Summit convened by:

Center for Biosecurity of UPMC

Canadian Policy Research Network

Center for Science Technology and Security Policy at AAAS

National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responsed to Terror

Panel II: Show Me! An Inside Look at Citizen Engagement
A Bayou Community's Cultural and Physical Survival Before and After Katrina

Rev. Kristina Peterson

Speaker biography  |  Transcript  |  Panel agenda

Summary
Reverend Kris Peterson shared the experiences of Grand Bayou Families United, an organization she helped found to serve the people of Grand Bayou, Louisiana, for purposes of and work toward sustainable development, environmental protection, and disaster mitigation.

Grand Bayou is home to a Native American subsistence community which has existed in the area for hundreds of years. Over the course of generations, they have developed a keen understanding of the environmental processes that affect their land. The experiential knowledge combined with the strong social bonds of the Grand Bayou community has enabled the residents of Grand Bayou to persist in their environment despite continual threat from natural hazards.

After surviving the October 2002 hurricanes Lili and Isador, however, Grand Bayou residents decided they needed an integrated approach to enable the sustainable redevelopment of their community. To address this need, they formed the Grand Bayou Families United. Through this nonprofit organization, members have partnered with groups outside their community to share their understanding of the natural environment and its challenges. They have also worked within their own community to devise systems for collectively responding to these challenges.

A strategy of community empowerment proved necessary in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita when the Grand Bayou community lost 60-plus square miles of land and did not receive sufficient outside rescue/assistance.

In her talk, Reverend Peterson stressed that the experiences of Grand Bayou Families United illustrate a more general problem: "Many at-risk, vulnerable, and marginalized population groups are in their situation due to social, economic, and political pressures/policies. When addressing vulnerability, an agency may be putting the population at greater risk if they do not understand the underlying political/social forces and provide for sufficient counterforce."

Summary by Jennifer Nuzzo, SM