[LINK] "As Louisiana’s marshes erode, so does the Houma Indians way of life"

[rfmcdonald]

In a sort of followup to the Brett Anderson Medium article on Louisiana's catastrophically eroding coastline that I linked to in September, Al Jazeera's Stell Simonton reports on the plight of the Houma Indians of the Louisiana coast. Their homeland is literally slipping away from them, even without oil pollution.

[Houma Chief Thomas Dardar Jr]’s administrative assistant, Bette Billiot, drove her black minivan down a narrow road alongside Pointe-aux-Chenes Bayou in early December, the white feathers of a dreamcatcher swaying from her rearview mirror.

The bayou is in Terrebonne Parish, one of six coastal parishes where the Houma and other Native peoples are concentrated.

She pointed to the right. “That’s Lora Ann Chaisson’s property,” she said. Chaisson, the vice principal chief of the Houma, used to own 15 acres, but only 12 acres of her land still exist. “She has three acres of water now,” Billiot said.

Billiot turned the van onto a narrow road leading to Isle de Jean Charles, a stretch of land that was inspiration for the 2012 film “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

For years, it was home to a community of Native Americans. Once, 125 or so families lived there, she said. Now it’s only about 25 families. The island was 5 miles wide and 11 miles long in the 1950s, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Now it’s barely a quarter of a mile wide and 2 miles long.