In November of 2019, as part of the Anthropocene River Campus: The Human Delta, dozens of scholars and artists from multiple countries toured the Center for River Studies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The $18 million center was completed in early 2018 with funding from Chevron and is maintained and operated by Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) and Louisiana State University (LSU). The main attraction of the sleek facility is a 10,000-square-foot topographically accurate model of the Mississippi River Delta equipped with pumps, acoustic sensors, and twenty mega-projectors that, according to the website, “bring the river and coast to life.”

A quote attributed to Albert Einstein looms over the gigantic model: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” The message reinforced a narrative of innovation, progress, and transformation often expressed in conversations about coastal restoration and resilience in Louisiana and elsewhere. According to our tour guides, the state’s efforts to “reconnect the river to the delta” using an array of projects that include marsh creation, shoreline protection, barrier island restoration, and sediment diversions reflect a departure from a long tradition of trying and failing to dominate the river with levees and other physical flood control structures. For many, Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan offers the promise of a more harmonious and “greener” relationship between humans, the river, and the delta.

The limits of transformative thinking, however, quickly became clear on our tour. During a Q&A session, one visitor asked how the multiple engineering projects in the plan would affect local communities throughout the region. After a pause, our guide emphasized that the state had learned valuable lessons in recent years and was doing much better than in previous iterations of the planning process. He mentioned multiple partnerships with nonprofits in the region and emphasized that one state agency (Louisiana’s Office of Community Development) has prioritized community engagement as they administered federal funding for the Isle de Jean Charles resettlement and Louisiana’s Strategic Adaptations for Future Environments (LA SAFE) program. “That will take care of those people outside of the Morganza to the Gulf Levee system,” he assured, referring to a planned U.S. Army Corps 98-mile levee system dubbed by some as “The Great Wall of Louisiana.” As we were being directed towards the river model, he added, “And well, with the diversions, nobody really lives down there.”

I was shocked. The tour guide’s comments evaded the reality that the Morganza to the Gulf levee system increased flood risk on Isle de Jean Charles. Moreover, he cast their resettlement as a state-led exemplar of community engagement despite reports that describe the process as a hijacking of Tribal-led planning. Furthermore, he disregarded the very existence of the Atakapa-Ishak Chawasha Grand Bayou Village and numerous Black communities located near the major proposed sediment diversions in Plaquemines Parish. The erasure of Black and Indigenous peoples is pervasive throughout the historical and contemporary United States, including within environmental movements and environmental studies education. Due to the troubling encounter at the Center for River Sciences and long-standing ecocide throughout the region, here we offer some experiences, expertise, and initiatives from Tribal and community leaders most immediately affected by the land loss crisis and institutional responses to it, perspectives from some of those most committed to ecological sustainability for future generations in this region.

NJ: Thank you for your time and for sharing your experiences and expertise here. Would you like to introduce yourselves and your communities?

Elder Rosina Philippe: I am Atakapa-Ishak Chawasha, my name is Rosina Philippe. I am from the Grand Bayou Indian Village in Plaquemines Parish of Southeast Louisiana.

Chief Albert Naquin: I am the traditional Chief of the Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe. My name is Albert Naquin. I was born and raised on Isle de Jean Charles in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana.

Secretary Chantel Comardelle: I’m Chantel, executive secretary for the Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe.

Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar: I am Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar, of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi Chitimacha Choctaw in Terrebonne Parish, Southeast Louisiana.

Theresa Dardar: I am Choctaw-Chitimacha-Biloxi-Acolapissa and Atakapas (Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe). My name is Theresa Dardar. I live in Pointe-Aux-Chenes which is 20 miles southeast of Houma, Louisiana.

NJ: This conversation is for a website that explores the Anthropocene, a concept that scholars have both embraced and criticized while describing the current epoch in which humans have made indelible marks upon the Earth’s geology and climate. How has human activity altered your homelands?

Elder Philippe: We are the first people of this place. We have lived a life in concert with the predictable seasonal changes, which naturally occur. Every part of our survival as a people has depended on our being attuned not only to the violent changes witnessed in nature, but the subtle nuances of change as well. As we traveled through our lands, our footprints were easily absorbed back into nature. We let nature predict how we should live our lives. We were, and still are, subsistent resource gatherers, but now our lifeworld has become less predictable since European invasion. The changes began with encroachment, resources that were exclusively used for the People had to then also support an incoming population. Trees were cut, lands cleared, communities built, and food resources were gathered to support newcomer populations that had moved onto our lands. The newcomers brought with them new ways of living with the Earth, ways of manipulation and control, and diseases, forever changing the landscape and the lifeworld of the People. The “hardening” of their lives, pitting themselves against nature through manipulation and control of the geology and the planet’s natural processes, is the major cause of the problems we are facing today: global warming, land loss, negative phenology impacts, the genocide of Tribal lifeways, and the pandemic.

Chief Parfait-Dardar: Non-Indigenous human activity has negatively altered our homelands. Our natural resources have been decimated, causing the lands to sink and erode. Our means of healing ourselves are all but an ancient practice, soon to be a memory due to the extinction of our medicinal plants. Our traditional ways of sustenance are no longer possible due to repeated random flooding events, pollution, and overfishing. Our homelands haven’t just been altered; they’re being destroyed.

Secretary Comardelle: Like others have said, we have known how to live with the land and sea. I often say that we live and die by the sea. It’s a balance of survival for all.  Our ancestors were clearly better at this balancing act than we currently are. We have over-extracted from this great Earth, and there are some clear consequences to our actions. We are losing flora that heals us due to saltwater intrusion. The trapping industry has all but ceased to exist outside of nutria due to over harvesting, marsh damage, and coastal erosion. I believe there is a footprint so big on “our” land that we can no longer see the beauty in the surroundings.

Theresa Dardar: Coastal land loss is a big problem. We have very little left to our barrier islands. Ponds look like lakes. We had a wealth of ecological and economic resources on our barrier islands and in the extensive estuaries, most importantly commercial and recreational fishing resources. Now commercial and recreational fishing is not very good. The activities that have altered our homelands started in 1891 with the cutting and floating of cypress trees. In 1905 a well was drilled on the edge of the marsh a few hundred yards from Bayou Terrebonne. That was the beginning of the oil companies cutting canals, which caused the saltwater intrusion, erosion of the land, and kills trees. The landscape has changed because of the logging and oil companies. Just about everyone in the past planted their gardens and had fresh vegetables. The ones that didn’t plant would trade eggs, pig, beef meat, or seafood for fresh vegetables. Because of saltwater intrusion caused by the cutting of canals by oil companies and sea levels rising from climate change not many people plant gardens.  The BP Oil Spill in 2010 also hurt by causing more land loss. Our community no longer looks the same. We followed the way of our ancestors in work and subsistence. As our ancestors did, we too live off the land. They had cattle, pigs, chickens, trapped various animals, hunted, fished oysters, crabs and shrimp.  We fish not only to make a living, but because it is also part of our diet. We share our catch with the elders and those who may be fishing a different kind of seafood. Because of saltwater intrusion and land loss, trapping is no longer profitable either. There is no land or marsh and so no animals to trap.

NJ: What are some of the ways these conditions have affected community relations, traditions, or ways of living?

Elder Philippe: The aforementioned practices are in direct conflict with the ways of living of the People. In our lifeway practices, nature and natural processes dictate how human life proceeds. We take our clues from the natural happenings and plan our lives around those events, not the other way around. We don’t try to bend nature to our will and choices. Our life teachings are in conflict with the systems that are now in place in the world, and our communities have been pushed to the edge as we try to resist the destructive practices of the powers that be, a global system more focused on commerce and power than protecting and keeping our natural world intact. We, the People, know that eventually nature will prevail, and the manipulators will lose. It is unfortunate that we only have one home world to share. We will be unable to replicate what we are losing.

Secretary Comardelle: For centuries Indigenous peoples around the world have grappled with explorers, conquerors, and entrepreneurs making their communities “better.” This has tattered the fabric of our people. Who really benefits from big corporations, new governments, and their industries? Granted, we all love electricity and modern technologies, but should it cost us our heritage? Our cultural traditions? Our way of life and sense of self? In the case of Isle de Jean Charles, with the first oil rig came commerce, modernization, and education for our people. That is celebrated, but what we don’t consider enough is what was sacrificed… tradition, culture, identity, heritage, and the ways of living and being that helped us survive for so long.

Theresa Dardar: After the BP Oil Spill, we had to have barbeque instead of seafood for Tribal socials, and the crab boil gatherings we had two to three times a week stopped. Our traditional diet changed with more meat than seafood. Our area is now more vulnerable to storm surge. It causes damage to property, and problems with transportation because of flooding of roads. We sometimes flood with just a tropical storm or even strong south east winds. Now, our fishers also have many challenges; low prices, import shrimp, fuel prices, land loss and not a lot of shrimp or crabs. Land loss cause danger in thunderstorms or just strong winds, when they brew up, especially if they are out on the water in a small boat. Islands in the past were protection for the fishers. Now when winds come it makes the waters rough and no protection causing danger to the fishers. And because of land loss, sea level rise and climate change, their catch is less. For example, this year white shrimp season opened Monday August 10, 2020 at 6:00 p.m. and boats were in early that night because they didn’t find any shrimp.

Chief Parfait-Dardar: To sum it up, continued generational genocidal practices, environmental destruction and greed have forced us to continually adapt. Our traditional practices are more difficult to teach to younger generations with the loss of land, depletion of food sources and medicinal plants. As a people connected to the land and water, when it disappears, so do our lifeways and ultimately our identity.

NJ: How have your Tribes and communities protected traditional lifeways?

Theresa Dardar: We learn and work with universities to protect our community. We also work with organizations like the Lowlander Center, Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL), Gulf of Mexico Alliance (GOMA), Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program (BTNEP), Bayou Regional Arts Council, and Louisiana Folklore Society. Some of these organizations have helped to restore, and others have helped us as we teach our children and youth during our Culture Camp or other gatherings. They trust Tribal members’ traditional knowledge in identifying the places which are most needed of immediate attention. Their trust in our leadership is important.

Elder Philippe: We have tasked ourselves to educate others to the benefits of acknowledging humanity’s symbiotic dependency to the natural world. We do this through a sharing of traditional ecological knowledges (T.E.K.), emphasizing stewardship and personal responsibility.11Kristina J. Peterson, Shirley B. Laska, Rosina Philippe, Olivia Burchett Porter, Richard L. Krajeski, Sheila Lakshmi Steinberg, and William A. Sprigg. “Refining the process of science support for communities around extreme weather events and climate impacts.” In Extreme Weather, Health, and Communities, pp. 135-164. Springer, Cham, 2016. This is work, as these moments of sharing are sometimes arduous, depending on our audience. We have also maintained our practice of coming together with our community members (youths and elders) to practice and embrace traditions, proving the viability of our lifeway and choices. We celebrate the ancientness of our civilizations and the fact that we are still here, despite the challenges we have faced, historic and ongoing. We educate ourselves by being students in institutions of “higher” learning, gaining knowledge of modernity and global trends and practices. In this, we gain knowledge of policies and laws. We also gain knowledge of advocates and of those who do not support our lifeways and views. Knowledge is powerful, both in the gaining and sharing.

Chief Parfait-Dardar: Education and adaptation are key. Not only are we educating ourselves, especially our youth, as others mentioned, to be able to utilize modern day innovative solutions, we’re also educating others how to work with Mother Nature in synchronicity when creating solutions to today’s environmental challenges.

Secretary Comardelle: I agree, knowledge is power. Our ancestors definitely knew this. The transfer of knowledge is where the baton gets dropped. We are currently working on a project, Preserving Our Place, to ensure our intellectual and traditional knowledge is transferred to future generations. Although we are losing our land, we don’t have to lose our traditions and cultural heritage. Through technology and media, we are documenting our lifeways to ensure that proper respectful transfer happens, honoring our past and bridging to our future.

NJ: You mentioned that the destruction of the land and pollution of the waters have threatened foodways. Environmental reporter Barry Yeoman has covered your efforts to reclaim traditional diets. Would you share more about the work of reestablishing food sovereignty?

Chief Parfait-Dardar: We work with different organizations to discover new ways of adapting to our rapidly changing environment, while maintaining our traditional sustenance practices. We’ve begun planting and raising small livestock in areas that are less prone to flooding, bringing in raised bed gardens, and looking into where we can locate medicinal plants that are no longer present in our own areas. Some can still be found in other places so we are finding higher ground locations for growing and harvesting that can be shared.

Theresa Dardar: The Tribe has planted a community garden in Montegut to supply the Pointe-au-Chien and Montegut communities. It was done through an agreement between PACIT and Terrebonne Parish. Two of our Tribal citizens also planted a garden in back of their house to supply the community and Pointe-Aux-Chenes Supermarket with fresh vegetables. Donald tends a garden at the back of our house and shares with friends and family. Because it gets so hot, vegetables aren’t planted in summer. As I said, people in the community also fish for fresh seafood. We share seafood with family and neighbors. We are also building a greenhouse, which will be used as a teaching tool. We will take the children/youth to the greenhouse during Culture Camp to teach the names and uses of plants. We will all probably learn from having the greenhouse, trying to locate plants our ancestors used that are no longer growing in the community. We will ask Natural Resources Conservation Service to help locate plants. We also make ointments and tea to treat our sick, going back to our traditional healing. The land has always fed us and healed our ancestors, and it can do the same for us if we relearn how to use the plants.

NJ: Elder Philippe, you described colonial attempts to control and manipulate the landscape, and Ms. Theresa, you described the long history of extraction in the region. The direct threads from colonialism to climate emergency and from private property and infrastructure to ecological genocide seem so stark. The U.S. Swamp Land Acts of 1849, 1850, and 1860 expanded private property relations throughout the region while incentivizing the draining of wetlands for agriculture.22Craig E. Colten, “Environmental management in coastal Louisiana: A historical review,”Journal of Coastal Research, 33 (3), 2017, pp.699-711.Throughout the late nineteenth century, prospectors grabbed up the land. Then, the Texas Company (later Texaco, now Chevron) became the first major oil and gas extractor in the wetlands in the early twentieth century. Their investments in Terrebonne Parish kept land companies like Louisiana Land & Exploration (now ConocoPhillips) & La Terre (now Apache Oil) financially afloat and ensured a century of ecocide. Meanwhile, throughout the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, the U.S. government expanded the levee system and river controls along the Mississippi River and it’s distributaries. This starved the naturally sinking delta of soil needed to keep building land. In 1903, Bayou Lafourche was severed from the river, preventing sediment renewal in some of the quickest subsiding areas in the Terrebonne and Barataria Basins. Your Tribes, along with the Avoyel-Taensa Tribe and Bayou Lafourche Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, however, have formed the First Peoples’ Conservation Council (FPCC) to address the effects of these ongoing histories of exploitation and destruction. Journalist Christine Baniewicz recently wrote about FPCC-led efforts to backfill pipeline canals in order to save sacred sites, and according to that reporting, this work is not included in or supported by the state’s current Coastal Master Plan.

Theresa Dardar: We started the FPCC in 2012 to help better our communities. Pointe-Au-Chien Indian Tribe has been able to get grants through the FPCC. That is how we were able to get the bulkhead/dock and the greenhouse by the building. We also have regular gatherings of the six tribes to learn how to make crafts, and we have guest speakers at these gatherings. We will not be able to have the gathering this year because of the pandemic.

NJ: The First Peoples Conservation Council has also partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service on various initiatives. Additionally through particular programs, the existence and efforts of some of your Tribes have been recognized by other agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). However, since the 1970s the U.S. government has used a process of federal acknowledgement to determine which Indigenous peoples are entitled to certain kinds of support. This process has been criticized for being slow, draining, arbitrary, divisive, and premised on racist notions of indigeneity.33Joanne Barker, Native Acts: Law, Recognition, and Cultural Authenticity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011; Amy E. Den Ouden and Jean M. O’Brien, eds. Recognition, Sovereignty Struggles, and Indigenous Rights in the United States. UNC Press Books, 2013. As of now, none of your Tribes have been formally recognized by the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) or Congress. Would federal recognition of your inherent sovereignty from the BIA or Congress support your ability to protect your communities and ecological relations?

Theresa Dardar: I think if we had federal recognition, we could get protection for our sacred places and maybe get homes elevated. If we would have had recognition when the BP Oil Spill happened, we would have been able to get workers in our community working with the government instead of having to get our attorney to work with BP to clean up our area. There is a lot of red tape to get recognition. They want a paper trail, but our ancestors didn’t read or write. We should not have to prove who we are, not after all the discrimination we have lived through, and still do sometimes. We had to attend Indian schools and were not allowed in some places. All we should need is our school records from the school board. But even then, that wouldn’t help everyone, because most of our elders didn’t have a school to go to. Most of the birth certificates do not prove anything because when some of us were born, they were listed as black or white, not Indian.

Elder Philippe: In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act, an all-inclusive act, was passed by Congress. The privileges of citizenship, however, were largely governed by state law, and the right to vote was often denied to Native Americans in the early twentieth century. While it is true that our communities and people enjoy a collaborative relationship with various government entities, I must note that this has happened over a vast space of time and these small measures of cooperation has only come about through hard work and efforts of visionary people supporting the concept of justice for all. This government has not, from its inception, considered the rights of its Indigenous population. The laws and rules enacted were designed to disenfranchise Native American populations. The laws and mandates of the federal recognition process remain unjust, biased, and based on an antiquated view of Native American people. The federal system still holds itself as judge and jury with self-given authority to say who is Native and who is not. The recognition criteria and its mandates of what constitutes proof is based on timelines and a paper trail where Tribes have been reduced to a footnote by some person/persons of European descent. Paper documentation is not an Indigenous concept and was widely unpracticed by Indigenous populations. Though many Tribes have been identified by such criteria, there has been varying degrees of interaction during colonization and government control. Many Tribes were tracked and recorded by various government agencies, because the People were enslaved and placed in concentration camps called “reservations,” where they were subjected to an inhuman existence… but thus are able to meet the government’s current criteria mandates. Other groups who were fortunate enough to escape the harsh reality of the forced Indian removals and relocations, and who were hidden, are now faced with the untenable task of proving their existence and claiming their sovereignty.  We are the FIRST people of this land and are the last people this government has given rights to as equal citizens with other people who are now living in this country (who I called ‘newcomers’ above). Attaining federal recognition under the current laws is almost like giving validity to their supposed right to define, recognize, or deny us, the First People of this land. The only benefit, I believe, to federal recognition would be that Tribes could interact with the government from a position of having more power than we have now. That would give us a platform to negotiate change, replacing current mandates with ones that would reflect true and just choices for the People, drafted by the People. Under the current process, we are still being subjugated and disenfranchised by a system where money rules the day and denotes who has the power of decision.

Chief Parfait-Dardar: It is a broken system meant to strip Tribes of their governance and inherent sovereign rights. While we are currently going through this system, because it is what it is; we do not agree with it. The only benefit is that we would be able to have access to some resources for housing and education, but we are very limited in our ability to govern traditionally and are forced to adopt a process similar to the United States government. To me this is simply another means of controlling Natives and stripping them of their sovereignty and traditional practices in exchange for small benefits that also keep us dependent on the federal government. One doesn’t have to look far to see that federal acknowledgement isn’t all its portrayed to be. Just look at the Standing Rock battle.

Secretary Comardelle: I agree with Chief Shirell and others, the federal acknowledgement process seems like a broken system to colonize Native communities: “We will give you this little money but no real support.” But at this point though, we do think federal recognition would help us in our struggle for cultural survival. The really sick part for us is that we have been told by the State of Louisiana that we can’t get our Tribal community resettlement, because we ain’t federally recognized. Then, because of the way the state has used the federal funds for the resettlement, we run the risk of not getting federally recognized.

NJ: Chief Albert and Secretary Comardelle, the Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribal leaders have been planning your Tribal Community Resettlement for nearly twenty years in response to generations of forced displacement, ecocide, exclusion from regional flood protection, and future flood risk associated with the climate emergency. Would you share where these plans stand now and some of what you have learned along the long road towards resettlement?

Chief Albert Naquin: Our first considering of resettlement started in 1999. My first reaction was it was a modern day “Trail of Tears.” Then to be fair I called a council and community meeting to discuss the possibility of moving off the Island. My reaction changed when I started thinking why I had moved off the Island. I was discharged from the Army in February 1971 and got married in August. I also had a day job and had to go to work in the morning and come home in the evening. Hurricane Carmen in 1974 put twelve inches of water in my house. Most of my appliances and furniture were destroyed. I bought a piece of land off the Island and built a house, moved in my new home 1975 and been here ever since. In some ways I felt selfish, because I was tired of flooding so moved off the Island. Others have felt like they had to move off too over the years, so I asked how many would consider moving to a new community to bring our Tribal community back together again. In 2002, I explained what I knew at the time. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineer (ACE) wanted 100% of the residents to go. I don’t know of any community who could get 100% to agree on anything, let alone something so big. Anyway, by the time we had the meeting with the ACE, we had 85%. I figured when the people see the plan for the new community, the rest would join. In June 2002, we had the meeting and there were people from all over yelling that they weren’t moving. I told the man in charge that those people were not from the Island, but he didn’t know who was who, so we called off the meeting. The council went to New Orleans to meet with the Army Corps of Engineers. They still wanted a 100%, but by then the count had dropped to about 65%. I gave up on the Corps to support our plans at that point. It is a process and the rules did not allow for that. Fast forward to Hurricane Gustav and Ike in 2008. These storms banged up our little community. The parish received money to get us off the Island, so we refocused on our plan. It was going so well. It seemed like a sure thing. We had our proposal together and were really ready for the big meeting. The night of the meeting in February of 2009. It was a full house. Since the plot of land that we had in mind was next to a large subdivision, the people from the subdivision showed up in protest. They said that we would bring down their property values. It was another battle lost. We did not stop planning though despite all the setbacks in partnering with government agencies. In 2014, the Tribe started working on a plan for resettlement along with the Lowlander Center. We worked and worked and worked to put together a version of our plan that turned heads from all over the world. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had one billion dollars to help communities through the National Disaster Resilience Competition. We jumped on it and Louisiana’s Office of Community Development said they would help us. To make a long story short, the state included our Tribal community resettlement plans in their application for funds, then the state hijacked the plans once they got the money. They are picking and choosing our plans and using it as the want, not to benefit the Tribe. Our plan would have cost about $110 million at the time so we figured the $48 millions we received from HUD was halfway to our goal. The state took control of the resettlement, purchased the land we chose for our home, and now we can’t get money to put our community back together as planned. The state uses our name, so now when we ask for money or support, we are told that we already got a grant for resettlement.

Secretary Comardelle: Listen, I was three when we moved off the Island due to flood damage to our home from hurricanes. To me the Island was always something we went back to and visited, it was home. As I got older and began to fully understand the problems, and it was disheartening to believe that nothing could be done to save someone’s home, especially when what’s happening is not our fault. We have watched our families lose everything they own, rebuild just to lose it all again in a year or two. I have been a long advocate for resettlement. I saw it as a bridge from the Island to a new place for us to have some justice and our culture. But being involved in the National Disaster Resilience Competition process has really changed how I feel about it. They turned our vision into a subdivision. They turned our Tribe’s future into a public community with a park and ball field and no commitments to our future. We have to ask how someone can say an entire community is not feasible or the cost-benefit ratio is not large enough to protect? I truly believe this is what colonialism and capitalism really gave us, a means to judge a community’s worth.

NJ: What have the other Tribal and community leaders learned by watching the IDJC resettlement process unfold?

Elder Philippe: What I have learned from watching the IDJC resettlement process unfold is this. I believe when there is a substantial amount of money involved and the government is your partner, they will find ways to re-interpret or re-define laws and legal concepts to their own benefit. They are able to seize control of the money and adulterate the entire process so that the Tribe’s vision, that was approved and funded, no longer reflects said vision, thereby creating conflict between the Tribe and the government. It is in this conflict where the government, in my opinion, gives itself and its actors an excuse to completely hijack the process and exclude the Tribe from taking part in the decisions. When there is an imbalance in the power construct (e.g. Government over Tribe), I would have a bevy of lawyers study, interpret, and draft the proposal, making sure that all concepts were considered and making sure that control would remain under Tribal rule before entering into an unbalanced partnership. But all of that is hindsight. The long and short of it is when your “partner” does not have your well-being as a priority, that is not a partner.

Chief Parfait-Dardar: This seems to be a never-ending nightmare that has only solidified the truths known by Native peoples for many generations. If you want something done right, you have to pray and be self-reliant, no matter how challenging it may be. Time and time again, our faith in those who have offered to assist us, who lack the intimate understanding and respect of our traditional ways and culture, has proven to be destructive.

Theresa Dardar: I have learned not to trust anyone from the state. If you have to deal with the state in your community, have an attorney deal with them for you. If your community decides to move and you are looking for funds, it would be best if you don’t involve the state’s Office of Community Development!

NJ: In recent years, the notion of a “managed retreat” from the coast has become more widely discussed as a governmental response to rising seas. This concept has also stirred critical debate on how the racialized, class, and colonial politics of development are internalized within climate adaptation.44 See Liz Koslov, “The case for retreat,” Public Culture, 28(2 (79)), pp.359-387, 2016 and also J Maldonado, E Marino, L Iaukea, “Retreat” from rising seas? It’s not just semantics. EOS: Science News by AGU, (Forthcoming, 2020). What do you think of this phrase? What does it sound like it might mean for your communities and Tribes?

Secretary Comardelle: “Managed Retreat” and resettlement have different interpretations. We had a Tribal community resettlement, but people keep calling it an example of managed retreat. Because a small ridge of land is only good and profitable for the oil or as a “sportsman paradise,” so then let’s invest in that, now that the Indians are gone. And let’s profit by learning about how to move these Indians. Managed retreat is another form of assimilation and colonialism. We need to wake up and realize what we are collectively allowing to happen. We need to say that enough is enough.

Theresa Dardar: I don’t like “managed retreat” because it makes me think of the Trail of Tears. If American Indian communities need to move that should be their decisions, not the state or anyone else. It should be the decision of the people living in the community and no one else. American Indians are connected to their community, which includes the land. My grandfather was 88 years old when he died. He lived all his life with no running water, electricity, or inside toilet, and he wouldn’t move away. His children knew not to try and make him move. His life and work were connected to the land. The state or anyone else will not decide if our community has to move. It will always be the people’s choice if they want to move or stay. We are connected to our community. Our roots and our work are here. Men just have to walk across the street to get to their boat to go to work. To move bayou people to a city is like taking a fish out of the water.

Elder Philippe: “Managed retreat” is like calling a pig a hog. It’s the same thing as “forced relocation” only now it’s being called something different. Terminologies are very important, and sometimes seemingly reasonable people quickly accept a proposed concept. They begin to repeat and refer to said terminology when referencing a certain idea, creating a new mantra of sorts. “Managed retreat”? Oh, how logical and reasonable that concept seems at surface value. Many who are championing this concept have not done their due diligence and have no idea how this concept would play out in real time and real-life applications, especially when this concept would be applied to Native American communities; communities where place-based habitation is measured in centuries. Home means more than geographical location. For Native communities, culture and traditions are connected to places where sacred connections are made and practiced. Those particular connections of place and prayers are not replicable just because you moved to another location. For years Native people were subjected to forced removal, not having a say in when, how, or where they were removed to. If the people who are the subject of this retreat are not in control or have the final word in the process, then this is just a new term for an old unjust practice, and you are just renaming a pig a hog!

Chief Parfait-Dardar: This terminology needs to be dismantled. It is simply another form of government controlled, forced relocation. Every community has its own dynamics, its own identity. The only people who should be managing a retreat, if that is what they so choose, is the community and they should be in charge of the terminology and ways of thinking about their resettlement. Period!

NJ: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2018), global warming will reach 1.5°C more than pre-industrial levels as early as 2030. Any warmer, according to the report, will lead to the worst of the worst conditions: Even more extreme daily temperature variations, drought, heatwaves, vector-borne diseases, ocean acidification, sea level rise, and extreme weather than we are currently experiencing. The report argues that remaining below 1.5°C requires urgent and significant energy transformations, including substantial reductions in oil and natural gas development. In August of this year, Louisiana Governor Jon Bel Edwards signed an executive order that formed a Climate Initiatives Task Force and committed to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Despite this, and all the talk of restoration and resilience, the State of Louisiana continues to permit industrial terminals and tries to push through new pipelines throughout your territories and sensitive wetlands. Additionally, state agencies are encouraging coastal gentrification, the creation of a “sportsman’s paradise” as you said, Secretary Comardelle. I’m thinking, for example, about recent plans to use 2010 BP Oil Disaster money to build fishing piers to Island Road despite earlier refusals to make new investments in the road prior to the Isle de Jean Charles resettlement funding allocation.

It seems as though the migration and assimilation of Indigenous peoples is treated as a foregone conclusion while the state accommodates a future for settler industries and leisure perhaps an example of what anthropologist Elizabeth Marino55Elizabeth Marino, “Adaptation privilege and voluntary buyouts: Perspectives on ethnocentrism in sea level rise relocation and retreat policies in the US.” Global Environmental Change, 49, pp.10-13, 2018. termed “adaptation oppression” and “adaptation privilege.” As you all have described here, this is not new. settler colonialism has long stifled Indigenous adaptation and environmental knowledge as a strategy for expropriating lands and development.66See Kyle P. Whyte, “Is it colonial déjà vu? Indigenous peoples and climate injustice.” In Humanities for the environment: Integrating knowledge, forging new constellations of practice, edited by J. Adamson & M. Davis, 88–105. New York: Routledge, 2016 and also Dina Gilio-Whitaker, As long as grass grows: The indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2019. Right now, many are fighting to ensure that an energy transition is more just through investments in communities and livelihoods77Varshini Prakash and Guido Girgenti, eds., Winning the Green New Deal. New York City, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2020. and by centering Indigenous leadership and decolonization (The Red Nation 2020). What would you hope to see in an energy transition or climate change adaptation to make it more just for your Tribes?

Chief Parfait-Dardar: It’s all Native land. In some cases, we can track the documents proving treaties and illegal land grabbing. Of course, local, state and federal governments use the federal acknowledgement process as a rationale for not honoring or protecting the Tribe’s territories and governance. There is no law that prevents local or state governments from honoring the treaties or from respecting the sovereign rights of historically known Indigenous Nations. It’s past time that they stop the ridiculous thinking that we’re not intelligent enough to know that they’re violating our laws and the rights of our land. It’s also past time that they be held accountable for their destructive practices that has endangered aboriginal peoples.

Elder Philippe: I think the government should practice what it preaches. Our government polices human rights violations around the globe, sanctioning actions, bringing violators into compliance, and sometimes ensuring that disenfranchised people receive justice. However, at home, government is the major perpetrator of continuing human rights violations against its own Indigenous populations. By deed or neglect, the first people of this land continue to face the consequences of not having our contributions to this country acknowledged and not having our cultures and traditions respected. We have been pushed to the fringes and made to live in substandard conditions, because our government refuses to invest resources to assist us in maintaining our lifeways; lifeways that were in place and thrived before they invaded our homelands. Until policies and laws are all-inclusive and Tribal sovereignty sits at the table of decision making, our work is unfinished and the struggle for justice is not over.

Theresa Dardar: They should follow the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. For example, our government is guilty of violating IDJC human rights by excluding Chief Albert from deciding what is right for his people. They divide communities, which then leads to losing culture and traditions. Indigenous people are connected to the land but if the community has to move out of harm’s way, and the whole community moves to one location, then perhaps culture and tradition will not be lost. But it is not only happening here. The violations are happening to our brothers and sisters around the world. The government doesn’t have to embrace our culture, but they should at least respect it. Instead, they force their culture on our people.

Secretary Comardelle: I agree, and also, we had this in our resettlement plans. It was supposed to be a pilot for sustainability, not just moving people. A whole pilot program is being wasted by the state just so they can say: it failed and here is what we learned while it failed. $48 million dollars for that. Before we got any money, we worked with partners like the Lowlander Center to pull together all the best practices for sustainability, for resettlement. The state ignored it once they got the money and are now doing their own thing.

NJ: Right. As you expressed earlier, the scope of your resettlement plans have been reduced by the state since they began administering the National Disaster Resilience Competition funds drifting from a plan that honors the Tribe’s sovereignty and embraces building upon the Tribe’s capacity as a teaching community into a kind of non-Tribal subdivision with some moderate investments in renewable energy, resilient design, and water retention. Recently, the state released another request for proposals (RFP) for contractors to “design-build” the homes and site. According to one designer who worked on the state plans, a “design-build” contract after the designs have already been completed is “extremely atypical” and “by giving the contractor the ability to edit drawings, the responsibility to ensure that design intent is carried through falls on the program manager and limits their ability to hold the contractor accountable to the design intent embedded in the previous bid set drawings.” This raises a question as to whether or not the renewable energy and resilience design components that were included, even in the distorted non-Tribal-produced version of the resettlement plans, will be included in the final outcome. It appears as though the state’s Office of Community Development has slowly removed critically important aspects of the resettlement and produced immense uncertainty in their prioritization of moving remaining residents from the Island. Sociologist Daniel Aldana Cohen88Daniel Aldana Cohen, “New York City as ‘fortress of solitude’ after Hurricane Sandy: a relational sociology of extreme weather’s relationship to climate politics,” Environmental Politics, 2020. recently wrote about “selective continuity” as a kind of strategy by which decarbonization has been removed from climate adaptation in New York City. Moreover, Thea Riofrancos99Thea Riofrancos, “What Green Costs,” Logic, (9), 2019. describes how the prevailing market-driven energy transition is also harming Indigenous communities through “green extractivism.” It strikes me that through the management of continuity and extracting of ideas your Tribe developed with partners, the state has enabled a kind of adaptation capitalism in the procurement processes while undermining the potential of your Tribal community resettlement as an effort to both decolonize AND decarbonize.

Secretary Comardelle: Yes, our original plans had renewable energy and building relationships between our Tribe and others as a teaching and learning community. Now there’s no renewable energy, no solar, nothing. The thing is we have a lot of our citizens that work in oil and gas, so we wanted to get ahead of the changes that we know are coming. We need to plan for it. We wanted to get ahead of the curve and be leaders in the transition. We know we have to learn and organize to do so, and this was our way to provide for our people when those transitions really start happening here. Now what are we going to do?

NJ: Chief Parfait-Dardar, I know that you have been working with the State of Louisiana on the Native American Commission. What is the significance of that commission, and what kinds of things do you hope that Commission will accomplish?

Chief Parfait-Dardar: This is the first time that we have an opportunity to have a voice that will continue to be present, regardless of whether or not the Governor decides to appoint a Director of the Louisiana Department of Indian Affairs. Our hope is to be able to address the many challenges faced by tribal peoples and having a legitimate government to government relationship with the State of Louisiana. One of the challenges is creating a just State Recognition process through the Commission, so that another tribe seeking recognition will not have to face attacks against their pursuit by being told that they only want a casino or having to deal will political biases. We plan on addressing education, housing and healthcare needs, just to name a few. So, yes, the Commission is a huge success and we’re very thankful to Representative Tanner Magee for his efforts and recognizing that this was crucial for improving governance in the State of Louisiana.

NJ: At the moment, we are also in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. How is this affecting your communities?

Chief Parfait-Dardar: When you destroy your environment, you open yourselves to so many possible negative challenges. It’s common sense really. Destroy your environment and you destroy yourselves. We are now beginning to have more cases within our community, and we are doing our best to stay socially distanced, wear masks and utilize our traditional teachings to aid in our healing. In August Representative Steve Scalise announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture would purchase $30 million in shrimp from Louisiana’s Gulf Coast as part of their pandemic economic response. Shrimping as a traditional practice has been steadily declining due to all of the environmental changes and unjust regulations that only benefit processing plants and large vessel harvesters. Add the impacts created by the BP Oil Spill, which are still being felt today, and you can understand why our youth are not being taught to continue this as a means of sustaining their families. So this is important to us, especially as we try to recover. Unfortunately, we have yet to hear from Representative Scalise and are starting to wonder if he is avoiding working with us to ensure that our Traditional Harvesters receive their fair portion of the monies.

Theresa Dardar: Socializing has come to a standstill in our community. Our community has survived because we were always able to come support each other. We can still support from a distance, but it is not the same as being able to go to help our elders if needed. Now even if our relative is in the hospital, we can’t be with them. Our tribal meetings have gone from in person meetings to Zoom and phones. No socializing after the meeting. The green house is on hold because of social distance.

Elder Philippe: Socializing is a large part of our culture. From our beginning to our present, we have survived because we were able to come together as a group. The isolation and separation are proving to be daunting. I think we have more questions than answers at this point…what were the conditions that gave birth to COVID-19; how do we prevent future outbreaks of similar or potentially deadlier viruses, what changes, as a global population, do we need to make, how do we survive the next pandemic event?

NJ: Finally, how might readers support your long-standing and ongoing efforts?

Elder Philippe: Think and ask questions. Hold those in power accountable to how they wield that power. Advocate for and speak the truth. Remember life is precious, and not just human life. Our lives are intricately tied to, and depend on, the survival of other life forms in our world. Our survival is tied to how we live with this planet. Animal life, plant life, insect life and other lifeforms do not need humans to survive (in fact other life forms seem to thrive when interaction with humans is minimized/non-existent…the same cannot be said of the reverse, we (humans) would surely perish if these other life forms did not exist.

Concerning relocation and so-called “managed retreat,” first and foremost sovereign right to self-determination must be upheld. If we allow ourselves to be moved or relocated to other places, what will be said of the places we now occupy; our homelands? Places where our spirits are fully awakened. For coastal people it’s the smell of the verdant greens of the marsh, the taste of salt in the air, the feeling of moisture on our skin, and the almost imperceptible sway of the lands beneath our feet. It is a place like no other; a place of divine sovereignty to the People. Other people will say this is an abandoned area if we leave. We who have been rooted in place for so many centuries will become strangers in a different land and will eventually be relegated to the oblivion of assimilation and forgetfulness. We know that time and events incite shortened memories when no one is left to invoke memories and practice traditions. We need to occupy our lands, so that our voices and the voices of our non-human relatives will continue to be brought forward as the future presents opportunities for Indigenous voices to be heard. There are none more Indigenous than the flora and fauna, the true “first inhabitants” of this world. We, the People, need to be seen, to really be seen, and for folks to see us for who we really are. We are not just communities pushed to the edge. We are not only to be defined by who we were in the past or the circumstances we currently face. See us for who we really are. We are survivors, original inhabitants, and contributors. We are not only contributors to our own lifeways and to this place, but to other places and people beyond our lands. We need everyone to recognize our strengths and respect our contributions. We continue to work towards that goal because what is the other option… Oblivion?

Chief Parfait-Dardar: I couldn’t have said it better than Elder Philippe. Always seek to improve by creating positive change and be respectful of all of our relations.

Theresa Dardar: Although the oil companies and others claim this land, so do we. We will never abandon where our mounds are. We bring the children and youth to the mounds and cemeteries so they can see and know where some of their ancestors lived and are buried. We will never abandon the land of our ancestors. If we did, it would be like cutting our roots. We can’t bring back what was lost because of the damage oil companies have done. We are trying to save the mounds and cemeteries and will continue to do that. We are also planning to do another oyster shell project. We are always looking for ways to restore around our community and teach the children, youth, and young adults. Also, the First Peoples Conservation Council is always trying to get funds to help the communities.