Time, nature threaten La. island and Native American tribe

By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY

ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La. — There was a time, people here remember, when groves of Cypress trees stretched to the horizon and the underbrush shook with mink and muskrat.

Today, this skinny spit of land in the bottom bayous of Louisiana is mostly barren — scorched marsh grass, dead Cypress trunks and acres of encroaching salt water.

Isle de Jean Charles is disappearing, mauled by rising sea-level, coastal erosion and an estimated 10,000 miles of canals dug by oil companies. Threatened along with it: the Biloxi-Chitimacha tribe, a French-speaking Native American tribe that has inhabited the island for generations. Nearly 20 families remain on the island, down from a peak of 68 families in 2000, tribal chief Albert Naquin said.

Some, like Naquin, are encouraging members to relocate off the island, which sits outside the state's hurricane-protection system, before it disappears into the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Gustav pushed a six-foot surge onto the island. Ten days later, Ike raked the island with a 9-foot surge.

Others say the tribe will vanish all together if they don't hold on to their native land.

Trying to protect culture

The dilemma of the Biloxi-Chitimacha underscores the hard choices state officials face in deciding what coastal communities to include in their hurricane-protection plans and which ones will be left to the approaching Gulf.

"It's hard to uproot an old tree and try to transplant it somewhere else," said Roch Naquin, a Catholic priest and the chief's first-cousin. "This is our home. It's our culture. We could move and try to fabricate a new one, but it won't be the same."

The Biloxi-Chitimacha tribe dates back to the 1830s, when French settlers took Native American wives and populated the small island, Albert Naquin said.

The tribe, related to the Choctaws, spoke Cajun French, trapped native muskrats and minks and raised cattle on the island, he said.

Until a road was built to the island in the 1950s, the children would paddle boats 2½ miles each way to school and back, said Wenceslaus Billiot, 82, an elder on the island. Men grew rice and sugar cane or fished in the bayous, he said.

Once 5 miles wide, the island today is about a quarter-mile wide, said Albert Naquin, adding that the island began disappearing in the 1960. Every passing hurricane took a chunk from the island and oil companies dug transport canals that further weakened surrounding marshes, he said. Members moved away. Albert Naquin himself moved to nearby Montegut after Hurricane Lilli battered the island in 2002.

The island's final hope vanished that same year when the 72-mile Morganza-to-the-Gulf project, the hurricane-protection initiative that strings a ring of levees around southwest Louisiana, left the island outside of its protection.

The financial cost, it seems, was too great to bear: At about $3 million-a-mile, the project was too expensive to jut around the island, said Windell Curole, interim director for the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District. Other communities, such as Cocodrie and Leeville, were also left outside the protection system, he said.

"It's always a tricky deal. You want to help everyone," Curole said. "It would be great if we had the resources to take care of everybody, but we don't."

Tradition key to isle

Albert Naquin understands the state's decision not to include the island in its protection plan. The next storm could wipe out the island, he said. The place is just too vulnerable for residents, he said.

"If we move together as a whole, we have a chance to start growing again," Albert Naquin said. "But if they stay, every time there's a storm, everyone's going to be scattered." He'd like to relocate tribal members to nearby towns such as Montegut and Chauvin.

Chris Brunet, 43, said it's important for the tribe to stay on the island to preserve its tradition. "We've been here 200 years," he said. "It'll be hard to move us now."

Billiot, the tribal elder, has lived in the same house for 40 years — a house he built. His backyard was once Cypress forests thick enough to hide in, he said. Today, it's a vast clearing of marsh grass and ponds of open water. Nothing to slow down the next storm, he said.

The way in which the water is marching toward the island's remaining residents, he doubts they could stay very long, he said.

"I'm pretty old. I'd like to stay until I die," Billiot said. "But if another hurricane comes, there may not be much left."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2009-01-04-isle_N.htm