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https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240130-this-louisiana-town-moved-to-escape-climate-disaster>
'"I can't smell the water," Chris Brunet says as he sits on the front porch of
his new home in Gray, Louisiana. "I can't smell it, I can't see it, I can't
sense it. And I miss it."
Brunet, a member of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe, lived most his life on
Isle de Jean Charles, a small strip of land about 40 miles (64km) away in
Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, which has lost 98% of its land to coastal
erosion.
Alongside his neighbours, Brunet made the decision to leave his home, and all
he knew, to move to higher ground in 2023, in a mammoth multimillion dollar
project to relocate the tribe to escape rising sea levels. The tribe had
already run once – from white settlers during the colonisation of America – and
fled to the island, which was an isolated refuge until 1953, when a road was
built that connected it to the mainland.
Now, they felt they were being forced to flee again, and wanted to change the
narrative. "We are not climate refugees," Brunet insists. "We are climate
pioneers."
It is an important distinction, particularly as the forced migration of Native
Americans has made tribes more vulnerable to climate change impacts.
The tribe's new neighbourhood has been named "the New Isle", a homage to Isle
de Jean Charles. "It's still our island. It will always be our island," says
Brunet, who only agreed to move if he could keep his old house too. He returns
when he can. But it's not the same.'
Via
Positive.News
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
