Oil spill update from the field: Deepwater could spell extinction for a tribe of Louisiana Indians

By Justin Nobel

Created 05/19/2010 - 5:02am

Rosina Philippe is the de facto matriarch of the last group of Atakapa-Ishak Indians still living off the land. The oil spill threatens their way of life. (Photo by J.N.)
Grand Bayou Village, Louisiana, May 19
Trace the Mississippi River south from New Orleans; refinery stacks spit fire, citrus grows in neat rows and red and blue rectangles drift above the treetops, containers on cargo ships long as city blocks. The air is thick, the land is rich and something about the style of signs and the gait of the folk indicate you are entering a place on the edge. And you are, after 2,200 miles this is the homestretch of America's mightiest river.

                                                     

Turn right after a large cow pasture and follow the gravel road until it ends. This is Grand Bayou Village, home to the Atakapa-Ishak Indians [1], a dark-skinned tribe that once occupied southeast Texas and south Louisiana but now occupies only this community. There are ten families left, living mostly off the oysters, shrimp and fish they draw from the marshes, their homes only reachable by boat. This is the edge of the edge.

 

As oil continues to invade the Louisiana coast, fishery closures shape-shift like an enormous gyrating amoeba and boom is laid down by the hundreds of mile, but both fish and the coast are still imperiled. More than five million gallons of crude have spilled into the sea and just what long-term effects it will have on Louisiana's marshes and the people like the Atakapa that rely on them, no one really knows. "This is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of impact," Ralph Morgenweck, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientist, announced yesterday at a Deepwater press conference [2].

 

The Atakapa have survived smallpox, Manifest Destiny and a millennium of hurricanes, but the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which represents a complete unknown, is the scariest threat of all, says Rosina Philippe, the tribe's de facto matriarch. Hundreds of years ago her tribe was driven from the lakeshores, river valleys and coasts they inhabited to this remote spindle of marsh. The ecosystem here is in jeopardy, but there is literally nowhere left to go. "We're looking at the potential for cultural genocide," said Philippe.

 

With a group from Below the Surface [3], an energetic NGO bent on saving America's waterways, I entered Grand Bayou. Sun-burnt fishermen chatted beside their boats and the marsh beyond was shadowed by thick black clouds. A small skiff motored forth and docked. Out of it stepped a large friendly woman in an amber skirt and white blouse named Ruby. She was on her way to church. "We have to paddle to our cars," said Rosina. "Sometimes it's wet, sometimes it's hot; sometimes it's cold."

 

The Below the Surface crew, me and a group of Louisiana Waterkeepers [4] piled into a slipshod blue boat for a tour. Our skipper was a muscular man with sideburns named John Phillippe, Rosina's nephew. As we motored slowly down Grand Bayou, the town's main street, a procession of small homes came into view, clapboard houses with sunken roofs and split siding, the still undemolished victims of Hurricane Katrina. But the following row of homes was intact and tidy, with floating docks as front yards and backyards of marsh. There were barbeque grills and American flags.

The homes of Grand Bayou are only accessible by boat (Photo by J.N.)

Past the homes, John let the engine rip and we tore off through a Pac-man board pattern of waterways, trailed by a flock of laughing gulls. Many Grand Bayou residents earn a living catching oysters, which thrive practically anywhere there is open water. The mud bottoms are owned by tribe members and others, then leased out in patches. We zoomed into a large bay marked with sticks of PVC tube that indicated oyster beds below. I asked John Philippe what he did for work. "All I do is catch oysters," he said. "Whenever I'm not doing that, I catch shrimps."

 

In the distance was an island of pipes and tanks, an oil relay station, funneling crude from offshore. "These dot the entire coast," said Rosina. The structure soon became obscured, as swollen drops turned into a sheet of rain. All aboard were instantly drenched. Bolts of lightning dashed the horizon and a powerful wind rocked our small craft. We could proceed no further, and turned back for the village, taking a different route, along a waterway lined with arching trees. At one point, a group of two dozen great egrets burst across the channel.

 

Back on dry land, Rosina apologized for having to cut the trip short. "Come back again," she said, "We'll still be here. We've been here for over 300 years, so we've survived a lot. We don't have the option to pick up and move somewhere else, this is all we know."

The Atakapa have survived smallpox, Manifest Destiny and a millennium of hurricanes, but the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which represents a complete unknown, is the scariest threat of all, says Philippe. (Photo by Justin Nobel)