Oil in the Gulf accelerates change for the Pointe Au Chien Indians
Mississippi Delta tribe changes diet and jobs to deal with the oil spill, but the biggest change is the rapid erosion of their marsh home.
by Gary Braasch
Pointe Au Chien, Louisiana (Aug 15-16, 2010): With a narrow bayou crowded with fishing boats and skiffs as its main street, a community of about 700 Indians in the lower Mississippi River Delta exists between their native heritage and the modern world of Louisiana industry. The oil spill stopped their fishing and shrimping, but this is just the latest of problems. The greatest threat to the community of Pointe Au Chien is rapid loss of tribal land to subsidence and erosion tied to recent hurricanes and oil and gas production.
Pointe Au Chien occupies both sides of a canal-like bayou at the end of a narrow asphalt county road west of Chauvin, Louisiana. Just as one sees the welcoming sign signaling the French language heritage, "Bienvenu. Pointe-au-Chien Indian TRIBE COMMUNITY," the road divides, one fork arching over the bayou and continuing along the opposite side. The two roads mirror each other for about a mile, and the water reflects boats and buildings along its banks. One sees families sitting in the shade of porches and men working on their boats. Most homes are on 10 foot pilings across the roads from the bayou, which is chockablock with docks, shacks, boathouses and boats in a wide range of age and repair. An array of craft from dented aluminum skiffs to 60 foot shrimpers decked with yellow boom – sign of employment in the BP crude oil cleanup – are tied up along the still canal. Over recent years flooding and subsidence have claimed most of the land behind the houses, on which residents once planted extensive gardens.
The area once had many oak and cypress trees, used in building and boat construction, but due to rising waters and salt intrusion only a few large oaks remain, and hardly any cypress. In a twist of meaning and culture, the official name of the area around the community was changed in the 1970s from the original meaning "Point of the Dogs,' to a similar-sounding French phrase, Pointe Aux Chenes or "Point of the Oaks." The Indian community continues to use the original name which refers to wild dogs which were in the area when Indians first settled there. And nearly all the oaks are now dead, stark bleached skeletons sticking up from the eroding marsh.
Fishing, crabbing and shrimping -- using small boats and large trawlers -- is the main work of Pointe Au Chien as well as their very healthy food source. "Here we eat seafood every day," said Teresa Dardar, but "I haven't eaten any fish since the oil" was seen in a nearby bay in May. This is a major change in diet for this community, which has no nearby grocery stores and eats mostly what it catches in the Delta waters. Jambolaya was being made with sausage, not fresh seafood, and families were relying on what they'd put up before the oil spill. "I have a freezer full of shrimp," Teresa said.
The invasion of crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon well into their fishing grounds just south of the village in late May is just the latest event in a long tribal history. Their historic language is French, which they speak among themselves and which beautifully accents their English. In their home filled with plants and family photos, elders Earline and Wallace Verdin showed a model of a one-person pirogue boat and photos of Wallace's modern 65 and 93 foot shrimp boats – indicating one kind of change in their lifetimes. Earline says her dad made dugouts and pirouges out of cypress. Trawling was very good for Wallace and others when shrimp prices were as much as $10/pound in the 1970s to 80s. Now the prices have fallen drastically, they said. They looked through old photos, showing us how the town and surrounding marsh has changed. The community has weathered many hurricanes, Earline said. "When I was little we had water (flooding the village) maybe once every 10-12 years." But now "every time we have one it's worse and worse."
While she spoke, her daughter, elementary school teacher Christine Verdin drew a map of the area bayous and Indian villages, to explain the complex modern history and relationships among the Houma, Pointe Au Chien and other tribes. Indians have been in the area for many hundreds of years, based on ceremonial mounds found in the area. They believe the 700-member Pointe Au Chien tribe is descended from Biloxi, Chitimacha, Choctaw, Acolapissa and Atakapa Indian groups. The tribe began seeking Federal recognition separate from the Houma tribes in the Delta in the 1990s, but so far are recognized as separate only by the State of Louisiana. Leading the effort to get Federal recognition for the tribe is elected Chairman of the tribal community Charles "Chucky Verdin, Earline and Wallace's son. Although the tribe is centered on the bayou, with about 500 members living nearby, members also live in other Delta towns and in more distant locales.
In the early morning light, kids filed onto the bus for their first day of school – which happened to be the same day that shrimping was opened in the area, August 16. The bus was headed for Pointe Aux Chenes school, up the road toward Houma a few miles, where Christine Verdin teaches and which serves a broader area including Cajun and white families. But Earlene Verdin says local schools were segregated for a long time. She and Wallace went to Indian school and had to work hard to complete their educations, sometimes commuting to schools run by churches. Then the local schools were integrated in time for their children. The kids attended local colleges. "We could not go to school with white people," Earline said, "but now who is teaching their kids? The Indian people!" "I've got three daughters teaching their kids."
Later in the day, at Wallace's sister Shirley Verdin's home, we asked about the tribal population which lives right on the bayou. Trying to make an accurate count, Christine Verdin began writing a list of the Indian families from memory, with help from Shirley and neighbor Teresa Dardar. Talk turned to why they have stayed here, despite the hurricanes and loss of land. "I feel safe here,' Shirley said, "I would never move somewhere else. This place is made of all family." "We care about our community," Teresa said. "After hurricanes it floods, but we come back."
In recent decades, however, after each storm there is less land left. On a late afternoon boat tour south from the town in his twin-outboard skiff, tribe Chairman Chucky Verdin points out the broadening channels, dead trees and open water which now dominate tribal land, and which in his childhood was much more solid ground. In the 1930s people lived out here south of the present town. The community lost land in the past century as developers and oil companies moved into the area. The Verdins said Indian land had sometimes been bought in the 30s through the 50s by outside land and oil companies in deals which the French-speaking natives thought were just leases. Many of these land deals were marked by straight-line ditches – the marshland equivalent of fences marking property lines. Once narrow enough to jump across, some of them are now 100 feet wide or more, easily seen on satellite photos.
A bigger issue than the land ditches is the network of oil industry canals and pipelines which have cut the marsh to ribbons and shards. There are about 10,000 miles of oil canals in the Delta, cutting across the marsh every which way, wherever the petroleum engineers want access for exploration, drill rigs, supply ships or pipelines. Several of them slice across community land. "They were supposed to fill it in after digging the pipelines," said Chucky. "Also the oil companies put in little dams ... I don't know why ... and then they just left them." The tribe has had to mark them for boating safety because "if you don't know where they are you could run over them."
The canals not only destroy marsh directly, but heavy boat traffic creates large waves which erode the shore and salt water has migrated up the channels, killing freshwater plants and trees. This is especially a problem since the fresh river water which once flowed through the marshes is now restricted by management of the Mississippi for shipping. There is also natural subsidence in a big river delta. But an area study by Robert Morton and colleagues of the USGS says that rapid subsidence and associated wetland loss were largely created by extraction of hydrocarbons and associated water by the oil industry. Average rates of subsidence between 1965 and 1993 were about 8 to 12 mm or up to half an inch a year according to this research, whereas average geological rates of subsidence for the past 5,000 years were about 1 to 5 mm per year.
Christine Verdin said much of the land she knew as a kid is now subsided or flooded. There is now danger to a series of apparently ceremonial mounds made by Indians before Europeans came. These mounds in rectangular groups of four mark the Pointe Au Chien sacred ground south of the town. Oak and cypress trees remain here because of the higher elevation, along with sabol palms and lush brush and vines. The mounds nearer to water are threatened by increased erosion and subsidence. Looking around from the bow of her brother's boat, Christine said, "I'd be lost now because I haven't been out in so long." "These trees were alive when I was younger." This loss of tribal land and the danger to the village itself, which is being made worse by sea level rise, is the greatest threat to the Pointe Au Chien Indians. Chucky Verdin said of the area that was lost to land and oil companies and now to erosion and subsidence, "If we could get it back, I'd take it just the way it is."
The BP oil spill brought even more loss to the tribe, first with closure of the Federal waters where some of the larger shrimp boats worked, and then in late May when oil was seen in the nearby lakes where they find food for their own consumpion – shrimp, fish, crab, oysters. Working with its lawyers the tribe convinced BP and its contractor to put a work center at the bayou marina, so most of the men worked on the clean up while fishing has been closed. In August, the long-awaited re-opening of the shrimp season in Louisiana waters near the Indian village of Pointe Au Chien did not immediate return the small tribe to normal life. "The jobs are only temporary," said Chucky Verdin just before some local waters were reopened by the State of Louisiana. "We'll have to go back to fishing. But for now most people are going to stay on the job." Jake Billiot, who owns two boats, the Sitting Bull and the Crazy Horse, only put one to work for the BP contractor, Lawson Environmental Services. The payment for boats is $1200-2000 a day depending on the size of the craft, with additional payments for captains and deckhands, and expenses. Those contracted at Pointe Au Chien are only paid if they work (not per month). Jake said, "BP treats us right," about the same money as his normal average shrimping income.
At dawn on August 16, first day local Louisiana waters were opened again to shrimping, only four boats from Pointe Au Chien went out. Most boat owners remained in harbor getting ready for another day working on the BP cleanup. Just as the contracted boats were going out, however, they were called in for the day by BP HQ, the men said. Boat owner Eric Dufrene returned his boat to dock, stepped off onto the grass of the bank, shrugged, smiled and said " I should've gone fishing." One of the boats that did just that, a shrimping skiff, returned from Lake Felicity at the end of the day with 200 pounds of white shrimp which looked clean. But most residents we talked with remained skeptical that the oil was gone and that there would be a market for shrimp.
Price Billiot, a shrimp and seafood buyer on the bayou, did not open his ice house and shop on the first day of in-shore shrimping because so few boats went out. "We'll see if they pull in oil with the nets," he said. He'll probably open by late August when shrimp should be more plentiful. Shrimp prices at the dock have fallen from near $10 a pound in the 80s to $1.20 for jumbos last year, and no more than $3 now. Shrimping everywhere in the Gulf has become more difficult recently due to huge amounts of imported shrimp flooding the U.S. market. Once dominant in the country, Gulf shrimp now makes up less than 10 percent of the shrimp consumed by Americans.
This moment of change for the communities of the Delta -- the oil spill and then the decision to stay with BP or fish when markets are unknown -- is difficult for many people.
Photo Reports Intro
1. The BP Deepwater Horizon oil well gushes crude across the Gulf to beaches and marsh.
2. Crude comes ashore from Gulf Shores to Grand Isle.
3. Clean up workers and local people react to the oil.
4. Oil in the marshes greases up birds and sedges; fishing and shrimping are closed.
5. Shrimping and fishing begin to return but long term effects of oil remain.
5A. The toll on animals and birds continues; rescuers take action.
6. Indians Face Oil Spill
7. Indians Face Oil Spill 2
8. The most endangered sea turtle and the Gulf oil spill 1
9. The most endangered sea turtle and the Gulf oil spill 2