17 September 2022 – by Cosmo Sanderson
Members of a Native American tribe have reportedly become the first climate migrants in the United States (US) as they begin a process of relocating from the sinking island their ancestors made home two centuries ago.
The Jean Charles Choctaw Nation has in the last few weeks started leaving Isle de Jean Charles – a slender island around 80 miles southwest of New Orleans in the US state of Louisiana – as part of a long-planned resettlement program.
When the US government issued US$48 million grant to resettle residents of the island in 2016, it was said to be the first-ever federally funded effort in the country to move an entire community due to global warming.
Many residents have already left the island, and the 100-or-so who remain are overwhelmingly of Native American descent.
The Jean Charles Choctaw Nation descends from three Native American tribes that fled to the island to escape forced relocation under the Indian Removal Act passed by the US government in 1830.
Since 1995, however, the island that was once a refuge for the community has lost 98% of its land mass – a 320-acre skeleton of what it used to be.
The only road connecting Jean Charles to the mainland often floods due to high winds or the tide, leaving the community stranded.
The tribe says that the resettlement program, which has seen many residents move to the town of Schriever around 60 kilometres northwest, has been beset by years of “delays, confusion, and stress” caused by state and federal governments.
According to the tribe, the resettlement has also been carried out “without meaningful consultation with, or the explicit consent from” its leadership. This is something the tribe says is “concerning” for many other nations and communities around the US that may soon go through a similar process.
