No One Cares About Cultural Heritage
The Miami Herald reports on the latest attempt at eliminating Native Americans in this area: Gulf oil spill threatens tribe’s livelihood in Louisiana
POINTE-AUX-CHENES, La. — There is an ages-old expression among the people of southern Louisiana’s Indian bayous. “Pas tout là,” they say with smiles.
“Not all there,” it means.
As in, “not right in the head.”
This is how the Native Americans of Pointe-Aux-Chenes have come to describe one of the guilty parties of the worst oil spill in American history. “Pas tout là,” they say with a grin when asked about BP.
The Indians here have borne the consequences of the work of oil and gas companies for nearly 100 years, but the oil that is now only a short boat ride away has the potential to slam a death nail into this fishing village and the cultural identity of Indians who have populated it for centuries.
And Cajun cuisine is also under threat if you can’t harvest Gulf seafood. Without crayfish, shrimp, red snapper, oysters, etc., it won’t be the real thing.
They way things are going we will be left with red tide and jellyfish, which means you can’t even swim or surf in the Gulf, even where the oil doesn’t come ashore. The Feds have already closed more than a quarter of their waters to fishing, and that includes some of the most sensitive areas of the Gulf – the spawning grounds of many species that spend the majority of their lives in the Atlantic, like the blue fin tuna.
6 comments
…it’s hard to even know what to say anymore. This is beyond a volcano or stand-replacing wild fire; those are the sorts of events that we say set the ecological clock back to zero, and this thing seems destined to set that clock somewhere back into negative numbers below zero. Instead of the millennial measure of ‘BC’ and ‘AD’, we may well end up with ‘BBO’ and ‘ABO’ (‘Before’ and ‘After’ the Blow Out), with year
Zero being some ill-defined point that we may not be able to point with any reliability for decades to come…
I continue to pray for all the people of the Gulf…
We are used to recovering from hurricanes and wildfires, but we just aren’t prepared for this. There is no good choice of what to do with the oil. The longer it is in the Gulf, the more of the eco-system it destroys, and if it comes ashore different eco-systems are wiped out. If any of the systems are destroyed, the whole will suffer.
The Houma don’t have, ask for, or need much, but they do need their bayous and gardens. The oil will destroy both and money can’t replace them.
None of the extraction corporations are worth spit. They take and give nothing in return but pollution and death.
Uhm, crawfish are freshwater critters and are raised in rice fields during the off season or harvested out of the Atchafalaya Basin (which won’t be penetrated by the oil because the Atchafalaya River flow through the two small passes that it’s allowed to flow through will keep the oil out), so there’s no problem with crawfish. Loss of shrimp and crab, on the other hand, is going to be a real problem for Cajun cuisine… though most of those are imports now so (sigh!)…
– Badtux the Louisiana Penguin
.-= last blog ..Crashing halt =-.
No one with taste buds is going to pay for any dish made with the tasteless, rubbery, farmed shrimp from Asia and blue claw crab grows where it wants, not where you want.
The declining red fish population was already a problem before the spill and now its will be in free fall.
They are going to turn the Gulf into a breading ground for mosquitoes and surface algae.
The crab industry was doing okay but the shrimp population was in freefall even before this, Bryan. A lot of shrimping boats have gone out of business over the past 15-20 years because the dead zone from all the nitrates coming down the Mississippi River interfered with the life cycle of the critters. Most of the shrimp imports used by the Cajun food industry are Gulf shrimp, but they’re being caught down Mexico way.
Of course, this thing is going to make it into the loop current and eventually wipe out those shrimp too, given the way things are going…
– Badtux the Shrimp-eating Penguin
.-= last blog ..Crashing halt =-.
The Loop has broken off into an eddy, so, for the moment the oil is trapped in the Gulf and being moved around it There is no way of knowing what will be safe now.