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A Bayou Community's Cultural and Physical Survival Before and After Katrina Rev Kristina Peterson, MDiv Speaker biography | Summary | Panel agenda Transcript
Denise Gray-Felder (Moderator):
Thank you, Roger. And our final panelist is Reverend Kristina Peterson, from Mississippi Delta. Is that a correct way of raising geography or no? Which delta? Kristina Peterson:
The Birds Foot Delta at the end of the Mississippi River. Denise Gray-Felder (Moderator):
The Birds Foot Delta. Ok, Kristina. I’m sorry! I forgot the introduction. [Laughter] Denise Gray-Felder (Moderator):
Kristina is the organizing facilitator of the Grand Bayou Families United, a Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Volunteer and is currently a doctoral student and is obviously a member of the clergy as well. Kristina Peterson:
Thank you. In preparing this presentation today, I am standing here with 150 people, because 150 people helped put this presentation together. And, as being a “level-five DNA” group [note: a joking reference to morning talks by Chatigny and MacKinnon on the different levels of public involvement], I want to tell you, first of all, it’s very, very messy when you involve all the people… when you’re participating in level five because everyone wants to have input! And I have three messages on my cell phone with information that they didn’t want me to leave out. So, citizens’ participation is great! And the other part I want to tell you so I do not miss it later is that when citizens’ participation really starts to activate, it just keeps increasing with more enthusiasm. … Maurice, Thomas, and Paul are the ones who called me this morning to make sure to tell me, to tell you, that while we are here meeting, they are going to talk about infectious disease and a flu epidemic while bringing in their shrimp. These are folks that everybody in society has basically written off by saying they are folks not educated enough too understand the dynamics of disasters. Grand Bayou is way down on the Bird’s Foot Peninsula, an hour and a half south of New Orleans. They are part of a Native American community that is spread across the coast of Louisiana: The Grand Bayou is Atakapa and Houma. They define their multi-generational community as kinship, tradition, culture, sacredness of place. As one elder has stated, their strengths are: everybody has more than one mom and dad, they live into their 80’s and nobody goes hungry. The community has been together and in place for a long time, they have history, they have a shared vision, [and] they have incredible environmental analytical skills. They know what happens and how it happens because their lives depend upon it. So, their analytical skills are incredible. They have knowledge of food resources, and as one person said, “You know, is it redundant to say, ‘It takes a village’”? Of course. This is their “wharf net” (a large net attached to the dock for fishing). They never go hungry because they have the wharf net. They can go out and catch lunch, or dinner, or anything else, at any time during the day—and that’s one of their homes [referring to slide image]. A lot of seafood (30% of what the U.S. consumes) and other resources come from the bayous of Louisiana. This table prepared for us for an event [note: refers to slide image]—which is so abundant—reflects the harvest of the surrounding marshes. They have a school bus—school boat you could say—that takes children and adults to the shore. They are a totally water-locked community. One person said, “You can’t separate us from the land. This is who we are. This is what we know: We love the land, the water, the birds. To live anywhere else is to die. We have a vested stake in what happens here.” The community is committed to work on restoration because they are vested in this area. After [Hurricanes] Isidore and Lili in 2002, their community was devastated. They did not want to just use usual modes of disaster recovery—they wanted an integrated approach to all the issues that were around them. So, they formed a non-profit organization, Grand Bayou Families United in January 2003 and had their first visioning meeting in April 2003. They then decided they wanted take community action to address their concerns—after they saw different ways and models of which to work with outsiders—they decided on the process of a participatory action research collaborative. Then, in August/September [of 2005], you knew what happened with Rita and Katrina: Lower Plaquemines Parish was totally under water, with a 21 foot wave that totally inundated the entire region. The issues for them were loss of place, culture, and loss of traditional ecological knowledge. They know very well there is global warming, costal erosion, hypoxia. Birds are dying before making landfall in the gulf. They see loss of species. They see different behaviors in wildlife. They know something is going wrong. For generations the community was self-sustaining. Their pain is that they have only recently become a subsistence colonial economy because of the ways in which the outside society has been treating them. They also said they wanted to make sure that you do not eat shrimp that have more frequent flier miles than Bill Gates. They said, “Buy local shrimp; they’re better.” They’re sinking: Loss of marsh, extraction from the oil, and the lack of rebuilding of soils, has made them extremely vulnerable. After Rita and Katrina, 60 plus square miles of land was lost in Plaquemines, also making more vulnerable New Orleans and the rest of the coast. This is the nightmare that they really wanted you to see [referring to slide images]. These are all oil platforms, oil wells, and oil pipelines. This was in 1999, and since then, many more have been built. This is all another disaster waiting to happen, with all kinds of other issues. This is what happens when canals and channels are cut through the marsh. The Grand Bayou is a little strip in the center part. As canals and channels are cut through the marsh, the land disappears. My Bayou colleagues also wanted me to say that many people—many at-risk, vulnerable, and marginalized population groups—are in their situation because of social, economic, and political pressures and policies. And so, when you address vulnerability at an agency, you may be putting the population at greater risk if they [at the agency] do not understand the underlying political and social forces and provide for sufficient community participation. It is extremely important because, as people become very vocal and start taking charge, it can be extremely threatening to all the powers that be if the agencies and political bodies are not ready for active democratic participation. In December 2003, we started building a team of “participatory action people”—people from universities, businesses, government agencies, faith groups, and others. They collaborate with the community folks who have the traditional ecological knowledge. Participatory action is a trust; it’s not superficial. It walks alongside the community for [an] extended time. It is collegial engagement. It listens, learns, teaches, modifies, respects place, ideas, cultures. It’s transparent in communication. It’s [being] in with each other. All the people who are involved from the outside have pledged they will not write or author or present anything about the Grand Bayou without the full participation, knowledge, and consent of the Grand Bayou. It takes patience. Here is Dr. John Pine (LSU) showing maps [note: refers to slide image] that Mashriki Hassan developed from GIS mapping of the Grand Bayou. The Grand Bayou folks are looking at the maps and sharing their knowledge about flooding and storm surges. LSU was able to refine their maps as a result of the community’s local knowledge of surge patterns. Collaboration is working together for solutions through education, training, participation in conferences, tutoring, personal investment, commitment, faith, friendships, and sharing traditional knowledge with others. The community is really working for sustainability of environment, economy, and culture. Sharing their knowledge through eco-touring is one of the ways in which they decided that they would try to educate outsiders and teach people about the issues facing not only themselves, but the entire country. And so, we became the first Ecotour. The other part is participatory strength and risk analysis through community oral history sharing and recording. When you’re doing this type of work, participatory analysis is not just looking at the risk, but it’s also looking at the strength. And the strength of this community far outweighs any of the risk that it has or that it sees that it has. To walk into this community and [to] recognize that strength and knowledge puts the community at a much different footing than going in and saying, “You have a problem” or “You are helpless.” So—lessons learned: Conflicting models have conflicting outcomes. There is need for continued work between friends of Grand Bayou and other outsiders. Constant challenge of finding funds that enables the work to continue. Differences in philosophical approaches will have diverse outcomes. Community action has philosophical approaches that can be harmful [or that] have been traditionally in the past. [For example], an outsider comes in and imposes their own values system. Or, somebody comes along with a grant and says “This big money is a big fix.” Or, a philosophical approach that goes against the very being of their community that wants them to act in ways that are counter to their own culture. They also see that an expert—PU really wanted me to underline this one—an expert is arrogant and ignorant because they do not understand the talents and abilities of the local community. The other thing that we hear constantly, and Roseana can tell you more about this, is that an expert is usually a carpetbagger that doesn’t listen and doesn’t care. So those are the local observations made about experts and they see the experts as being “anti-peer.” Keeping ourselves intact as the outside friends—of which I’m one—we constantly regulate ourselves so that we do not become experts. The Bayou has presented its concerns for stabilization of the marsh and preservation of its cultural heritage to such groups as the National Hazards Workshop, Corps of Engineers, Legislative Representatives, National Rivers Association, Academies of Science, and over 100 students from three different universities. These are folks who society has written off, saying they are ignorant and have no ability and yet they have worked with people from Oxfam, National Council of Churches, Organization of American States, Social Enterprise Alliance, National Science Foundation, Native American [Inaudible], Sundance... In this last story that I will tell you, Sylvia is standing here with the man that headed up the fire department of New York City who handled all of 9/11[note: refers to slide image]. They met at National Hazards, and he said to her, “Be creative and take charge.” She was left in the Office of Emergency Services as a dispatcher after Katrina—right before Katrina. Her boss evacuated, left her, and four other women at the Center. She said “Okay, I’m taking his advice. I’m going to be creative. I’m going to take charge.” She called around the entire region of the South Plaquemines Parish where the water surge came over, and she identified who was staying, where the boats were, where the keys were, where gasoline was, and she rounded up the “Cajun Navy.” The percentage of death in Lower Plaquemines was much lower than any place else along the coast, and it was due to her innovation and her ability. These were the boats [note: refers to slide images] that the Grand Bayou used [and] lived on for eight months with 49 people. The oldest one being 93 years old. The youngest one was only three weeks old at the time of the hurricane. This is the toxic waste dump behind where their boats were located. They asked FEMA for trailers—they never came, so they innovated. They found junk buses, they found these appliances that were thrown out in New Orleans, and they provided [for themselves] so that they had healthy, safe conditions. So they were creative. The people have continued to meet and deliberate on their safety and take charge of their future. What they envision is a healthy, bio-diverse community with green energy, green houses, [and a] lifestyle that is sustainable and good. And the kids said, “We want a healthy Grand Bayou. We do not want drugs. We do not want alcohol, pollutants, poachers, or junk food. Thank you.” Community engagement starts early: This was from Emily, age 2 [note: refers to slide image]. Thank you. Proceedings of the May 23, 2006 Summit: Disease, Disaster, & Democracy Transcription by CastingWords | 
