NCAI committee sets mid-year conference for Rapid City

Two Bulls seeks stronger NCAI stand on gulf oil spill, Houma Nation’s future


PINE RIDGE –– Oglala Sioux Tribal Chair Theresa Two Bulls is calling on Indian country for a stronger, more unified stand by Native American tribes against the damages wrought by the massive – and continuing – oil spill.

In that regard, Two Bulls sent a letter to the National Congress of American Indians on June 10, calling for an emergency meeting to create what she dubbed a “tribal response” to the British Petroleum Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

“I feel that there needs to be a stronger tribal response to the spill, since it affects all of us,” Two Bulls said in the letter addressed to NCAI President Jefferson Keel. “We must still exercise our duties as stewards of our original homelands, and protect the native peoples and animals that reside within these homelands,” she wrote in her letter.

Two Bulls, secretary of NCAI, said her organization needs to give a stronger response to the oil spill predicament through coordination between the executive committee – and its staff  – and the United Houma Nation.

As NCAI secretary, Two Bulls will have an opportunity to discuss her request for the emergency meeting during the organization’s three-day, mid-year conference, set for Rapid City on June 20-23.

NCAI, based in Washington D.C., was founded in 1944 and is the main tribal government organization in the United States.

“We must still exercise our duties as stewards of our aboriginal home lands, and protect the Native peoples and animals that reside within these homelands,” Two Bulls’ letter continued. “We need to determine how NCAI member tribes can assist the Native people and wildlife in the area as stewards of the land.”

Two Bulls letter, written to Jefferson Keel, NCAI president, asks that he “direct” Jackie Johnson, the organization’s executive director, to work with the United Houma Nation in Golden Meadow, La., to coordinate the set up of the emergency meeting.

Meanwhile, tribal officials throughout Indian country are considering the impact of the BP’s mega gulf oil spill, particularly as it affects the survival of already threatened Native American communities in the southeastern United States.

Nobody yet knows the magnitude of the oil-spill’s impact on indigenous populations, but its potential already has sparked discussion about what is seen as its part in a pattern of genocide.

A representative of the original inhabitants of the Gulf Coast tribes, which are the most directly affected, United Houma Nation Vice Chair Michael Dardar, welcomed the call out from Two Bulls.

“We’re grateful for the assistance,” Dardar told Native Sun News. “This spill is just the latest in a century of struggles and battles with unchecked economic development in our home communities, erosion accelerated by canals dug by (the) oil industry years ago, and loss of coastal Louisiana land to hurricanes,” he said.

The United Houma Nation is a state-recognized tribe of about 17,000 residents living in the bayous and coastal areas of six Louisiana counties. Included in the 4,570-square-mile Houma Nation area are Pointe Au Chien and Isle de Jean Charles, the indigenous communities among the hardest hit by the oil-spill damage.

The island of Jean Charles, home of the Biloxi-Chitimacha Tribe, has been all but submerged with canals dredged for oil transport and the incursion of four hurricanes during the past five years.

“Isle de Jean Charles is probably the most adversely affected community,” Dardar said. “There are still a dozen or more families there, but a lot of the families have been forced to move,” he said. Dardar noted the impact of relocation on the “social fabric” of the community.

The bayou tribal community of Pointe Au Chien has a drawing of shrimp as its symbol. The majority of survivors there, as in Isle de Jean Charles and other native Gulf Coast communities, rely on commercial and subsistence fishing for their livelihoods.

“We’re not really sure what the scope of the recovery is going to be,” Dardar said. “The oil spill’s been going on for 50-some days. The effects on the community are not immediate, but gradual, in coming.”

BP’s oil spill started in April and has now has exceeded the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Alaska, which until now had held the unofficial record off crude oil spilled into the oceans.

Fishing grounds not previously closed by BP’s gulf-spill accident have now been declared off-limits, as the slick expands beyond the amounts and areas projected in history’s largest oil spill. Temporary cleanup jobs are available to provide income relief for fishing families. But it’s not adequate, according to Dardar.

He said fishermen are beginning to feel the effects, “and it’s not as bad as its going to be with the closure of estuary and fishing grounds for years.

“We are looking at long-term, severe economic needs with fishing families,” he said.

As shrimping season closed for the Pointe Au Chien, tribal members reported oil invading the lake they fish, and shrimpers wondered if it would be the last year of the catch.

“Today, the tribe relies primarily on fishing due to the devastation of the land by oil companies, lack of protection of the barrier islands, and the lack of fresh water replenishment, which has resulted in salt water intrusion and the devastation of the land,” the tribe said in a May 23 statement entitled “Oil Invades the Tribal Community”.

It continues, “But now, even the fishing lifestyle is threatened.  The tribe is concerned as to the future impacts, but we are doing our best to try to protect what we have left.”

National Geographic magazine raised the issue of genocide when it broached the disaster in an article June 8, quoting an Atakapa-Ishak saying the tribe is “ facing the potential for cultural genocide,” as a result of the line of events leading up to the growing oil slick.

One reader, who identified himself only as Phil, wrote, “Isn’t genocide a deliberate act by one group of humans upon another? Do I understand that Nat Geo considers the oil spill to be a human group? Perhaps Nat Geo believes that the oil spill is a deliberate act brought about by BP to kill the Natives. Less inflammatory language please.”

National Geographic responded by removing the word “genocide” from its headline. The managing news editor thanked Phil for his comment and said, “This headline has actually stirred a bit of discussion in the office, too.

“The intent wasn’t to imply that Nat Geo considers the spill an act of genocide, but to convey the despair felt by at least one member of the Atakapa-Ishak community.”

“Genocide is the deliberate extermination of a political, national, racial or cultural group. By not having a backup plan for the case that this type of spill occurred, they deliberately have caused what might be the extermination of this group,” said reader Ted Chamberlain.

In a late-May statement, the United Houma Nation declared itself “at high risk of cultural extermination as a result of the immediate and long-term effects of the British Petroleum Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.”

The Houma Tribe, which takes its name from the word for “red,” can trace its roots to long before its 1682 encounter with French explorer and colonizer René Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle in tribal territory. History tells that the Atakapa (pronounced uh-TAK-uh-paw) saved Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his mates from shipwreck and starvation in 1528.

The Biloxi, a nearly extinct tribe, calls itself Tanek haya (meaning “first people) and descends from a Siouan tribe formerly living in what is now south Mississippi.


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