The Vanishing Island and Risky Business Blast

The Vanishing Island

Blast: Risky Business

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8.2(A)

8.1(A)

8.2(B)

8.3

8.5(E)

8.5(F)

8.6(A)

8.5(G)

8.6(D)

8.6(C)

8.6(G)

8.6(E)

what will our learning look like today?

Learning Intention

Success Criteria

Language Objective

Students will identify and explain at least three themes in The Vanishing Island. Students will provide evidence from the text to support their analysis.

I will explore the short story "The Vanishing Island" to understand its structure, elements, and themes. We will also practice using evidence from the text to support our interpretations.

I will use academic language to discuss the structure, elements, theme, and genre of "The Vanishing Island."

Blast Poll

How does risk play a role in innovation?Imagine trying to develop a new product or invention. Which of these risks would be the hardest for you to take?A. Getting criticized for trying something new and differentB. Gathering the funds and materials to start your productC. Losing all your profits and savings if your product flopsD. Being remembered as a failure

According to the business theory of disruptive innovation, there are five common traits of innovators who are risk takers. The traits are questioning, experimenting, observing, associating and networking.

optimism

the belief that good things will happen

intimidating

causing a feeling of fear

diagnose

to determine what is wrong

innovation

a new method, idea, product, etc.

encourage

to give hope or confidence to someone

Olivia Hallisey learned about Ebola when she was a high school junior. Ebola is a virus that broke out in West Africa in 2014. It killed more than 11,000 people by 2016. Hallisey was shocked when she learned how fast it spread. She wanted to help. So, at age 16, Hallisey created the Ebola Assay Card, a new way to diagnose the disease. The card is made of simple materials, including silk. It can detect Ebola in under 30 minutes. Hallisey’s invention won the grand prize at the 2015 Google Science Fair. The competition challenges middle school and high school students to change the world. Past finalists of the Google Science Fair have created amazing inventions. One finalist made a flashlight that uses energy from human heat. Another made solar-powered water purification filters. A third made plastic out of banana peels. One winner even developed a flying robot that can escape from threats. These projects would not have been possible if the students didn’t take risks. Even when their experiments fell short, they stuck with their ideas. They continued their research and developed amazing innovations. "I think imagination and optimism are important parts of innovation,” Hallisey said. “Teenagers have that and so they try things that maybe adults think will fail." The research matches Hallisey’s conclusion — that is, adults aren’t taking as many risks in science as they could be. A 2015 study found that many biomedical scientists today are unlikely to take risks. Many pursue existing questions, instead of studying new research topics. In the past, “researchers were encouraged to do some crazy stuff,” James Evans told Science magazine. “It was high-risk but it paid off enormously

for their group, and for science.” Evans co-authored the study. Now, he says, researchers aren’t encouraged to take risks. Adults are not the only ones who struggle with taking risks. As students grow older, many worry more about the risk of failure. This fear bleeds into academic, social and career settings. Rachel Simmons, a leadership development specialist at Smith College, wants to change that. “What we’re trying to teach is that failure is not a bug of learning, it’s the feature,” she told the New York Times. Other colleges are making different efforts to embrace failure. Davidson College offers a special scholarship called the Failure Fund. According to its website, the grant encourages students “to model the traits of innovators and creative entrepreneurs.” It rewards students who are “comfortable with failure.” Taking risks can be intimidating, because you can’t be sure that your idea will be successful. However, with science experiments, success is often impossible without failure. Failures lead researchers to reshape old ideas into better ones. What other fields besides science involve taking risks to achieve a goal? Does the reward always outweigh the risk? How does risk play a role in innovation?

Do Now:

As we watch this video on Disappearing Islands, write your thoughts in the chat!

Introduction

Author Anya Groner offers an intimate perspective of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Native American tribe and the trials they face as their ancestral homeland disappears before their eyes. As creeping water threatens the tribe and much of the Louisiana coast, the tribe must take on the challenge of seeking a new and safe place to live. In a race against the clock, the tribe seeks ways to preserve their community and protect their culture from eroding along with the land. *Watch Study Sync Video

Background & Context

• This article interweaves information involving Louisiana geology, political and social history, the culture and lives of Native Americans, and historical events in a long and complex narrative, and the narration moves back and forth in time. Students may need support as the topics and time periods shift.

Specific vocabulary

• anhingas-a long-necked fish-eating bird
• arsenic-the chemical element of atomic number 33: Poisonous
• palmetto-any of several usually low-growing fan-leaved palms.
• bousillage- mixture of clay and grass or other fibrous substances used as the infill (chinking) between the timbers of a half-timbered building.

catastrophic

causing ruin; disastrous

erode

to become worn down or to deteriorate, usually caused by natural forces

maintain

to keep or continue without changing

settle

to resolve a problem or reach an agreement

subsistence

the tools and ability needed to survive

Summary

The ancestral homeland of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Native American tribe, the Isle de Jean Charles, is being threatened by rising sea levels. In the past, the small Louisiana island was eleven by five miles, but over time it has shrunk to only two miles long by a quarter mile wide. The tribe originally settled on the island in the early 1800s and was self-sufficient for years. However, the loss of land has meant that the tribe can no longer grow food to sustain themselves. In 2002, the tribe had an opportunity to relocate, but the residents voted against it. In 2009, after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the residents agreed to leave, but potential future neighbors did not want the tribe in their backyard. In 2016, the government gave the tribe a $48 million grant, which will allow the tribe to stay together and maintain their community when they find a new home.

The Lay of the Land At first glance, the Isle de Jean Charles, a skinny, two-mile long Louisiana island 75 miles south of New Orleans, looks like a tropical paradise. Beards of Spanish moss sway from the branches of oak trees. Orange and white wildflowers brighten both sides of the only street. Snow-white egrets, blue and green herons, and ebony anhingas stretch their necks, balancing on fallen trees. A flock of red winged blackbirds takes flight, swooping before landing on the power lines. Even the houses have a bird-like quality. Teal, maroon, and gray, the buildings perch on stilts, fourteen feet off the ground. Wide porches and open front doors welcome visitors. A group has gathered for a fresh crawfish and crab boil.

Everyone knows each other here: they grew up together, fishing and crabbing and catching game. Of the two dozen families that still live here, most are relatives and members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Native American tribe. But the island is not what it used to be. In fact, the island is vanishing. By 2050, Isle de Jean Charles may be completely gone. “Way back in the old days,” lifetime resident Wenceslaus Billiot Sr. says in the film Can’t Stop the Waters, “you had trees. There was no bay. All this water used to be marsh.” Billiot Sr. is an 89-year old boat builder and lifelong resident who has watched the landscape transform. “I built this house in the 1960s. I have another I built in ’49. I built it all.” Since 1955, the tribe has lost 98 percent of their land to encroaching

waters. What was once an eleven-by-five mile island that contained forests and cattle farms is now just two miles long and a quarter of a mile wide. The land, composed of soft, silty dirt, has dissolved, much of it giving way to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico—and the population has shrunk along with the island. The size of Isle de Jean Charles in 1955 compared to the size of the island today.

“Just in my lifetime, the amount of land loss is astonishing,” says tribal secretary Chantel Comardelle. She spent her early years on the island, but her family left when she was four because life on the mainland is more stable than an uncertain future on Isle de Jean Charles. Nonetheless, like many tribal members who’ve moved away, the island remains her cultural home. She visits nearly every weekend, usually bringing her children with her. “Every time I go back, I see a little bit less.” “I grew up here,” echoes Emray Naquin. “The land is going like you wouldn’t believe.” When he was a child, the tribe’s leader, Chief Albert Naquin, set traps in the woods with his father. Now, though, that forest is part of the bay, a place where fishermen search for crabs. Farms have vanished, too. There’s no place for livestock. Even small vegetable gardens are hard to keep. Over time, the earth has absorbed salt and arsenic from the polluted waters that sweep across the land with increasing frequency. “We were so self sufficient as a tribe, that [in the past] we were unaware of the outside world,” explains Damian Naquin. He’s eighteen years old. He grew up in nearby Pointe-aux-Chenes. “When the Great Depression happened, the tribe didn’t know it.” He says that during the nation’s greatest economic collapse, tribe members suffered no shortage of food. “It didn’t affect us.” Self-sufficiency used to be a point of pride for islanders who found freedom in working for themselves. Subsistence, the ability to live off one’s natural surroundings, is no longer possible because of land loss. The forests are gone, and without the marshes to sustain fish nurseries and provide habitats, the once abundant sea life has diminished. “At one time, water was our life. Now it’s almost our enemy because it is driving us out,” says Comardelle. “It’s a double edged sword. Our life and our death.”

Between August and October, the peak months of hurricane season, day-to-day erosion is worsened by storms. Since 1998, Terrebonne Parish, the region that encompasses the Isle de Jean Charles, has suffered a federally-declared disaster every two years. The big ones arrive with more strength and more frequency than in the past. The natural features that used to protect land—wetlands and barrier island—are gone. During hurricanes, waist-deep water rises over the only exit road, cutting off the island from rescue crews. Trees fall and wind rips walls and roofs from buildings. Before residents began elevating their homes atop stilts, biannual flood waters swept furniture and belongings into the bay. “Every time there’s a flood, we lose everything,” explains Damian. “We don’t have any valuables. We know, if we get something, the next storm that comes through, it’s going to ruin it. It’s going to carry it away.” When storms subside, weary residents paddle through town checking up on one another and assessing the damage. After the waters recede, mold and mildew linger, which causes respiratory problems and makes residents ill. The cycle of devastation and rebuilding is exhausting. But it wasn’t always like this. “Now [folks] evacuate for hurricanes. Back then they didn’t,” recalls Comardelles’s father, Deputy Chief Wenceslaus Billiot Jr. As a child in 1965, he spent Hurricane Betsy in his father’s boat, in the canal in front of their house. “We would get hit by storms but it wouldn’t be as bad because we had protection. When Camille hit we didn’t have any damage at all. Now, a hurricane like Betsy hits? Shooo.” His voice drops to a whisper and he shakes his head. With such severe conditions, outsiders are often baffled to learn that many of the remaining residents of Isle de Jean Charles refuse to leave. The island, which some affectionately refer to as “the bathtub,” isn’t

simply a place to live—it is the center of tribal life and a cultural homeland. Eight generations have grown up on Isle de Jean Charles, surviving off the bounty of the water and land around them: hunting, fishing, trapping, and gardening. As the land erodes, the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribal culture erodes with it. “Once our island goes, the core of our tribe is lost,” says Comardelle. “We’ve lost our whole culture—that is what is on the line.” Many elder tribe members don’t want another way of life. They grew up here. Though the island has changed, giving up on their homeland is simply too hard. For them, staying put is a way of maintaining traditional life. Others lack the financial resources to live elsewhere. They have come to terms with cleaning up flood damage every two to three years. Island life has changed dramatically over the past few decades. “The old chief, a great great great grandpa of mine, he owned the [island] store,” remembers Comardelle. “The store was also the dance hall, it was the church, it was the wedding hall, it was everything.” When the population began shrinking, the store shut down. Today the closest grocery store is fifteen miles away. Other community spaces have disappeared as well. There are no longer event grounds on the island. Grand Bois Park, a public event space on the mainland once used for pow wows has been destroyed by flooding, too. The tribe hasn’t held a pow wow—a traditional Native American festival—since before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana in 2005. “We have no place,” says Comardelle. “I used to dance in pow wow dress. My kids have never experienced that.” What remains are the Isle de Jean Charles fire house and the local marina. Above the tin roof, an orange flag flaps in the wind. It is the flag of Houma Nation, the name of another local Native American tribe.

On weekends, visitors come to the island to eat fresh crawfish, shrimp, and crabs; the rest of the week the marina is quiet, as though already abandoned. For more than fifteen years, Chief Naquin has been trying to relocate his people. “The longer we wait,” Naquin says in the documentary Can’t Stop the Water, “the more hurricane seasons we have to go through. We hate to let the island go, but we have to. It’s like losing a family member. We know we are going to lose it. We just don’t know when.” As chief, Naquin believes he must have a good heart in order to know right from wrong and determine what’s good for his people. “We’re washing away, one day at a time,” he says. It is painful for him to admit, but Naquin believes the tribe’s future lies elsewhere. In January of 2016, Chief Naquin received good news. Through a Housing and Urban Development grant, his tribe received $48 million, about half the estimated cost of resettling the tribe. The money would help build a community center, medical facilities, and housing for tribe members. That includes the 600 or so people who left Isle de Jean Charles and scattered throughout Louisiana. The grant would also help fund an education program so visitors can learn about the island’s history and the difficult process of relocation. “I’m flying high as a kite,” Naquin told the newspaper Houma Today after receiving the news. It’s easy to understand why the grant would make him so happy. Though the island is vanishing, with this money the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe just may have a future. Eight Generations of History

Jean Marie Naquin and Pauline Verdin married in the early 1800s. After their wedding, though, they needed to hide: Jean Marie was French and Pauline was Native American. At the time in Louisiana, interracial couples faced discrimination and even violence. Jean Marie’s family disowned him because of the marriage. To escape persecution, Jean Marie and Pauline built their home on an “uninhabited” island. The landscape was rich with palmettos, alligators, crawfish, and sea birds. Ironically, it was Jean Marie’s disapproving father, Jean Charles, for whom the Isle de Jean Charles was likely named. He was the one who first showed his son the island, hidden in the coastal wetlands. Jean Charles had first come to the island while he was employed by the notorious privateer and outlaw, Jean Lafitte. At the time, Louisiana’s wetlands were considered “uninhabitable” by the government. They weren’t even mapped by Europeans. For a man like Jean Lafitte, a privateer who transported stolen goods and slaves to illegal markets, the maze of marshes provided a hiding place for his misdeeds. The coastal

swamps provided safety for the newly married Jean Marie and Pauline. Not only was the island isolated, the land was also free. “Uninhabitable” land meant unwanted land, so Jean Marie and Pauline simply claimed it as their own. They built their home from mud, moss, and palmetto leaves, a kind of construction known as bousillage. Soon they started a family. By the 1830s, Jean Marie and Pauline’s children were having children of their own. Later, they married Native Americans from off the island and brought them to Isle de Jean Charles to live and start families as well. Once again, the remote location provided safety from a hostile society. In 1830, the United States Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, a federal law authorizing the forced removal of southern Native Americans from their ancestral land. The purpose of the law was to enable white settlers to move in. A few tribes, including the Mississippi Choctaws, signed treaties exchanging their homeland for payment and land rights west of the Mississippi. Other tribes resisted and the situation escalated. White men formed local and state militias, which forced southern and southeastern Native Americans to abandon their homes and march west to Oklahoma and Texas. The Native Americans were exposed to the elements. They lacked supplies. Thousands died and the march west became known as the Trail of Tears, in memory of the lives and culture lost. Unlike so many other Native Americans, the growing Naquin family escaped the Trail of Tears because of their hidden island deep in the marshes. For the second time, the swamp saved their lives. By 1876, Louisiana settlers were looking to expand their communities and build in new places. The state revoked the coastal marshes' official designation as “uninhabitable.” It put the wetlands and their hidden islands up for sale. Four families, residents of Isle de Jean Charles and descendants of Jean Marie and Pauline, purchased the land they lived on, which gave them a legal claim to the island their families had been occupying for seven decades.

By 1910, sixteen families lived on Isle de Jean Charles. Residents were fluent in Cajun French and English. They lived a subsistence-based lifestyle. Families fished, trapped, and hunted for food. They added to their diets with gardens. They had domesticated livestock such as chickens and cows. French, Native American, and African food cultures influenced their cuisine. For instance, Gumbo Fricassee, a popular dish, contains the following ingredients:

• Okra -a vegetable imported from West Africa during the slave trade
• Roux -a mixture of fat and flour often used as a base in French cooking
• Filé -a Choctaw spice made from ground sassafras leaves
• The Holy Trinity -a Catholic nickname for the celery, bell peppers, and onions, essential ingredients in any gumbo recipe
• Whatever seafood, chicken, or sausage is fresh and available

Religious practices on the island similarly combine French Catholic and Native American customs. To this day, many Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw people attend both church and pow wows. Masculinity was important in both games and government. On Christian or Native American holidays, men and boys often gathered to play pick, a game still played today. Damian Naquin first played pick when he was six. Pick, he explains, is “a simple game. You have a circle in the mud. Everyone has a sharpened wooden stick, which you find from a tree and sharpen. ...The point [is] to see who could keep their stick in the mud the longest [and] to knock another person’s stick down.” The tribe’s chief was always a man. As the tribal leader, he would maintain the grocery store, distribute

mail, help settle disputes, represent the people of the island to outsiders, and gather residents for community service. Upon retirement, he chose his successor, a practice that continues to this day. Despite the growing size of the community, for decades Isle de Jean Charles lacked a school. In the 1930s, children began traveling by small wooden boats called pirogues to the nearby town of Pointe-aux-Chenes, where a missionary school funded by donations and run by the Live Oak Baptist Church served both white and Native American children. At that time, though, Louisiana was committed to Jim Crow laws, which legalized racial segregation. The missionary school didn’t last long. The superintendent visited, saw a racially mixed classroom, and shut the school down. The island children had nowhere to go. In 1940, Baptists tried again to provide education for the younger islanders by building the Mission School. It was a one room building on the Isle de Jean Charles. The mission school filled a gap, but it only ran to eighth grade. Eventually, some frustrated families moved off the island. In 1952, Louisiana built its first “Indian High School” in Houma, Louisiana. It was a segregated school for Native American teenagers 25 miles from Isle de Jean Charles. It was not until 1967 that local public schools admitted Native American students. Even today, there are no schools on the island. The closest schools are on the mainland. In 2008, Hurricane Gustav damaged the only road connecting the mainland to the island, turning it from a two-lane road into a one-lane road. After that, school buses stopped coming to Isle de Jean Charles. All but one family with school-age children have moved away. Though the road has been repaired, it still sits only inches above open water. High winds can cause flooding over the pavement. “If you live on the island and the road is flooded then you can’t go to school or go to work,” explains Sheila Billiot. Stomping Out the Boot

If you open a United States atlas or search the Internet for “Louisiana map,” you’ll discover a state shaped roughly like a boot. Louisiana is bordered by the Mississippi River to the east, Arkansas to the north, and Texas to the west. The foot of the boot stretches south and east into the Gulf of Mexico. A state’s shape sounds unchangeable, but some Louisianans believe their map needs to be redrawn. “The boot is at best an inaccurate approximation,” writes Brett Anderson, staff writer for the New Orleans newspaper The Times-Picayune. Anderson isn’t disputing Louisiana’s borders with surrounding states; his contention lies with the southernmost border, where the state’s marshy edges are rapidly slipping into the gulf. Because marshlands are largely impassable except by boat, it’s difficult to understand the magnitude of Louisiana’s land loss unless viewing it from a plane. The United States Geological Service (USGS) reports that between 1932 and 2000, roughly 1,900 square miles of Louisiana’s land vanished into the Gulf of Mexico. That’s an area about the size of Delaware. Today, an estimated football field of land is lost every 45 minutes. That rate of land loss is higher than almost anywhere else on the planet. If no measures are put in place to prevent more erosion, another 1,750 square miles—a landmass larger than Rhode Island—will give way by 2064. “Our coast is going away faster than pretty much any other coast in the world,” explains Pat Forbes. He’s the Executive Director of the Louisiana State Office of Community and Development. Currently, Louisiana’s greatest land loss occurs during storms. In 2005, the year Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit, Louisiana lost more than 200 square miles of coastal wetlands in a single summer. In addition to hurricane damage and global sea level rise, other factors also contribute to land loss. The engineering of the Mississippi River, the land’s natural propensity to sink and erode, and the dredging of canals throughout the wetlands have also contributed to the loss of land in Louisiana.

From its source in Minnesota, the Mississippi River winds its way through nine more states before spilling into the Gulf of Mexico: Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The river, nicknamed the Big Muddy, picks up dirt and carries it downstream. Eventually, this dirt is deposited along the Louisiana Gulf Coast, a process that has replenished and maintained coastline marshes and islands that would otherwise erode into the sea. “Essentially,” explains Forbes, “most of Southern Louisiana has been built up by sediment carried down the Mississippi over thousands of years.” Without this sediment to constantly build back the land, Louisiana’s coastline would naturally diminish. In 1927, unusually heavy rains overwhelmed the Mississippi River, flooding an area the size of Ireland and causing the current to run backwards. Levees broke. Floodwaters swept away farms and towns. In some places the swollen river stretched more than 60 miles wide. More than 700,000 people lost their homes. The damage cost about $1 billion at the time to fix. To prevent such a disaster from happening again, the US government constructed the world’s largest river containment system around the Big Muddy. The Army Corps of Engineers built dirt barriers called levees on either side of the river to prevent the floodwaters from spilling over the banks. They also dug man-made canals, called floodways. That way, when the river swelled, the water could be released along predictable routes. Rather than carving a new riverbed every spring, as the Mississippi had done annually since the last Ice Age, the massive waterway was given a fixed path which ended in the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi from overflowing its banks, but they also stopped the river from carrying out many of the natural processes that surrounding states relied on. The levee system cut the Louisiana coast off from the sediment that nourished and created the land. The dirt that gave the Big Muddy its nickname no longer reached Louisiana’s marshes. The problems caused by river engineering are worsened by subsidence, or the natural propensity for wetlands to sink and erode. Louisiana contains 40% of the nation’s wetlands.

These marshes make up more than a third of the state. They provide habitats for shrimp, fish, crawfish, and crabs. These animals are crucial to Louisiana’s fisheries. Built from soft mud, these wetlands are constantly sinking and eroding, a natural process called subsidence. When the river dumps sediment into the marshes, the wetlands rebuild and the lost land replenishes. Without river sediment to continually build them back up, Louisiana’s wetlands shrink, then vanish, a process that’s been charted repeatedly along the coast. In addition to subsidence, a system of canals crisscrosses the state’s wetlands, further damaging the fragile ecosystem. In the swamp, these waterways function as roads, providing boats easy access to oil, gas, and fisheries; over time, however, they’ve created pathways for saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico to leach into the freshwater wetlands. Salt is poisonous to wetland plants such as Cypress and Tupelo Gum trees. As the flora dies off, the wetlands give way to open water. The disappearance of the wetlands has had another unintended consequence. Marshes and swamps are like sponges; they can expand and soak up water, protecting the mainland and inland islands from storm surges and flooding—but without wetlands to provide natural barriers, hurricane damage can be even more catastrophic. For Louisianans, restoring the coast is a race against time. The goal is not only to protect the land, but also to care for the humans, plants, and animals that live there. The US economy is deeply linked to Louisiana’s wellbeing. The state’s commercial fishing industry produces a quarter of US seafood, and nearly half of the nation’s grain supply passes through the port of New Orleans. Since 2007, the state has built 250 miles of levees and constructed 45 miles of barrier islands and berms. But this massive effort has not been able to keep up with the rate of land loss.

Stay or Go? The first opportunity for the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe to relocate came in 2002. The Army Corps of Engineers redrew the path of the Morganza-to-the-Gulf Levee. This 98-mile earthen wall was designed to protect people and property from hurricanes and storm surges. Originally, Isle de Jean Charles was included in this plan. The levee would keep water off the island and the land would regenerate. However, in 2002, the Army Corps of Engineers decided to bypass Isle de Jean Charles. For islanders, the news was devastating. The Army Corps of Engineers offered to relocate the community. But it would only happen if the residents voted unanimously in favor of resettling. “The plan was dead in the water,” Comardelle recalls. “At the time, we’d had a lot of land loss, but we hadn’t had major structural issues [with buildings and infrastructure].” The majority of residents were in favor of the relocation. However, some residents, particularly tribal elders, were reluctant to leave. “It’s home for them, you know,” Dominick explains. “They were born, raised, grew up, lived their whole entire lives there. Even though their home is being stripped away, they still don’t want to leave because of the sentimental value.” Others worried the relocation was part of a dishonest effort to take over their island. In the end, the tribe couldn’t get unanimous support. The relocation was voted down by the people. Several years after the vote, storm damage caused tribe members to reconsider their stance. In 2005, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita flooded the island, badly damaging the land. Three years later, when Hurricane Gustav hit Isle de Jean Charles directly, houses lost roofs and walls, gas lines broke, and the utility company refused to replace the lines. Many residents left, and those who stayed behind reconsidered their options.

In 2009, the tribal council restarted the relocation process. This time, plans progressed much further. Most residents were ready to leave. The tribal council found land to purchase. This time the relocation was halted by their future neighbors. “We were going forward and some issues came up with the [adjacent] neighborhood,” remembers Comardelle. “That community rose up and said they didn’t want [us] in their backyard.” With no place to move, tribe members wondered if their culture was fated to vanish along with the island. Good news came in early 2016. That’s when the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe learned they would receive the $48 million relocation grant from the federal office of Housing and Urban Development. Beginning with the marriage of Jean Marie Naquin and Pauline Verdin, eight generations of tribal members made their home on the Isle de Jean Charles. The relocation grant meant the tribe could have a future, but it would have to be elsewhere. Though he was thrilled to receive the grant, in an article in National Geographic Chief Naquin compared “losing the island” with “losing a family member.” Federal grants have supported resettlement projects for storm victims for decades. They’ve enabled, for example, families who lost houses in Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy to live elsewhere. The Isle de Jean Charles relocation, however, is an entirely new endeavor. “Resettling a community is entirely different from relocating individuals,” explains Pat Forbes. “In the past, when an area’s been declared unsafe to live, the state or federal government has offered buyouts to affected landowners. In other words, they pay residents to leave. The problem with buyouts is that communities don’t stay together.” In contrast, the primary goal of the Isle de Jean Charles relocation is to preserve the community and

culture of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe. Rather than splitting up tribe members, the grant aims to bring people together. The grant proposal explains, “The tribe has physically and culturally been torn apart with the scattering of members... A new settlement offers an opportunity for the tribe to rebuild their homes and secure their culture on safe ground.” With this funding, island residents and tribal members who left their homeland due to land loss and flooding can also rejoin their community in a new location. “The people of the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe are situated on the front line of Louisiana’s coastal land loss disaster and their ancestral home is sinking into the marsh,” explains Forbes. “This $48 million grant will allow the state to help them resettle their entire community to a safer place with minimum of disruption to livelihoods and lifestyles. Together we’ll be creating a model for resettlement of endangered coastal communities throughout the United States.” To accomplish this lofty goal, tribal members have been dreaming big. “We could have our own community center,” says secretary Comardelle. “We could have room to grow. We could have our own crops, our own industry if we wanted. We want to be our own place again.” Community members are working hard to make the relocation happen. “It’s about family,” says Dominick Naquin. “No matter how many times we’ve been shot down, we came back stronger and kept fighting.” Perhaps everything that the Isle de Jean Charles’ residents and their ancestors have overcome has set them up for this moment. With ancestors who escaped the Trail of Tears and families who’ve survived numerous hurricanes, they’re well equipped to triumph despite unfavorable odds. A Vision of Community “I want you to feel like you have just walked onto the original island, with the way the trees look,

the way the vegetation looks,” says Chantel Comardelle. She’s leaning back in a brown armchair in her two-bedroom house in Houma, Louisiana, 45 minutes from the Isle de Jean Charles. To her right sits her daughter’s three-story plastic dollhouse; to her left, giant containers filled with quilts and photo albums. Heirlooms inherited when her mother-in-law passed away. One room over, one of her young sons is crying. Comardelle’s mother, Sheila Billiot, is talking to him softly, comforting him. The emphasis on family, a value nearly every member of her tribe seems to cherish, is abundant in this house. Comardelle’s eyes are closed as she talks. Physically, she’s here, in her living room. Spiritually, she’s in the future, imagining what her tribe’s relocation will look like. What will it mean for her family and for the future of her people? Her voice is confident as if she’s describing a place that already exists. “When you pull up, when you approach the community, the center grounds are also pow wow grounds.” In the front of the facility, she imagines a museum. It’s a wooden building with a front porch. When visitors enter, they feel like they’re walking into someone’s house. “I want guests to walk through the history of the island with the original settlers. The ceiling, I want it to be the road to show how it progressed. With no road, just water and canoes, and then you have the road, and then you start to see the road on the floor. I want to have a big map on the wall and show the island. I want it to be digitized to show you how the island’s progressed in digital pictures as far as land loss, how it’s shrunk.” Comardelle’s belief in the museum is so great that she’s begun taking online graduate courses in museum studies, using her class assignments to start planning exhibits and features. “Even the sounds will be like you’re on the island,” she says. “I want French music playing in some sections. I want people talking in other sections. I want animal sounds in other sections. I want you to be fully immersed.” Comardelle’s vision is so detailed and her belief so firm that it’s hard to imagine the future panning out any other way.

Besides the museum, Comardelle imagines the new site hosting other public facilities. There will be a store, a clinic, and a restaurant. “We hope to have a kitchen. The food’s traditional Cajun food. Gumbo. Gumbo fricassee. We’re going to have a healthcare facility. We want to have a 24-hour nurse, and we’ll also service the outside, so it’ll be like a both-ways kind of thing. We also want to have a childcare facility. An elderly senior center. Our kitchen will cook and serve food for the outside, but daily they’ll make a plate lunch for our residents who are elderly.” Comardelle’s idealism is intentional. In 2010, the tribe began working with a non-profit called the Lowlander Center, a community-run organization aimed at helping lowland residents build a future while adapting to an ever changing coastline. After Hurricane Gustav, volunteers at the Lowlander Center heard about the tribe’s resettlement plan. They encouraged the council of elders to come up with their best-case scenario. “All the bells and whistles,” recalls Comardelle. “Everything you want. Everything you desire.” Beyond the pow wow grounds, the museum, and the restaurant, Comardelle envisions a less public part of the community where residents live. Designed to accommodate up to 400 members, the houses will be arranged, as they were on the the island, so that extended families share backyards. Aunts and uncles and grandparents will be able watch each other’s children. They’ll call across to each other from porch to porch. “I want to build that family unit back,” says Comardelle. Comardelle isn’t the only one to prioritize shared responsibility and familial interactions. At eighteen, Damian and Dominick Naquin are the youngest members of the resettlement committee. They see blood relationships as the glue that holds their community together. “As a future, I would love to see us stay as a family,” explains Damian. “Some elders don’t want to give up what they remember, what they hold onto, but their grandchildren, they would love to see another future for them. They want to save the family values and the culture so that the younger generation can

experience what they experienced.” “If we’re successful with the relocation,” adds Dominick, “then the elders will know the younger generation will experience what they experienced.” As for their own future, the twin brothers hope to return to their tribe equipped with skills to help their community thrive. Both are currently freshmen at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. “I’m trying to become a pediatrician, a child doctor,” says Damian. “If I achieve that goal, I know I’m able to bring a very valuable resource back. I see my role in the future of the tribe, to support wherever the tribe goes.” Dominick, who’s majoring in computer science, echoes his brother’s wish to contribute to the well-being of his people. His ideal day in the new community includes multigenerational activities. “I’ll wake up. I’ll do my job, whatever that may be,” he says. “Hopefully, when the time comes, I would have the privilege to sit down with a whole bunch of children and be able to sit down in a circle drum and teach them how to drum and sing. To pass down our culture, that would bring me great joy.” Damian and Dominick’s plans are exactly what the tribe needs for the resettlement to work. Maintaining a cultural identity is the primary goal of the resettlement, but the only way that can happen is through interaction across age groups. Already, the culture is being lost. Comardelle’s grandmother was a medicinal herbalist, who used teas and plants to cure others. Those skills weren’t passed down and the tradition was lost. Until the relocation is complete, Comardelle does her best to transfer culture by taking her children to Isle de Jean Charles, explaining, “If you can keep the younger generation connected with the oldest generation, you can keep that transition. I notice it with my kids, when we go visit my grandma. They’re learning French in school and they’re tickled to go over there and talk French with my grandma.”

Perhaps, years from now, Comardelle’s children will recall these trips to Isle de Jean Charles, an island homeland that no longer exists. Sitting on a back porch, they’ll tell their children about how they caught crabs in the bayou. How they listened to their grandparents speak in Cajun French about weddings in general stores and waiting out hurricanes in their daddy’s boats. Around them the egrets will take flight as Spanish moss sways in the breeze. Relatives might wave from nearby porches. After all, history isn’t just what happened a long time ago. The creation of a new homeland, the tribe’s relocation, and the council’s efforts to maintain culture are all history in action. If the relocation works, Comardelle, the Naquins, and the other members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe will achieve something amazing. Their people and their culture will have a safe home in coastal Louisiana for centuries to come.

Children in front of a bousillage

The man in the photograph was a chief at the Biloxi-Chitimatcha-Choctaw tribe.

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