Native tribe in Louisiana highlights challenges of climate-driven relocation

John Yang:

Last year, the Biden administration said it would pay to help move five Native American tribes from coastlines and rivers where waters are rising due to climate change. Special correspondent Megan Thompson reports on an earlier relocation effort in Louisiana that led to some unexpected complications.

Chris Brunet, Isle de Jean Charles Resident:

Well, it's the only place that ever known as home. This is where my whole life experiences are.

Megan Thompson:

For almost all of his 58 years, Chris Brunet lived in one place, Isle de Jean Charles, a sliver of an island on Louisiana's Gulf Coast. Brunet is also tied to this land through his ancestry. He's a member of the Jean Charles Choctaw nation.

Chris Brunet:

We are one with the island, and the island is one with us.

Megan Thompson:

The tribe traces its roots to a Native American woman who settled here with her French husband in the early 1800s. Their children married people from nearby indigenous tribes, and the community eventually grew to around 400. Reverend Roch Naquin is Chris Brunet's uncle. Over his 90 years, he's seen the island change dramatically.

Roch Naquin, Reverend:

When I was little, I didn't see any water on the land. Everything was dry all the time.

Megan Thompson:

Back then, Isle de Jean Charles was about 5 miles wide. Today, it's only about a quarter mile wide. There are many reasons for that. Sea levels are rising, while at the same time, the land beneath Louisiana's coast is sinking. Thousands of canals used by oil and gas companies have made erosion worse. And Mississippi River levees block sediment from naturally restoring the wetlands. All this as increasingly intense hurricanes pound the coast.

Chris Brunet:

And we are still here.

Megan Thompson:

When the News Hour first met Chris Brunet in 2012, his house looked like this. This is his home today. In 2021, Hurricane Ida ripped off a corner of the house and damaged the elevator. Next door, Ida's winds destroyed his uncle's roof.

Deme Naquin, Jean Charles Choctaw Nation Chief:

I lost about everything.

Megan Thompson:

Over the years, flooding and storms drove residents away, and the island's population dwindled to only a few dozen, mostly Native American. For tribal leadership, the writing was on the wall. Deme Naquin is the new chief of the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation.

Deme Naquin:

So they came up with a plan. They had a good plan to move as a community, move everyone together.

Megan Thompson:

In the early 2000s, tribal leadership began planning a new community to reunite the scattered tribe at a new location 40 miles north, and most importantly, 10 to 12ft above sea level.

Deme Naquin:

The goal was to bring everyone back together.

Megan Thompson:

The tribe partnered with a nonprofit and the state of Louisiana to apply for funding. Then, in 2016, big news, the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded Louisiana $48 million for the first federally funded relocation of a community because of climate change. After six years of planning and construction, families began to move in last year.

Roch Naquin:

Come on in.

Megan Thompson:

They're calling the community the new aisle. On a winding road of modest homes, 34 families have moved in so far. Three more are expected to arrive this year.

Roch Naquin:

This room eventually is going to be a prayer room.

Megan Thompson:

Reverend Naquin lives in a two bedroom, two bath and was able to choose the layout and paint colors.

Roch Naquin:

I love the house. I tell people, this is the most luxurious house that I ever lived in.

Megan Thompson:

Naquin lives next door to his nephew, just like before. For Chris Brunet, leaving the only home he's known has taken some getting used to.

Pat Forbes, Louisiana Office of Community Development: I'm grateful that a house was built. I'm grateful for that. It's home because I'm surrounded by the people I've known my whole life, but it's still not all the way home.

It's absolutely an innovative approach to adapting to climate change.

Megan Thompson:

Pat Forbes runs the Louisiana State Office of Community Development. Because the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation doesn't have federal recognition, Forbes office received the money and oversaw the project.

Pat Forbes:

One of the most important lessons we learned was that you have to talk to people on a personal, individual level to understand where they're coming from and what their priorities are.

Megan Thompson:

Residents told him they wanted a community center, so one is being finished now. Another example the houses here don't need to be on stilts. But Forbes learned the space underneath homes on Isle de Jean Charles often functioned as a place to gather.

Pat Forbes:

Now you'll see, every single house has a covered outdoor space.

Megan Thompson:

The houses were also designed to withstand hurricane force winds.

Pat Forbes:

The windows are all double paned. There is an extra layer of impermeable covering between the shingles and the roof.

Megan Thompson:

For some residents, like Chris Brunet, who's on disability because of cerebral palsy, these extra features create an unexpected problem. The value of his new home is higher than its last one, so property taxes and insurance will also be higher.

Pat Forbes:

How can you put me in a position that requires me to afford more than what I can afford if this is about climate change?

The long term success of this whole experiment depends on people's being able to afford to live here for the long term.

Megan Thompson:

Forbes says this future marketplace could help by creating jobs and generating rent revenue to offset the higher costs so could a proposed health clinic or other commercial projects. But there's no concrete solution yet. Though this might look like a success story, the leadership of the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation doesn't see it that way.

Deme Naquin:

Once the funding was issued, the tribe had nothing to do with it. The tribe had no say so it's like they stole it from us.

Megan Thompson:

The chief at the time wrote a letter to HUD calling for the grant money to be returned, saying the project was no longer for and led by the tribe.

Deme Naquin:

What this project was supposed to be was to be for the tribe, and it was supposed to be keep our heritage, culture all in one spot.

Pat Forbes:

What we found when we started interviewing folks on the island was that not everybody on the island is part of the tribe. We couldn't say we're going to put all the decision making authority with the tribe.

Megan Thompson:

Forbes says they couldn't build homes for people who'd left the island long ago because the federal money was from a disaster resilience program related to Hurricane Isaac in 2012, so only current residents and people who'd lived there when Isaac hit qualified.

Pat Forbes:

Do I wish that the tribe would work more closely with us to bring more people back here who used to live on the island? Absolutely.

Megan Thompson:

The state's offering free plots of land to anyone who left before 2012, 27 families have signed up so far, but the building costs will ultimately fall on them. The state also offered to sell the tribe a parcel of land, but Chief Naquin questions why the tribe should pay after it helped secure the grant that bought the land in the first place.

Deme Naquin:

It was supposed to have been a model to the rest of the world, it hasn't happened.

Chris Brunet:

There are different ways of looking at it optimistically. There are different ways of looking at it negatively.

Megan Thompson:

Chris Brunet feels his community has been preserved because he's still surrounded by his neighbors from Isle de Jean Charles. The island is mostly deserted now, but Brunet was allowed to keep his property, so he visits as often as he can. To his new home, he brought a big tub of the marsh grass that grows in the shallow waters off the island.

Chris Brunet:

Because it reminds me of what I come from. And then also its resiliency to want to grow, to want to come back.

Megan Thompson:

Far from home, but still able to thrive.

For PBS News Weekend, I'm Megan Thompson in Gray, Louisiana.