique communities, their language and Indian culture, their lifestyle and indeed their identity as a separate people are deeply threatened.
From slavery to dispossession of their traditional tribal lands, to discrimination, segregation and systemic lack of education, the tribes have survived continual insults for well over 300 years. But over the last 75 years, the Corps of Engineers has dammed the Great (Mississippi) River, robbing their lands of the river’s life sustaining sediment and causing the land to sink and subside at an astonishing rate. Additionally, oil and gas companies have carved a spider’s web of exploration canals throughout the marshes, allowing salt water to intrude and kill the marsh vegetation, eroding their last remaining ridges.
As a result of these two man-made environmental crises, the marsh land surrounding their communities constitutes the fastest disappearing landmass on Earth! Miles of marsh are lost every year to subsidence and storm surge. These marshes hold their history, their cultural relics, their sacred places, and indeed, the very remains of their ancestors.
Just two years ago, Hurricanes Gustav and Ike ripped these historic bayou towns with ferocious winds and six foot storm surges. The hurricanes left a trail of peeled back roofs or crumpled houses, overlain with uprooted marsh and thick mud, unparalleled elsewhere in Louisiana. Generations of entire extended families lost everything, with little means to recover. Immediate relief from the government was almost non-existent, but good people did come to help muck out, including fellow Native Americans from the Coushatta tribe, Tulane graduate students, religious groups and public service organizations like the American Red Cross and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, whose tireless efforts ensured that basic provisions and cleaning supplies were on hand to enable these Native Americans a chance to respond, recover and rebuild.
Tribal leaders rallied their brothers and sisters. Lessons were learned and adaptive strategies applied. Pointe Au Chien was rebuilt, higher and stronger. The resilient community bounced back and laughter could once again be heard along the banks of the bayous. Work on their long quest for federal recognition re-emerged and produced promising new historic evidence. It seemed all was going well.
On April 20, 2010, BP ended this hope by ignoring safety in the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. Even as cameras were affixed on the wealthy beach communities and in the national parks, oil was seeping into the tribe’s historic fisheries. Even as the country stood aghast, watching oiled birds and soiled turtles, the oil invaded tribal bayous, ending possibly forever what in all likelihood was a thousand year history of use. Worse, tribal members are now forced to depend on the very company that destroyed them for economic survival. It’s just not fair.
The tribe seeks to assert its historic role of protecting its resources, its cultural spots and its burial grounds. Tribal members have put out boom to protect these areas and are fighting to keep the oil out. If we can’t tip the balance, or if mother-nature deals another cruel blow, the towns they live in will be abandoned, to be viewed only in the museum galleries of curators who foretold this eventuality and sent photographers to document the communities after the storm.
The Pointe Au Chien and Biloxi Chitimacha tribes, undiscovered and ignored for much of American history, deserve federal recognition of their ancestry, heritage and culture. The tribes deserve to be respected by BP and dealt with as tribes, not as BP’s hired contractors, as they are now. The state government must help to achieve these goals. The tribes should be allowed to act as natural trustees over the lands for which they have always cared.
With federal recognition, and the legal trust relationship it entails, with the ability to protect their own, the tribe can make the legal and political case for meaningful coastal restoration and storm protection. We hope to inject the very existence of this unique Indian culture as a determinative factor when deciding which projects will be funded, which communities will be allowed to die and which survive. Exactly these decisions are being made right now.
To help, visit: http://pactribe.tripod.com/
Pointe Au Chien Indian Tribe Chairman: Chief Chuck Verdin
Tribal Attorneys: Joel Waltzer and Patty Ferguson
