America's First Climate Refugees - Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Abandon Disappearing LA Island

[hatrack]

It has taken well over a decade of advocating on behalf of his tribe to keep his scattered community intact as their island on Louisiana’s Gulf coast disappears under Gulf of Mexico waters, but now Chief Albert Naquin of the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw is high fiving.

That’s because the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced in January that it had awarded the state-recognized tribe $48 million to pay for a move, most likely farther north inland, making them the first community of official climate refugees in the United States.

Chief Naquin is ecstatic to have gotten the funds. “I’m very, very pumped,” Chief Naquin said. “I’m very, very excited. I’ve been working on this for 13 years. I’ve taken some pretty big hits for doing that, and not just locally.” Naquin said the tribe’s standard of living should improve as well. The monies are part of $92 million awarded to Louisiana as part of a National Disaster Resilience Competition the state won. HUD’s copy billion competition awarded funds to states and communities nationwide.

The Isle de Jean Charles has been reduced from 11 miles long and five miles wide in the 1950s, to around a quarter-mile wide and two miles long today. The tribe’s disintegrating homelands have already displaced and scattered many families, and some of the funding will pay for homes to reestablish community. “Now we’re getting a chance to reunite the family,” Naquin said. “They’re excited as well. Our culture is going to stay intact, [but] we’ve got to get the interest back in our youth.”

EDIT

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/02/05/biloxi-chitimacha-choctaw-get-48-million-move-disappearing-louisiana-island-163310

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I'm not sure I'd call that 'climate refugeeism', although I'd have to see exactly where their island

was to be sure.

If you type in 'Louisiana subsidence due to oil' into google, you'll see a long list of articles and studies about how pumping oil OUT of the Gulf region has resulted in enormous tracts of Louisiana dropping in elevation, effectively collapsing downward to fill the area that no longer holds oil.

Ah, here, below the linked article itself -

A 2014 ProPublica report about the tribe, Losing Ground, said sinking land and extreme erosion along the southeastern coast of Louisiana could lead to the “largest forced migration for environmental reasons in the history of the country.”

The report blamed the loss of land on changes in the Mississippi delta designed to increase flood protection and enhance oil and gas production.

[Tanuki]

2. Heartbreaking, and straight out of "Beasts of the Southern Wilds"

Life imitating art imitating life....

http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/true_story_behind_beasts_of_the_southern_wild/

...."If you’ve seen the movie, you know something about the raw, haunting beauty of southern Louisiana’s coastal landscape. And you might remember that film depicts a place and a people that are imperiled. What you might not know is how true-to-life the story is.

Today Isle de Jean Charles and Pointe au Chien, a part of Terrebonne Parish locals call “The Bathtub,” are threatened by costal erosion and political red tape. Coastal erosion is a major threat along much of the Louisiana shoreline. The levees that girdle the Lower Mississippi River have robbed the delta of the silt deposits necessary to keep the low-lying land from disappearing under the constant pressure of the tides. Louisiana’s large the oil and gas industry have cut channels and canals throughout the marshland, fueling saltwater intrusion and further contributing to shoreline erosion. Since 1930 the Louisiana coast has lost about 190,000 square miles of land, an area the size of Rhode Island.

State and federal agencies, along with a range of private groups, are working to halt the steady erosion of the Louisiana coastline. Odd though it may seem to some, a portion of the settlement money from the BP oil spill has been set aside for coastal protection. But the Bathtub has for the most part been left off Louisiana’s Master Plan for coastal restoration. Two Indian tribes, the Pointe-au-Chien and the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaws, are making what could be their last stand as they fight to have their communities recognized and protected.

During a meeting at which the public was invited to voice its concerns, Patty Ferguson, one of the Pointe au-Chien’s lawyers (and a tribe member herself) asked why the tribal land isn’t protected. “State agencies claim the science doesn’t support restoration of these areas,” she told me. Until the tribe can hire experts on their own, tribal members are unwilling to accept the state’s conclusion that their threatened lands can’t be saved. (Ferguson claims that many coastal restoration studies are funded by the same interests — oil and gas and big agriculture upriver — that have caused the damage in the first place.

The tribes’ efforts to protect the land have been stymied by the fact that neither of them are federally recognized tribes. Although both groups have been recognized by the state of Louisiana, they fall outside federal definition of a Native American nation, which requires more historic documentation than they have provided. According to Ferguson, tribes with far less documentation have gotten federal recognition, so she will not abandon the fight. Without federal recognition, the tribes do not have direct representation in Natural Environmental Resource Damage Assessment, a group made up of Gulf state government officials, the Department of the Interior, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and BP representatives to oversee coastal restoration projects and funding.

......(more at link)

[ShrimpPoboy]

3. Glad to hear they're being helped

But devastated about the enduring loss of our beloved coast. There's a big focus here about protecting and rebuilding, but budget problems (thanks in part to republicans refusing to raise taxes) and a refusal to acknowledge the role of climate change (thanks republicans) will keep us from doing what we need to. My kids and grandkids will get to enjoy the beauty and bounty of the marsh, bayous, and coastal town charm, but that's likely going to be the end of it.

The red is what we actually are today:



Imagine another 100 years of unchecked erosion and rising sea levels.