By John Burnett

All Things Considered, NPR, January 17, 2017 —

Grand Bayou, La., is a tiny fishing village of Native Americans in the vast wetlands south of New Orleans. You can only get there by boat. Before the Cajuns, Spanish, French and Americans came, the ancestors of the people of Grand Bayou were living in the marsh, catching seafood. And the folks there today are still doing the same thing.

But now they’re scared, because the Gulf oil catastrophe is encroaching.

Rosina Phillipe on a flatboat in Grand Bayou, La. She is the spokeswoman for the tiny Native American community that is struggling to hold on to its livelihood since the oil spill. John Burnett/NPR

 

The Roots Are Deep

The people of Grand Bayou tend to stay put. Like 66-year-old fisherman Raymond Reyes, with his shaggy white hair and a cross tattooed on his leathery, brown biceps.

“Why leave heaven and go to hell? This is heaven here. Y’know?” Reyes says. “I tried in Texas and I can’t make it. All I seen was cement and Mexicans. I can’t understand Mexican and I don’t like cement. I like water.”

For the surviving members of the Atakapa-Ishak people, water is their identity. They’re one of the small Native American tribes that still live on the bayous and marshes of southeast Louisiana. While other marsh residents have taken jobs in the oil and chemical industries, the people of Grand Bayou resolutely try to live as their forebears did — fishing, shrimping, oystering, crabbing and trapping.

“Welcome to summertime in Louisiana,” says Rosina Phillipe, the 54-year-old spokeswoman for the village. She’s in her flatboat, wearing colorful jewelry and her hair in a long black braid.

“This is Grand Bayou, the village. And these are some of the homes damaged during Hurricane Katrina,” Phillipe says.

Before Katrina, 23 extended families lived in Grand Bayou. The hurricane’s epic tide and wind decimated the little fishing outpost.

By this spring, Grand Bayou was just beginning to get back on its feet. In the past five years, volunteers from Mennonite Disaster Services have rebuilt homes for nine families, with more planned.

But the oil spill has jeopardized the village’s recovery. Residents who’ve been gone since Katrina are questioning whether it’s worth moving back if they can’t fish the bayou.

The Next Challenge

Phillipe moved into her newly built house on stilts last August. She climbs the stairs to a simply furnished living room cooled by ceiling fans.

She’s pressed for time. Phillipe was planning to fly to Washington, D.C., in the afternoon to impress upon Louisiana’s members of Congress and anyone else who’ll listen that the oil slick threatens the very existence of her indigenous community.

“Grand Bayou for us is our place in the universe. This is where since time began the Creator saw fit to set our feet here. And we’re going to do whatever we have to do to remain,” Phillipe says.

But what can they do? Fishermen say the oil slick is merely 35 minutes away from Grand Bayou by boat. Like the people of other coastal communities, they don’t know how long their shrimp and oyster grounds will be off-limits or whether their waterways will be poisoned.

The Marsh Is Their Provider

But unlike other coastal communities, Grand Bayou depends on the water not just for its livelihood, but for its daily sustenance.

“We’ve never faced this before. No matter what happened before, at the very least we were able to feed ourselves. That’s been taken away from us. That’s serious, that’s real serious,” Phillipe says.

This is an American community whose residents have not grown accustomed to running to the supermarket to buy ingredients for supper. As village elder Ruby Ancar says, the marsh is their provider. “One of the things my dad told me, the only thing that a Grand Bayou person needed from the grocery store was sugar, coffee and milk — oh, and rice, yes,” Ancar says.

The waters of Grand Bayou have also traditionally provided recreation for the Atakapa-Ishak people — who are, today, a mixture of Native American, black and Cajun. Some still speak French at home.

Phillipe’s 18-year-old daughter, Ani, a budding environmentalist, says she never wants to leave this bayou. “You just go out in the marsh and it’s freedom. We were out chasing the porpoises in boat, we were alongside the boat and we were just riding with them up the whole way just up and down the bayou. I mean stuff like that you can’t do anywhere else,” Ani says.

Though the village has dwindled in size, it has hung on despite a host of threats — violent ones like hurricanes, and gradual ones like cultural dispersion. Rosina Phillipe cannot imagine living anywhere else.

“We are who we are because of where we are. We are Grand Bayou people, and you can’t be a Grand Bayou person if you’re living in Ohio,” Phillipe says, letting out a slight laugh.

She’s going to Washington because she believes the Atakapa-Ishak have to find a way to survive this latest calamity. She says she owes it to her ancestors.

 

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