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March 2006
5th-A visit to the Harmony House
20th-Frontlines of Global Climate Change
1st-Four Directions
(Britt) As soon as we heard of the Four Directions Relief Project, we were intrigued and excited to learn more about this organization whose focus seemed to flow with ours. We saw great parallels and potentials for collaboration between this organization’s mission and our intentions with the sustainability project. Four Directions works as a support for indigenous peoples’ requests, honoring the decisions made by the tribal elders and helping the communities to realize these identified goals. Many of the elders have determined that they would like their communities to be restored using traditional models, which closely resemble principles of sustainability. Green homes, medicinal herb and community gardens, traditional structures made of organic material, honoring and respecting the earth and the culture are some examples of the traditional/sustainable confluence of our mutual interests.
This grassroots organization uses a community-based model to organize people, supplies, and other forms of support in collaboration with indigenous leadership and communities. Four Directions works in solidarity with indigenous people in the southern bayous of Louisiana, creating a foundation for the exchange of knowledge and wisdom, and supports the need for equality and mutual assistance. Overlying these values is an emphatic focus on cultural preservation. While people from outside the tribes are coming together to work on the identified projects, the goal is for the indigenous people of the tribes to take over the coordinating and organizing roles when they decide they are ready.
Four Directions works mainly with bands of the Biloxi Chitimacha and Pointe au Chien tribes in Isle de Jean Charles, Grand Caillou Dulac, Pointe au Chien, and Bayou LaFourche areas of the south bayou. We met with the Project Coordinator for Four Directions, Naomi Archer at the project headquarters/home/volunteer housing of Naomi, Ronald and Cheryl in Chauvin. Naomi took us on a tour to each of these communities so we could get an idea of the hurricane damage while answering our questions about the history and quality of life here.
Basically these tribes came from Biloxi, MS where they lived until they were forced to move west as more European settlers populated their homelands. When finally they came to the southern bayous of Louisiana, they thought they had found a place no one would want to take from them. When slaves began to be freed, they traveled south to try to secure land for their newly liberated families. The Native American Indians tried to hold on to their place of refuge but were considered “less human” than the African Americans, eliciting no empathy or support from outsiders. The natives ended up sharing the land with the new comers. Now it seems that both peoples live in peaceful co-existence, although each community continues to live very closely within their respective tribal areas or neighborhoods. The native population has never been federally recognized by our government and thus still struggles for basic rights as autonomous tribal members.
What we saw when we drove around was evidence of the startling amount of continual land loss. As the sea levels continue to rise, land sinks, and salt water intrusion continues to deteriorate soil stability (due to the loss of plants, trees and shrubs not able to withstand salt water conditions, thus resulting in soils crippled by a nearly non-existent system of roots). This area of Louisiana loses a football field of land every hour! The National Geographic has stated that the land recedes at a rate of 30 fields a day. Not only have people suffered from flood damage due to hurricanes, wind, and massive erosion, they are also losing land due to people from out of town buying houses and turning them into vacation rentals (thus upping the property taxes and making it less affordable for the locals), or literate people taking advantage of a largely illiterate population buy stealing land through misleading documents culminating in a signature by the unsuspecting victims. And there has been virtually no help from outside sources to improve these conditions.
The overall health of the population is quite poor, and in some cases, downright toxic. One tribe lives in a superfund site where cancer clusters run rampant due to an oil company’s drainage outflow. The company has tried to suppress the concerns of the people living in this area with a $2,000 per household settlement. This meager monetary compensation does nothing to ease the pains of an entire neighborhood affected by the oil company’s blatant disregard for the welfare of the people there. Diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, physical disabilities, alcoholism, and drug and physical abuse are just some examples of the more prominent physical ailments afflicting people in these areas.
I have become the volunteer coordinator for Four Directions and am currently keeping busy trying to arrange all the elements involved in getting people to Chauvin and placing them within the community to work where they are needed and wanted. Eric has volunteered to become the researcher and main “asker” for donations and information having to do with green building and water filters (the water is very toxic and most people buy bottled water if they can afford it).
There is a group of 77 University of North Carolina volunteers who are coming down on Saturday, March 11 for 7 days that we are currently trying to organize. This entails finding a place for them to stay, food to eat and a kitchen in which to prepare the meals, showers, toilets, nighttime activities (to keep them out of trouble) and job placement. I am working with tribal chiefs in each of the four areas to come up with lists of jobs to be done and making sure we have all the tools and protective equipment to do the gutting, demolition, and mold remediation work. Eric is helping by setting up the solar showers, communal eating tent, and composting toilets. And Katie is coordinating the kitchen and meals. This work is non-stop as volunteers are coming in more rapidly now and constant communication between the tribes and the Four Directions organization is becoming crucial.
The tribal chiefs have asked that their communities be redeveloped sustainably and together, Four Directions and the chiefs have been formulating a long-term plan. Since the land is receding so quickly, it doesn’t make much sense to rebuild the destroyed homes except that the people are not ready to leave. So, the proposal is to honor the peoples’ requests and restore their ruined homes while at the same time, building a new “green” community about 60 miles North of their current homeland. This community will be built with sustainability in mind and will be used as community buildings until the people decide they are ready to move their of their own volition.
Even though Four Directions has been in the south bayous for 6 months, the tribes and this organization are still in the beginning stages of implementing the requested changes together. I will only be here for 3 weeks, but expect to leave behind a structure that can work indefinitely to organize volunteers who come to Four Directions wanting to help.
5th-A visit to the Harmony House
(Katie) Today Eric and I got to see what we couldn’t see from the water. We drove from New Orleans to Gulfport and back to New Orleans. So we saw the places were the eye of Katrina passed through. Not much left of those areas.
Our mission was to meet with Gail from the Harmony House. The bonus was that it was Sunday, so first we went to the Service at the Nourishing Place and had a delicious breakfast. After the service and some food, we headed over to the Harmony house to take some soil samples. Gail has been concerned about the quality of the soil, so the samples we took at the house have been sent to the Louisiana State University lab to be tested for contamination of heavy metals, oil, other harmful chemicals, and salt. We hope that the tests come back Ok and she can go ahead recreating the herb gardens. If the soil is contaminated, bioremediation will need to be used to start restoring the health of the soil. The alternative to bioremediation is to have the topsoil removed from the property. Although it is a faster method, it is definitely more destructive and more expensive than bioremediation.
It was nice to be at the Harmony House again and see how much progress has been made on the reconstruction of the house. Once the restoration of the house is complete more energy can be shifted to the gardens around the house. In a week or so a bunch of Hands On USA volunteers are going to come and work on the grounds there to try and remove ruble that is still in the ground from Hurricane Camille (40 yrs ago).
I wish we could be in multiple places at once there are so many wonderful projects, like the Harmony House, that I want to spend my time on. I’m very thankful that our friend Carolina has let us use her car over the past two weeks, it has allowed us to be in many places.
8th-A busy day!
(Katie)We had a work party in the garden today and got a lot done. There are actually two different Community Gardens on the lot, so far we had only been working in one. The other, Whispering Winds, was under the care of others in that neighborhood. One of the women who lives across the street from the garden was one of those people. On Sunday, we got to chat with her and got her permission to help clear out the beds that have not been tended to since Katrina. So that was our main focus today. We were clearing the beds so that the community members can start gardening in the gardens they used to tend. We also watered and planted out some beds with summer squash and a little section of Ginger. The plants grow so fast here, it’s quite a change from the temperate climate of Bellingham. It reminds me of my dad’s big gardens growing up in Kansas City, where it also gets really hot in the summer (but not this soon).
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Three sister, Corn Beans, and Squash, planted and mulched |
Baby corn |
Eric and I spent half the day in the garden, the second half was spent gathering information and materials for this coming week when the UNC students come down to volunteer with Four Directions. The neat part about gathering this info, was that we got to see some places that we had heard a lot about but hadn’t made it to yet. Our first stop was The Green Project, a place that salvages reusable building materials and resells them. We went there to find some showerheads for the solar showers Eric is setting up for the UNC Students. Eric also made a connection with someone who produces bio-diesel. The contact will be useful in the sustainable development plan for the tribes.
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Solar showers at St.Mary's School |
The big black tube on the roof that uses the sun to heat the water inside its |
Our next stop was St. Mary’s School to check out their solar showers. It is a real simple system with a big tube on the roof that was spray painted black and can hold 250 Gallons of water. St. Mary’s is currently another base for Common Ground, where 300 volunteers are staying. During the storm it was a refuge for people in the neighborhood who’s houses flooded. Apparently, when Common Ground first went in the building to access the damage, they found all kinds of stories written on the chalkboards form the people who were stuck there without food or water for several days during and after Katrina.
Our last stop was the Art Egg (an old egg factory that was turned into an artists coop space and few years ago) to talk to someone about mold remediation and also to check out there permaculture gardens. By the time we got there it was already dark. So we got a night tour by the man with the plan, Charles Reith Ph.D. He is a professor at Tulane University and before the storm he and some of his students had created a permaculture demonstration garden. The whole garden was completely destroyed by Katrina. What the winds didn’t damage, the water finished off. The land surrounding the Art Egg was under water for three weeks! But they have had a lot of help rebuilding. Many of the volunteers are college students from all over the country. Its pretty neat that they are getting exposed to the concepts of permaculture while they are down in New Orleans doing hurricane relief work. I am sure many of them had never heard of it before.
12th- The students arrive!
(Katie) Wow! A lot has happened since the last time we wrote. Where to begin. . . How about our salvaging mission in the middle of the night on the 8th? Eric came to pick me up (around 9pm) and we were headed for Chauvin, but first we needed to salvage as much building material as we could find. We would use it for installing the infrastructure for the UNC students coming to volunteer with Four Directions. We got a tip about a lumberyard that had been flooded during the storm. Many of the bundles of 2X4s that were in the yard had floated into random places in the surrounding blocks. We didn’t find any of these bundles, but we did find a structure that was just a skeleton of a house, which was never finished and there were many nice pieces of timber. At this point however, it was 11pm and the neighborhood we were in was completely andoned. There were a few streets lights on and all you could hear was the wind catching on loose pieces of corrugated iron roofs. Looking around me all I could see were empty dark homes with front doors half hung on hinges and the smell of mold in the air. I think a cat might have been screeching off in the distance. I got the chills and we left shortly after that with the roof of the Subaru wagon fully stacked.
The other commodity we picked up along the way were two volunteers that wanted to help us in Chauvin. Patrick and Bobby were their names and they live up in New York on a community farm, Germantown Community Farm (www.germantowncommunityfarm.blogspot.com). It sounded really neat. They have an extensive CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program and involve lots of folks in the greater community with what they are doing.
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The finished Ambient temperature showers made with salvaged materials |
Back to our story, we arrived in Chauvin very late in the night and got some sleep. The next three days were a scramble to get everything built and working. We managed to get most of it done before the students arrived last night. We built three ambient temperature showers, four composting toilets, and put up a geodesic dome, which we turned into the kitchen. Britt was working hard coordinating all the jobs the students were going to do when they got here. Eric was directing the building of all these structures, as well as doing salvaging trips, and I was cooking and setting up the kitchen. Thankfully, we had about 7 volunteers helping us do all this. The UNC students arrived around 7pm and started to set up camp. 69 of them care and it’s a lot of people!! Including us, our volunteers and the people who live here, there are about 85 of us living on less than a ½ an acre. I am a little nervous about how I am going to feed all these people. My kitchen supplies are not many and I am working with one propane burner. I think I will have to commandeer a bit of space on the stove inside the house.
14th-The things we learn!
(Britt)Yesterday was relatively quiet save for a handful of us making arrangements for a flood of volunteers scheduled to arrive today. Cheryl and Ronald Courteaux’s backyard (the volunteer headquarters by default since October) in the southern bayous of Chauvin, Louisiana had been transformed into a camp to accommodate up to 80 people. The mission bestowed upon us by Four Directions Solidarity Network: accommodate 70 college students on spring break for a week from the University of North Carolina, contact tribal council members for names of people in their bands who may need or want assistance repairing their homes, contact those individuals to line up a list of jobs, raise a dome for an outdoor kitchen, set up solar showers and composting toilets and welcome the students as they arrive.
Oh, my goodness! It’s a good thing we came into this project with open minds, hearts, and plenty of exuberance. We rounded up about 7 volunteers from New Orleans to help carry out plans for the infrastructure Eric had drawn up and scrounged for materials in garbage piles left as garbage on the city streets. Miraculously, we were mostly ready when the moving truck (small semi truck) carrying tools and supplies arrived. Shortly thereafter, 7 huge vans arrived carrying loads of college students hyped up from their all day drive from North Carolina. It was past 10 pm when they had their tents up and by 11, a trapse through the tent camp told me everyone was fast asleep. Eric and I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, organizing for the week’s activities, researching sustainable rebuilding techniques, and doing general coordinating for Four Directions. Katie was up at 4 am to prepare for breakfast and get the kitchen in order. This was to be our routine for the week.
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here is our geodesic dome kitchen (on left) and the camp. A bit of a rainy day! |
The next morning, after an orientation and introduction, we sent the students on their ways to the respective job sites. There was a house to be demolished, garbage and general storm debris to be picked up along roadsides, a store to be gutted, several houses needing to be painted, roofs to be re-tinned, floors and walls to be repaired…
Although there were about 10 people from the four tribes requesting volunteer help, many of the requests came from people who needed skilled laborers. The students although many in number, were mostly unskilled and had visions of rows of houses to be gutted and demolished where they could move from house to house and unleash their energy from sun up to sun down. Things move a bit slower in the bayous.
Most of the people here fixed up their houses on their own immediately following the hurricanes and storms instead of waiting for help. Historically, this area has been ignored and the people have come to expect that they need to pick up the pieces and move on with their lives. Many people do not have the luxury of moving into another space while their homes are being fixed, and therefore, moving everything out and gutting is not appropriate in most cases. Volunteers who come to Four Directions need to be prepared to meet with the families, interact in a culturally sensitive way, and work with the families (sometimes working around them as the work is accomplished). In addition, many people cannot afford the materials necessary to repair their homes and so we need to work on their time and put our personal agendas aside. Sometimes people would like to spend half of the day talking and sharing stories, getting to know and establishing a trusting relationship before accepting help. All of this takes time, and most of this requires money in the form of donations.
The students put in three days of good work, did about as much as they could without the skills needed to finish the jobs, and then headed to New Orleans where they could gut lots of houses. Everyone but Eric and I were surprised that the students decided to leave midway through their stay. I had been communicating with them continually (in the mornings to help them get to their worksites and collect the tools needed, at the job sites to answer questions, during the day to coordinate with the community members, and at night to group the students into teams and give them their next-day’s assignments), and could feel that their expectations were not being realized.
The slower pace and importance of the cultural sensitivities, lack of money, and the fact that the hurricane damage (although no less devastating) was harder to see here since the people had already picked up as much as they could. New Orleans differs in that the devastation is wide-spread and there are just too many houses to be addressed immediately. Most people evacuated out of New Orleans and the houses have just been sitting there, in a state of ruin, waiting to be bulldozed. People in the bayous don’t have the option of demolishing their houses, they need to make due with what they have, and get used to living with mold. Tearing down and rebuilding is costly and not a viable option for people whose income is less than $500 a month.
Just as the students left, new volunteer groups moved in and the constant cycle has continued since we arrived on the Four Directions scene. I have enjoyed speaking with people on the phone and organizing groups to visit and help people rebuild their homes. The challenge of coordinating 70 people was a great opportunity to experience the work I’d love to do more of in the future. Katie shined in the kitchen, as usual, and managed to cook three square meals a day for the lines of hungry students. Everyone loves Katie and her incredible cooking. And Eric was incredible and calm, also typical of his demeanor, as he taught people how to use the toilets and showers and constantly made sure everything was in working order. Together, we worked really well and it was exciting for each of us to work together utilizing the skills with which we have experience.
We’ve been invited back to Four Directions to manage things while Naomi is away on a much needed break and recouperation period. Eric and I will live and work out of Naomi’s house/office and work with the community and volunteers who come through. It will be another great challenge and I’m looking forward to the task.
20th-Frontlines of Global Climate Change
Four Directions Relief Project (Eric). The wind has been blowing out of the south at 15-20 mph for the past 3 days. Here in Chauvin, LA, at the volunteer house on Petit Caillou Bayou, the water is rising. From the front porch you can see the bayou across the road, normally on the other side of a narrow strip of land. Today is different though. The wind has steadily blown the water up the bayou, and the water level has risen. The land on the other side of the road is completely under water, and the water has seeped under the road filling the ditch by the house with water. The road is dry, but the water is coming up the yard, seeping through the ground. The house is only 18 inches above the water level, and if the wind keeps blowing the water will cover the yard, and the road. This is a microcosm of what happens in a hurricane with the storm surge, the wind pushing the water from the gulf onto the land.
This area wasn’t always like this. The elders here now fish and shrimp over their old family farms, and the towns in southernmost bayous have had to relocate north. It has only been a few decades, and the people here have watched their land disappear under the rising water. The Chitamacha people, who have lived here for thousands of years, are watching their ancient burial mounds disappear under the rising sea. Why? You ask, and it is a good question. There are a few reasons, all working together to cause rapid loss of land.
It started about 80 years ago, when the Army Corp of Engineers confined the great Mississippi River with levees and dams. This redirected the annual deposits of rich silt out to sea, instead of building up the estuary of the delta as it had always done. Around this time the oil companies started to change the area by digging thousands of miles of canals and ditches for oil and gas pipelines. This fragmented the land and caused erosion and salt water intrusion to damage the fragile ecosystem and kill the critical plants and trees that hold it together. The melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers due to global warming has caused the sea level to rise, quickly covering the shallow land of the gulf coast. These factors, and more, have led to a compound problem here, where the land is sinking and the water is rising.
Places that have never flooded before were covered in water from hurricane Rita, and in the past 20 years the amount and frequency of flooding has increased. The people who live down here, who have always lived down here, will have to move north to higher ground in the coming years. Many people are too poor to afford to move, and there is nowhere for them to go. Their land is disappearing, and their way of life is changing.
This is the human face of global warming, the reality of the intellectual debate over Climate Change. This is the frontline, and it is happening right now. Four Directions Relief Project is here to work in solidarity with the tribes through times of change, and indeed this is a time of change. A time of change for all of us, all our relations on planet Earth.
29th-So much to see and do!
Just as the UNC students were on their way out of Chauvin and the Four Directions Solidarity Network, our friend Dana Lyons flew in for a quick visit. We were all overjoyed to see Dana and unwind while his lyrics and guitar wrapped us up in the familiar songs so many Bellinghamsters know. During our journey down the rivers, Eric, Katie and I would practice the “Drop of Water” song written by Dana several years ago until we all knew it by heart. We even got Dana to sing it with us one day as we sailed in a light wind on Lake Ponchartrain. I was so excited to hear Dana’s version that I recorded it and the eulogy he sang for my hat that blew overboard, never to be seen again. You’ll have to hear them one day after Katie and I make our documentary. Prior to our escapades in the city, Eric and I had agreed with Naomi, the Project Director, to return to Four Directions to coordinate the volunteers and oversee the organization while she took a break for a couple of weeks (her first since the project’s inception in October). But for the next few days, we took Dana on a tour, though it was more of a mad dash, through the New Orleans with which we have become familiar. We stopped at the various Common Ground bases and media center, ate lunch at Emergency Communities, toured the lower 9th in Saint Bernard’s Parish which is still largely untouched in its devastated state, went out to the French Quarter to catch the famous New Orleanian music scene and eat a few beignets, took Dana to several volunteer venues to perform for the masses.
One event we were fortunate to go to was a direct action Common Ground and local community members were organizing. It was an action to re-open the doors of the Martin Luther King School. The city, for some reason or another, was not allowing any volunteer groups to go in and gut the school even though the residents of the neighborhood wanted the school to be restored. So the residents decided to take the matter into their own hands and just start gutting and they did, with the help of hundreds of Common Ground Volunteers. A very inspiring event!
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Peotest in front of the Martin Luther King School |
Common Ground Volunteers bringing out the first pieces of debris |
After this “break,” Eric and I headed back to Four Directions and worked out of the little office for the next week and a half. Katie stayed for a couple of days until our friend, Carolina, flew home from Venezuela and needed to have her car back (she graciously let us borrow her car for a month and a half!). Everything went along pretty smoothly for us while we were there. Somehow, we managed to stay glued to the computers from sunup to well after sundown. We sat side by side, drinking cups of donated coffee (all day!), creating a
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Our solar cooker |
brochure, volunteer manuals, coordinating with volunteers, finishing to erect the outdoor infrastructure for volunteers, researching and writing to granting organizations and humanitarian aid foundations and centers, helping to stock the new free store, answering the phone, responding to emails, and fielding inquiries. Without Katie there to cook her scrumptious meals, Eric and I managed to survive on organic cookies and coffee. He did make us a grilled cheese sandwich in his solar cooker one day, which was actually the real reason we made it through without Katie’s cooking!
Toward the end of our watch, we were interviewed by Gordon of Voices For Peace on our experience at Four Directions and the goings-ons there. I found this reflection extremely introspective and through that interview, was afforded the perspective I hadn’t seen while running around being busy. Each time I work with an organization, I learn a great deal about the ways the organization runs itself, ways in which I would do things differently, and the impact they have on their communities. The tenets that Four Directions is based upon are very much in alignment with the way we would like to see the Sustainability Project go. Eric and I were able to communicate (directly and indirectly) with the people in the communities with which we intended to work and all of the decisions were left up to the stakeholders (the native people). We sent out emails, made phone calls, or talked with Cheryl and Ron (the Grand Caillou/Dulac local representatives) to ask questions before proceeding with ideas. This has been very humbling work…putting our own agendas aside in order to work with the two tribes to help them accomplish what they want and need. We’ve gained an abundance of knowledge on the histories of the four bands, a crash course into Indian politics, and a welcome invitation into the hearts of most of the people we conversed with (at least I think!). It’s been an honor and I can’t wait to do more of this work in the near future.
Ron, Dana, Eric, and Britt at Ron's Ancestral burial mound. |
Just as a side note…if anyone is interested in donating to a great cause, Ron and Cheryl have been hosting this organization out of their home since October (and are continuing to do this out of their backyard). They have completely cleaned out and fixed up a hurricane damaged home in Dulac to turn bit into a free store where anyone in need can come for free food, clothing, supplies, and compassion. They would like to turn this store into a community gathering place for native/community workshops and educational information. Ron works full-time as a welder during the week and then devotes all of his time on the weekends to helping Cheryl with the free store so that their tribal band is better served. To see the passion and selfless devotion these people have is like witnessing live saints who are running themselves to the bone. They would love to devote themselves full-time to helping their community and we’d love to see that happen. If anyone is interested in learning more about what Ron and Cheryl have done and what they are currently doing, please contact us and we’ll put you in touch with them.