BATTLE FOR THE BAYOU

reduce greenhouse-gas emissions statewide to net zero by 2050. She became the sole indigenous voice on the task force. Getting people to listen — whether they want to or not — is ParfaitDardar’s specialty.

Parfait-Dardar was just 27 when her council of elders sent her to her first public hearing, where the 2007 coastal master plan was presented. “They were slick,” she says, thinking back to how the elders subtly guided her. “They sent me to meetings, and I got really upset when I learned all kinds of decisions were being made that were impacting us, and we certainly weren’t being included in the conversation.”

At first, the political jargon was confusing, but she kept going to meetings, bringing what she learned back to her community. After two years, Parfait-Dardar became her tribe’s first female chief. Her native name, Chula humma abi, means “killer red fox” in Choctaw. Her uncle blessed her with the name when she was 36, after she spent nearly a decade building up her network of allies and learning how to navigate for policy changes that included indigenous voices on a state and federal level.

Finally, with Parfait-Dardar, the coastal tribes have a seat at the table. After much advocacy led by Parfait-Dardar, Philippe, and the FPCC, their canalbackfilling initiative is finally listed in the state’s coastal master plan.

“Her tribal leadership is showing a way for a more sustainable, just future that is going to uplift and support everyone,” Julie Maldonado, an anthropologist who works with tribal communities on climatechange adaptation, says of Parfait-Dardar. “It’s a very big hill to climb when the first step is having to prove who you are and that you’re still there and exist.”

Having to prove their identity has been a fight indigenous people around the world have battled for centuries. Parfait-Dardar’s tribe is recognized by the state but not federally. Federal acknowledgment is vital — it’s the missing piece that would unlock some of the resources they need to protect their homes. (The federally acknowledged Chitimacha Tribe, for example, just received $5 million from the Biden administration to help with climate-change relocation.) It would allow the tribe to access additional disaster-relief funding as well as solidify its right to have more of a voice in decisions regarding land and sacred sites.

Disaster-justice expert Jerolleman puts it succinctly: “No other group is asked to prove their identity in the way that indigenous persons are. And no other group has their rights so closely tied to how they do so. It creates a nightmare scenario.”

Parfait-Dardar’s tribe first applied for federal acknowledgment in 1996, and the criteria since then continues to be revised and get more complicated. They hope to resubmit their documents again this summer.

“We would prefer just to exist as native peoples instead of still having to fight for our right to exist as who we were born to be,” says Parfait-Dardar. “[They] are overcomplicating things that are simple.”

In louisiana, there are two shrimping seasons: May for brown shrimp, August for white. On a recent Friday afternoon, I’m eating fried catfish and brown-shrimp jambalaya with Parfait-Dardar in a small restaurant perched on the edge of the bayou.

We chat with Devon Parfait, the 25-year-old new Grand Caillou/Dulac chief she is mentoring.

Parfait-Dardar has known Parfait, her cousin’s son, would one day take over for her as chief since he was 12 years old and peppering her with questions about their tribe’s history. She encouraged him to get a college degree because she wanted him to have the right tools to navigate the new responsibilities that come with being a chief, like discussing policy with government officials. Plus, she says: “Education is the one thing they can’t really take from you once you have it. They’ve taken everything else, but they can’t take that.”

Today, Parfait is fresh out of Williams College, where he studied geoscience. At school, Parfait used satellite imagery to show that while Louisiana loses approximately 0.3 percent of land per year overall, his tribe loses 0.7 percent of their land per year. “By studying coastal land loss and developing better methodology, I was able to get those numbers and use them as an advocacy tool to show how we are disproportionately affected,” he says.

Parfait recently started working as a coastalresilience analyst under the Environmental Defense Fund, an organization within the Restore the Mississippi River Delta Coalition. He will be able to advocate for his community on a professional level, and his current project models how cost-beneficial and successful canal backfilling can be.

We drive to where Parfait grew up, and he recounts his childhood on the bayou, which he calls the water highway, playing with puffer fish on his grandfather’s shrimp boat. As he points to the spot where his friend Tommy used to chase alligators, Parfait’s former neighbor, an indigenous elder named Pierre, comes over to say hi, and they reminisce about how the land has changed. Pierre says he remembers when he was paid to burn down wood pilings and debris after a storm, on a barrier island that is now underwater. He remembers thinking it was enough material that it could have been used to bulkhead miles of the bayou. (Bulkheading is a retaining wall meant to slow down coastal erosion and flooding.) Instead it was being wasted and turned into ash. If Pierre wanted to bulkhead his own property now, he’d need an impact statement and a permit, and it would be an expensive undertaking. Parfait-Dardar says an elder in their tribe calls this “white tape” — another way white people overcomplicate something that could be simple and beneficial.

Down the delta, most houses in Grand Bayou Village are raised 14 feet off the ground; in 2021, Ida flooded the wetlands with about 10 feet of storm surge, but the wind caused the most damage. Philippe’s runaround boat and her brothers’ shrimp boat were damaged by Ida. The day she takes me through the bayou, she borrows her sister’s boat.

Philippe looks up as an osprey circles, then dives into the water and comes up with a fish in its talons. The osprey was considered endangered in the mid20th century due to threats caused by pesticides. After the sale and use of DDT was banned, these birds of prey came back in a resurgence. The osprey lands on old wooden pilings, on which a dock used to sit before it was wrecked by Katrina. Evidence of past hurricanes is intertwined with the beauty of the landscape.

After Hurricane Katrina, Philippe says she felt pressured by the government to relocate, “But I kept hearing my grandfather’s voice, ‘Never give up your land.’ So I’m never giving up my land.”