Eroding Indigenous Sovereignty: How climate change complicates the fight for Tribal Nations to prove who they are.

Very interesting article to read on a dreary, cold day here in August.
Feels more like fall instead of the balmy hot days of summer here in mid WI.
Enjoy



Eroding Indigenous Sovereignty

How climate change complicates the fight for Tribal Nations to prove who they are.

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/eroding-indigenous-sovereignty/

Ottavia Spaggiari

As a record-breaking hurricane headed toward the United Houma Nation’s ancestral and current homeland, Melanie Liner was in the eye of an existential crisis. It was August 2021, on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, when a Category 3 storm named Ida was suddenly upgraded to Category 4, catching many by surprise. Fueled by warming ocean temperatures, the storm had rapidly intensified in the Gulf of Mexico and stalled for hours in southern Louisiana. Those who could afford it rushed to board their homes, pack their bags and drive out of town, often bringing along irreplaceable belongings and essential records: birth certificates, insurance papers, Social Security cards and family photos.

Liner, one of the two archivists of the United Houma Nation, couldn’t afford to leave either—she only had a few hours to figure out how to protect one of the most irreplaceable things the Houma Nation had: their tribal archive.

At 30 years old and with a degree in history from Nicholls State University, Liner was hired as a tribal archivist in 2020. When she saw the opening for what she describes as her “dream job,” she couldn’t believe her luck. “It was just fate,” she says.

Liner had always been passionate about her tribe’s past, but she hadn’t anticipated that her work as an archivist would also be key to the Houmas’ future. That stormy August, she rushed over to the Old Settlement School, a frail wooden building that had served as the only school for Native children in Lafourche Parish during segregation. Liner’s own grandmother had studied there. The old school was a symbol of the nation’s fight for education and its centuries-long resistance to colonial forces and institutional racism. The building had since become their enrollment office and a makeshift archival library, housing historical and genealogy records as well as legal documents and artifacts.

The roof needed to be replaced, and Liner “was scared it would rain in some place,” she says. So she rushed to wrap computers, documents, and artifacts like traditional baskets and wood carvings in large garbage bags. “I definitely improvised,” she says.

But Liner was mainly worried about Houma’s enrollment records: the files mapping each tribal citizen’s ancestry and relation to the tribe. These records were stored in fireproof filing cabinets. She did her best to cover them with layers of heavy tarps, hoping that would be enough to keep the water out.....................................................