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Dianna Hunt
ICT
A Louisiana tribe forced by climate change to leave its homelands has filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development against the state of Louisiana.
The complaint, filed by the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation, formerly known as the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, accuses the state of racial and ethnic discrimination, ignoring tribal sovereignty, eliminating important cultural components to the relocation program and providing substandard replacement housing.
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The tribe is asking HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge and regional housing Director Patrick Banis to investigate the resettlement program run by Louisiana’s Office of Community Development and to force the state to restore tribal authority and priorities to the project.
“The Jean Charles Choctaw Nation are considered the first climate refugees in the United States,” according to the complaint. “After centuries of discriminatory forced relocation, rejection of Tribal sovereignty, and denial of educational and land ownership rights, climate change poses the latest existential threat to the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation.”
The tribe, which is recognized by the state but has been fighting for federal recognition, has been based for generations on Isle de Jean Charles, an island off the southeastern coast of Louisiana.
Now, however, facing rising sea levels and the loss of wetland protections, the island community is working to relocate its citizens after being inundated repeatedly by powerful hurricanes and other storms in recent years.
The Jean Charles citizens are among tens of thousands of tribal citizens across Indian Country forced to choose between staying in their homelands or moving to protect themselves from damage wreaked by climate change, according to an informal survey of tribal nations conducted by ICT in 2021.
In addition to the problems faced along waterways and in coastal areas, Indigenous people have been hit with unprecedented drought, wildfires, heat, lowered water tables and depleted waterways in the Southwest and Plains. They’re all facing loss of habitat and a reduction in traditional food sources for people, livestock and wildlife.
The complaint accuses the Louisiana government of displacing Native people from the lands so private developers can build a small subdivision for fishing camps.
“The government and private actors have a long legacy of ongoing dispossession of Tribal lands and displacement through violence, exploitation, and legal land grabs,” the complaint concludes. “That the depopulated Isle de Jean Charles is now being developed into a sportsman’s paradise … with millions of dollars of governmental assistance … is a chilling continuation of this pattern.”
The DuPont Corporation has proposed a small subdivision on the island with seven lots for sale to fishing camp owners. The proposal was presented to the Houma-Terrebonne Regional Planning Commission at a meeting on July 15, 2022.
The complaint cites the response to the proposal from Elder Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar of Jean Charles Choctaw Nation’s sister tribe, the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-ChitimachaChoctaw, after attending the meeting.
“It was obvious that they wanted the Natives gone before they began trying to improve the land,” Parfait-Dardar said, according to the complaint.
“Our oppression hasn’t ended in over 500 years. At Thursday’s meeting, I cried for our people, for our children and grandchildren.”
The complaint was filed by the nonprofit rights organization, EarthRights International, on behalf of Traditional Chef Deme Naquin Jr. of the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation.
Forced to relocate
The complaint says Louisiana’s shoreline is facing the highest rate of sea level rise and subsidence in the U.S., with more than 50 percent of the state’s land falling within a flood hazard zone.
The Isle, based in Terrebonne Parish, has already lost about 98 percent of its land mass, from 22,000 acres in 1955 to just 320 acres now, according to the suit.
Since 2005, the area has been pummeled by more than a dozen strong hurricanes, including hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike. In 2021, Hurricane Idea destroyed most of the remaining homes on the island, leaving about 10 tribal citizens living there.
Amid the destruction, tribal members have been unfairly forced to relocate by a series of government actions that gave them no other choice, the complaint said.
Among those actions include a decision by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers not to include the island in the protection zone of earthen levees and floodgates called Morganza-to-the-Gulf, and a decision by the Federal Emergency Management Agency not to repair Island Road, the only roadway off the island.
The state has also largely prohibited residents from making repairs to their homes, and has required a buy-out of their property before accepting the relocation.
And while the tribe had hoped to maintain the island for cultural purposes, the state is now adding long-needed infrastructure in an apparent effort to prepare the island for the influx of non-Native development.
The tribe has also been hampered by the decision to funnel the federal funding through the state while removing their decision to make decisions about the project, according to the complaint.
What’s ahead
Residents began moving to the relocation site, now called New Isle, in 2022, with construction of new homes beginning in June 2023.
Those homes, however, do not meet the specified standards – they are not elevated at a height to properly avoid the risk of flooding and the work has been shoddy, according to the complaint. Planned solar energy was scrapped by the state, the complaint says.
Moreover, the plans do not include facilities aimed at rebuilding the heart of the tribal community.
“The Tribe’s vision for the New Isle included a community center focused on disaster and cultural resiliency, a museum, gathering areas, childcare, healthcare and educational spaces, community gardens, a library, a seed-saving program, a market, and safe housing,” according to the company. “This vision incorporated many climate adaptation strategies through building design, site planning, and restoration of the land, while also honoring Tribal livelihoods and lifeways.
“Crucially, the Tribe saw the New Isle as a place to reunite Island citizens and the diaspora of Tribal members who had been previously forced to leave due to severe storms and flooding – protecting the Tribe’s cultural survival by keeping the community together to honor and preserve the Tribe’s history and traditions for future generations.”
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