United Houma Nation Receives Seed Funding from Federal Government

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By means of Donovan Quintero

July 27, 2024

PHOENIX — It may not save the swamps and the land itself from climate change in the next five years, but the $56.5 million in funding could be the catalyst to begin the fight to keep the ancestral lands of the United Houma Nation, or UHN, from disappearing forever.

On Friday, UHN Principal Chief Lora Ann Chaisson stood at the podium and became emotional as she briefly described how her 10 acres of land went from being a prime deer hunting area for her children to a prime fishing area during a press conference. Chief Chaisson said Friday, “was a very emotional day.”

“I looked at my father; where we are now, there is no land. Where our family lived, there is no evidence that there is any land. So of course, where we hunt deer in my backyard, we fish,” Chief Chaisson said, describing how her 25 acres of land and her father’s land were lost forever to rising Gulf of Mexico waters. “So, this grant means a lot.”

The encroaching Gulf of Mexico has dramatically changed the landscape that Chief Chaisson once called home. Nestled in interconnected bayous, her memories are rich of afternoons spent gardening and deer hunting on Isle De Jean Charles, located 80 miles south of New Orleans. Chaisson said the threat of rising sea levels and significant erosion is endangering this cherished environment, which is central to the identity of Chaisson and her tribe, which numbers nearly 19,000.

Chaisson was on hand to express her appreciation for the grant to her tribe, a state-recognized tribe nestled near the coastline and with six parishes south of New Orleans. She spoke about the more than $56.5 million grant that the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, awarded Friday to the tribe she leads, and how it would address critical issues and allow UHN to preserve and celebrate its cultural heritage. NOAA is a science-based federal agency within the Department of Commerce.

“It will support initiatives that promote our language, traditions and education, or ensure that they continue to flourish and enrich the lives of future generations,” Chaisson said.

The funding would also help the tribe modernize their main building and make it self-sufficient, with solar panels and energy-efficient materials.

“This funding is intended to invest in infrastructure projects that will not only improve our tribal communities, but this building that you saw here will be a state-of-the-art building,” she said, pointing to the building.

The funding was made available through NOAA’s Climate Resilience Regional Challenge, a $575 million competitive grant program funded under the Inflation Reduction Act. The UHN award was part of a total of $59.8 million awarded to projects in Louisiana to make the state’s coast more resilient to climate and other coastal hazards.

According to a UHN press release, UHN, in partnership with The Water Institute’s Community Resilience Center, the Greater New Orleans Foundation, the Law Office of Michael J. Billiot, and the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, has secured funding to implement four of the five phases of their Hazard Mitigation and Resilience Plan.

“Equitably and effectively strengthening a community’s capacity to address climate change means empowering the leadership of those most affected by climate impacts and actively working with them to address those impacts,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “This funding provides communities in Louisiana with the resources to empower local leaders, building their capacity for coordination and resilience now and in the future.”

UHN has weathered the worst the Gulf of Mexico has thrown at them, but they were unprepared for climate change. According to the City of New Orleans’ Hazard Mitigation Plan, Louisiana has the highest rate of wetland loss in the country

Louisiana is experiencing the highest rate of wetland loss in the United States, accounting for 80 percent of the nation’s coastal wetland degradation. According to the USGS, the state has lost about 1,900 square miles of coastal land since 1932. Over the past century, Louisiana’s barrier islands have shrunk by more than 40 percent, losing more than 75 percent of their land area. If current rates of loss continue, numerous barrier islands could disappear within the next 30 years. This erosion threatens wetlands and estuaries behind the barrier and increases risks to local infrastructure, signaling a critical environmental crisis.

The New Orleans Hazard Mitigation Plan states that if steps are not taken to limit coastal erosion, it could devastate the tribe’s ancestral lands all the way to the ocean.

Chaisson said the alligator has become adapted to saltwater, which is unusual for her. But she said she’s been told there’s a reason alligators have survived for hundreds of millions of years.

“But she said the reason they’re dinosaurs is because they’ve been around for so long, you know, they adapt,” Chaisson said. “So, that’s really interesting to hear.”

Chaisson said she and her staff stayed after the press conference and held a town hall meeting with 75 tribal members. She said they specifically asked about raising the height of the building from 3 feet to 10 feet, she said.

“We wanted to go through the details that we had said about seventy-five of our tribal citizens, and we went through the details with the phases because it was just a last-minute thing. And so we wanted to make sure that our tribal citizens understand what’s going to happen,” Chaisson said. And so we went through the phases of each phase.”

The plan includes Phase 1: Enhance the central community resilience hub, the current UHN administration building; Phase 2: Establish and enhance satellite community resilience hubs in each of the six service area parishes; Phase 3: Strengthen and expand communications; and Phase 5: Explore community-led migration strategies in light of land loss and increased storm activity. Phase 4 focuses on building capacity for economic development and is not funded under this award.

Although the UHN has always lived along coastal areas, they appear unprepared for climate change. Hurricane Ida, a devastating Category 4 storm, hit the Gulf Coast in 2021, becoming the second most destructive hurricane to hit Louisiana with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph. Ida was the strongest land strike on record in the state, tied with Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The storm caused widespread damage in Louisiana, leading to significant power outages and destruction of infrastructure. Its remnants spawned a tornado outbreak and catastrophic flooding across the northeastern United States. The damage caused by IDA, Chaisson said, is still being felt to this day.

People are still living in FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) trailers. So many insurance companies went bankrupt after Ida, and some people still haven’t recovered. This place hasn’t been up and running since Ida. This time there was so much devastation because it was like Katrina on steroids. It stayed and stayed and got stronger and it stayed over us for hours and it devastated,” Chaisson said.

The UHN Chief is grappling with a harsh reality: Every storm and erosion deepens the gap between the physical space of her home and the emotional connection she has to it. At 60, she said she worries about the future and the hurricanes that are coming.

“They’re going to be the ones who are going to get this,” she said of the younger generation. “This is for them, because we know there’s another hurricane coming, they’re going to have a place where they can be safe, they’re going to have a place where they can go when these hurricanes come. So, this grant means a lot, and this is not for us. It’s not for me, it’s not for my generation. It’s for the younger generation that’s coming up. This is going to benefit our future for the next generation.”

The resilience improvements made possible by the federal grant will benefit the United Houma Nation and residents of six parishes: Lafourche, Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Mary, St. Bernard and Terrebonne.

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