00:02:19.740I'm really well and I'm really excited to speak with you and Cherie who will be joining us shortly
00:02:26.180and I just wanted to take a moment and thank you so much for your film My Louisiana Love
00:02:31.080it was incredibly moving yeah well thank you for trying to amplify the story I think the Gulf South
00:02:39.080and the big picture nationally you know we've had a lot of trauma and drama all of the details and
00:02:47.180the data gets forgotten or just not told, you know, and that was the story of my Louisiana love.
00:02:53.880I wanted people to walk away from the film knowing how we got here and not just people
00:02:59.500outside of the region. I mean, even my own younger cousins, you know, to make sense of
00:03:05.120what the last hundred years here in South Louisiana has given us, you know, that we've
00:03:10.640inherited this huge mess. And then also to connect that to this more international issue of
00:03:19.040climate challenges. I'm very proud of that work. And I feel like it, you know, especially for the
00:03:26.520Homa people of the Delta, you know, that there's been this cycle of displacement going back to the
00:03:32.920times of colonization and how my indigenous ancestors ended up at the ends of the earth
00:03:40.900essentially you know when this at the time what was considered undesired swamplands but for them
00:03:47.560they were able to maintain their sovereignty there because they had everything they needed
00:03:52.320to survive and were connected by this web of bayous and the Mississippi River deltas one of
00:04:00.220the world's largest deltas. And I try to remind people that this is a power point for the planet.
00:04:05.780It's a major migratory flyway. The entire Gulf of Mexico Ocean Basin is dependent on our estuaries
00:04:14.460and our wetlands here. So it's a womb, you know, it's America's womb. Of course, oil and gas has
00:04:20.760played a huge role in the modern destruction over the last 100 years, 80 years. Before it was oil
00:04:29.960and gas. It was plantation society, and we very much here in the South are still living with that
00:04:37.000kind of mentality of taking. Prior to that, it was clear-cutting our cypress forest. We should have
00:04:45.760cypress trees here that are thousands of years old, a thousand years old at least, and they just
00:04:54.460cut down all of our forest and how that contributed to the changing of landscape and how we're no
00:05:02.100longer protected. I mean, our coastal forests are so important when it comes to cutting down
00:05:07.480the wind that hurricanes produce and slowing those violent storms down. And we just,
00:05:14.400we don't have them anymore. They were already clear cut and now they're disappearing even more
00:05:18.760as our land, which was once more a freshwater, brackish water environment, has now become
00:05:27.560totally singed by saltwater because we've had thousands and thousands of miles of pipeline
00:05:35.080canals and exploration canals. And the federal government has dredged these federal canals,
00:05:43.260not to mention the levying off of the Mississippi River, which has starved our wetlands from the
00:05:51.160thresh water that they need to survive. So it's just this combination of man's mismanagement,
00:05:58.580all in the name of progress and economic development and what have you. But the side
00:06:03.780effects are something that even though they were warned about the consequences, it was ignored.
00:06:09.780What took Mother Nature 5,000 years to create being the Mississippi River Delta, it's taken, man, 80 years to screw up to a point where we're not really sure what we can do to restore.
00:06:23.640we don't have enough time money or resources to really ever be able to restore this environment
00:06:32.160to what it once was it's really kind of like okay well how can we adapt to allow it to be
00:06:39.460somewhat sustainable going into the future but there's a lot of questions around that
00:06:44.240absolutely and i was so amazed by the images of the cypress forest and what they once were
00:06:51.940and the graveyards of stumps coming out of the water to see that for me just drove it home that
00:06:59.040there are no winners so with your land in the state of advanced degradation and with the tentacles of
00:07:05.960extractive industry at every level where are your efforts and dreams focused what would you say is
00:07:14.300the best case scenario moving forward and how do you feel about having to simply adapt at this point
00:07:20.980The best case scenario, the mantra is to reconnect to the river, to the wetlands. That's a huge part of the puzzle. It's also very controversial, though, especially because most of our people down here, if they're not working directly for oil and gas, they are working as commercial fishermen.
00:07:42.780A huge percentage of the nation's seafood is coming from South Louisiana. So we've been adapting ever since 1927 when they put in this federal levee system along the Mississippi. And so what once was more of a fresh brackish environment has now become saltwater.
00:08:04.320So it's a lot easier for our fishermen to go out not so far from their homes to be able to harvest the bounty of our estuaries.
00:08:14.860But scientists say that what will happen is that there'll be this overabundance of production and then it will totally collapse.
00:08:24.600And I think that we're in that time now where, you know, yeah, our fisheries, even post BP, we're still, the BP drilling disaster, we're still producing a ton of seafood. So the fishermen are very much against this idea of freshwater and sediment diversions that would be taking water from the Mississippi River and redirecting it back out into the wetlands.
00:08:48.880So, you know, 41% of the United States is drained by the Mississippi River, but then it's just a channel out into the Gulf of Mexico. So you have all of these tributaries that are coming in, and then there's just one distributary.
00:09:05.820And so we have a coastal master plan, which the master plan sounds bad, especially with our, like, as I was saying, plantation mentality, you know, to kind of call it that.
00:09:18.380But that's what they call it is the coastal master plan.
00:09:21.280And so, you know, Louisiana has recognized that we have this huge problem.
00:09:27.740We're losing land at one of the fastest rates on the planet.
00:09:31.460So this is one of the solutions, is to bring this water and the sediment back into the wetlands.
00:09:36.660But it's also, they have to be very strategic in where that water goes.
00:09:42.080And so there's a lot of fishermen, like in my community here in St. Bernard, we have a historic,
00:09:47.680it's actually one of the first freshwater diversions that ever was put on the Mississippi
00:09:53.940and contributed to killing off all of these oyster beds.
00:09:59.000And so people are up in arms because they know it's going to change what we know now, but the scientists say, well, it's going to change one way or another. There's a lot of conflict. We have been enduring storms, you know, Katrina in 2005 is the storm that everyone hears about, but there were many storms before and we've had numerous storms since that don't always get the news and people are just not aware.
00:10:27.440And just as Katrina was not the first or the last,
00:10:29.880the BP drilling disaster was not the first oil spill,
00:11:22.160I said, Rock, what's the matter with you, Rock? Don't you see I need you, Rock? Lord, Lord, Lord, for on that day, so I run to the river, it was bleeding to run to the sea, it was bleeding to run to the sea, it was bleeding to run to the sea.
00:11:45.380It was bleeding all on that day, so I run to the river.
00:13:05.940Recently, a kind of a historic lawsuit was filed by our levy boards against 99 oil and gas companies, because when the oil and gas companies are given their permits, part of the contract is that they have to do mitigation.
00:13:24.420And part of that is to backfill all of these canals that they dredge through our pristine wetlands, and they never did that.
00:13:33.640That's why we have these what some call saltwater daggers because they dredge these canals and then the saltwater is just able to come in far into what was once fresh environments.
00:13:44.860And so this lawsuit is trying to really hold the oil and gas companies accountable and say, hey, you need to restore what you've destroyed.
00:13:55.300It was really a revolutionary lawsuit. And our governor at the time, Bobby Jindal, he was a tyrant. And it's really great that he's out now. So hopefully the lawsuit that he was trying to get thrown out of the courts now actually has life again.
00:14:10.720And it's not only the levy board, but also some of the parishes here in South Louisiana.
00:14:17.160And so parishes are like counties in other parts of, in other states.
00:14:22.040And so parishes are trying to also get on board and, you know, say, hey, we're not going to be able to protect our communities if you guys don't, you know, carry part of this burden because you are directly responsible.
00:14:36.420We're already starting to adapt in ways. One way is that you go to the ends of the roads here in
00:14:43.600South Louisiana, and everyone's houses are raised 17 feet off the ground. But, you know, like in
00:14:51.120my community of St. Bernard, so we have a federal canal called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet,
00:14:58.200which is now closed, but was dredged in the 1960s as a shortcut from the Gulf of Mexico to New
00:15:05.660Orleans. And it was never really used. There was a lot of prospecting about how there were going
00:15:11.440to be these big container ships that were going to be coming up and there was going to be all
00:15:15.240these jobs and all this. And it ended up just being a total disaster because it allowed the0.98
00:15:21.120salt water to come in. I think it's blamed for the destruction of 500,000 acres of wetlands here
00:15:28.300in this parish of St. Bernard. And so when Katrina came ashore, it was like a shotgun
00:15:36.120and just allowed all of this water to surge from the Gulf all the way up into New Orleans and
00:15:43.040actually is responsible for the levee breaks that happened in the Lower Ninth Ward. And in my parish
00:15:48.820of St. Bernard, you know, the entire parish was flooded where I'm sitting right now on my family's
00:15:54.360land, we had 11 feet of water here. And we also had a huge oil spill that because we have two
00:16:02.480major refineries here, holding tanks were not properly secured prior to the storm. And one of
00:16:11.000the tanks floated off of its base and there were a million gallons of oil spilled into a residential
00:16:17.280community. And people just never heard that really. You know, I mean, I had a hard time
00:16:22.920getting that news myself when I was evacuated and worried about my family, who some of them had
00:16:29.220stayed. There's so much uncertainty. And there are these band-aids that keep getting put up.
00:16:35.820And I think that the levees are flood protection. But in another respect, they call it the
00:16:41.840Chalmette Loop, which is a federal levee that was built after Katrina, because the feds were like,
00:16:49.060oh yeah, it's our fault. They accepted the blame of contributing to this major flooding that
00:16:54.640happened after Katrina. And their levees just along the Mississippi River Gulf outlet, they
00:17:00.340just crumbled. They totally crumbled. And so they built this huge levee around us now. And I know
00:17:08.080that they built that levee not so much to protect the people of St. Bernard Parish as much as it
00:17:14.060is to protect the city of New Orleans. We call it the Great Wall of St. Bernard because it's
00:17:19.040this, you know, 27 foot tall concrete wall that surrounds us. But the thing about the levee is
00:17:25.820that now they're saying that, and they just completed it, we heard them pounding sheet
00:17:30.780metal for months and months and months. And I want to say maybe it's been completed now for about
00:17:35.920four years. And because our soil types are so erratic from foot to foot, and they say that
00:17:43.240this levy, it's a brand new federal levy, has sunk between three and six feet in such a short
00:17:49.380amount of time. So in one way, it's like, okay, yeah, I feel safe because I'm inside levy protection.
00:17:54.660But in another, when the feds are saying, oh, yeah, you have nothing to worry about. We just
00:17:59.780put in a million dollar system to monitor the levy. It's like, okay, you're not making me feel
00:18:04.680safe now. People are not able to afford flood insurance anymore, especially if you're outside
00:18:11.020levy protection. But, but the thing with being outside levy protection is that when the water
00:18:15.360comes in from the Gulf, it also is able to flow back out as soon as the surge goes out. But if
00:18:23.960you're inside levy protection and the surge comes in and there's a levy break, then it essentially
00:18:30.060fills up like a bowl. And wherever those breaks are, are the only way that the water can get back
00:18:35.820out so the water just sits. So, you know, I have a lot of questions about what my future will look
00:18:43.620like if I remain in this territory because I know that the land is sinking. I know that the wetlands
00:18:52.880are decaying. I know that climate change is real and that the water is rising. I know that I live
00:18:59.560surrounded by pipelines and refineries and hazardous material. So I have a lot of concerns.
00:19:08.780I mean, I also know that this is a beautiful, magical, vibrant place that I love dearly. So
00:19:15.520it's, it's hard to, yeah, it's hard to kind of say, you know, I'm going to turn my back and head
00:19:21.540north. And, you know, there's something about Louisiana, this part of Louisiana that, you know,
00:19:27.960I feel most in my skin here. This is my home. You know, this is my place and I want to defend
00:19:33.740it and protect it. But I also know that in my lifetime, this may not be an area where I'll be
00:19:41.740able to remain. So I think that raising your house 16, 17 feet in the sky is great, but there are
00:19:50.580tornadoes that come with these violent storms. And our storms are more frequent and stronger
00:19:57.380every year. Last fall in October, there was one of the largest hurricanes ever recorded,
00:20:05.960Patricia, which started in the Pacific and came across Mexico and ended up in the Gulf of Mexico.
00:20:14.500And it died down to just like a tropical depression by the time it got into the Gulf.
00:20:19.160But my cousins who live in Terrebonne and Lafourche Parish, that storm just sitting out in the Gulf brought three feet of water.
00:20:28.720It's kind of like you put your blinders on, you know, when the water comes in, you sweep it out and you try to just get back to whatever normal might mean.
00:20:39.320Same thing with the BP drilling disaster.
00:20:44.320our men get on fishing boats and go out with oil boom on their shrimping vessels. But as soon as
00:20:53.180the cleanup in big quotation marks was over, we just wanted to get back to our lives. BP came down
00:21:01.480and threw a bunch of money around and people got quiet really fast. So our coastal master plan is
00:21:09.760the $50 billion plan, but in reality it's probably more like $200 billion. And the funding that we
00:21:19.220have right now to use towards rebuilding our barrier islands and also to start the engineering
00:21:25.680for these freshwater and sediment diversions is coming directly from BP fines. So there's this
00:21:33.660really weird relationship where now not only is it the BP fines that we're dependent on for the
00:21:40.460restoration of our coast, there also is a Go Mesa Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act. And so we
00:21:50.000here in South Louisiana have a really bad deal compared to other states and their royalties.
00:21:57.780And because most of our oil and gas is being produced offshore and federal waters, it's an even smaller percentage because it's not actually in state waters or on state land, even though all of the supply and the ports and the pipelines and everything are coming through our territory.
00:22:17.660But one of our senators, Mary Landrieu, fought really hard to make it so that we would get a larger percentage of these offshore royalties and that those monies would go directly into funding coastal restoration.
00:22:32.300So we're actually dependent on their continuing to be production of oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico in order for us to restore our wetlands.
00:22:42.640So, you know, it's kind of makes you want to beat your head against the wall sometimes. But I think that we're on the front lines of this conversation about what the future of fossil fuels looks like. And also, we are so dependent on the oil and the gas industry for jobs.
00:23:04.220So even though my cousins, who are all fishermen and outdoorsmen, hunters, they know what's happening to our coast and the destruction of our coast better than anybody, but also they work as welders for the offshore oil and gas industry.
00:26:54.440And then you think about what's eating that, you know, and living in it consistently.
00:26:58.440And then the food that comes out of that, we consume ourselves.
00:27:02.620And what are the health effects that people are experiencing with the oil and with the dispersants?
00:27:09.800It's been interesting to watch this evolve.
00:27:12.280Like in the early parts of the spill, we had a lot of cleanup workers in particular, but also residents, especially small children, older people, and people with pre-existing conditions.
00:27:22.060that had a lot of issues around breathing problems, a lot of skin lesions, neurological disorders,
00:27:28.700heart problems. Your heart would race real fast and then slow down. And then as things kind of
00:27:33.380evolved, we're six years out now. As we saw things evolve, we saw some of those things kind of
00:27:38.240lessen. We had kids here who had their hair fall out. Most of their hairs fall and come back,
00:27:43.460you know, and maybe the lesions, they're still skin problems, believe it or not. There's people
00:27:47.140here that I've seen that have had lesions come up and down for the last six years. But by and large,
00:27:51.920you know, the skin problems have sort of abated. But now what we're left with is a lot of
00:27:55.680neurological disorders, still some breathing issues, because of course, once your lungs are
00:27:59.780scarred, you're going to continue to have problems. And what we're really seeing, I'm most concerned
00:28:04.400about is higher rates of cancer, especially near the Gulf and in cleanup workers.
00:28:10.360And I want to talk about the no new leases that you both were a huge part of and organized for,
00:28:17.540because after the BP oil spill, I know there was a lot of discussion about will there be drilling
00:28:23.300in the Gulf? Will there be a moratorium for years to come? What is really going to be the outcome of
00:28:28.820this horrendous disaster? And if you could explain what you're fighting for with no new
00:28:34.640leases, what you were doing at the Superdome, and what is up for grabs right now?
00:28:40.020As of right now, they're auctioning off lease sales for 43 million acres in the Gulf. In the
00:28:45.700next five-year plan that the administration just released here a few weeks ago that's another 47
00:28:51.000i believe million acres it'll be going up and that pretty much will be all of what's left of
00:28:55.540the gulf of mexico besides what's already in moratorium which is a little bit of area just
00:29:00.580west of florida and i think little parts of texas as well basically what i think they're doing is
00:29:05.780locking us into this fossil fuel economy i call it fossil foolish for basically generations to
00:29:12.160come you know basically as far as i'm concerned the federal government is allowing the oil industry
00:29:17.420to take our federal waters and put that into a trust sort of like a land trust for later use
00:29:23.540because you know with the oil prices the way they are we have a lot of oil workers that are out of
00:29:28.380work right now even though like there's plenty to do out there we have 27 000 abandoned oil wells in
00:29:33.740the gulf of mexico that could be being cleaned up you know taylor energy's been linking for more
00:29:38.020than a decade out there you know but nobody's taking care of that so we could have our oil
00:29:42.280workers out there cleaning things up and preparing for this new economy that we all know is coming
00:29:46.780everyone knows it's coming but instead they're sitting on land unfortunately collecting food
00:29:51.540stamps and wishing they could go out and make some kind of money somewhere with the economy the way
00:29:56.040it is and the oil companies are still coming up with enough money to buy leases out there and
00:30:02.180my major concern is this what we just talked about you know i just named off several things
00:30:06.920that happened during the BP disaster, right?
00:30:18.760cause more damage, cause more flooding,
00:30:20.480the winds are stronger, puts more people in danger.
00:30:24.340And we can talk about refinery communities
00:30:26.120and the number of kids that are sick next to them.
00:30:28.240And we can talk about when they get finished
00:30:29.820with all that stuff and how they put that
00:30:31.840into injection wells or open waste pits
00:30:33.860like they do in Grand Blanc, Louisiana.1.00
00:30:35.360After they do cleanup, they take it out to Escambia County in Florida and dump it there amongst people of color, poor people in particular, you know, we can talk about all that. That's the effects of this industry. And what they're doing by selling those leases, as far as I'm concerned, is they're locking us to that.1.00
00:30:51.600They're chaining us to this continuation that we see today of people who are sick, people who are oppressed, people who can't get past their state legislation or the responsibility of the people who are supposed to represent us on the state level.
00:31:07.380I'm tired of it myself, and I'm not willing to put my children and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren tied to that system that doesn't care or work for them or even concern whether they live or die.
00:31:18.740Right. So you're speaking of this cycle of poverty and the environmental racism that is keeping especially people of color oppressed, sick, and like you said, tied to the system that will continually keep them down.
00:31:34.500Yeah, I mean, it's time to do something different. And we have those options available. I mean,
00:31:40.020go look at the solutions project. You look at innovation. What happens is here where I live
00:31:45.700in Louisiana, a lot of times is we have these lobbyists that'll go on a stand. They just last
00:31:50.820week had this big luncheon. And after they, well, I saw in the news that night, the governor,
00:31:56.020John Bel Edwards said something like, you know, we're having a budget crisis here. And he had
00:32:00.180the nerve to say, well, we didn't go to the oil industry for any of the money that we subsidized
00:32:04.820to them because that's called being a good partner. Well, what about being a good partner
00:32:09.960to the future of this country, of this state? What about being a good partner to my children's
00:32:15.060health? I'm ready for a new day when people or people that we elect are actually talking about
00:32:21.000being a good partner to the future of life on this planet, right? That oil industry is still
00:32:27.060putting its foot in the way of progress towards that end you see they're still sucking off of
00:32:34.020life right they're still sucking off of the human systems that we have that's why when we talk about
00:32:40.720no new leases we're always talking in almost in equal parts towards two things and the first
00:32:45.720thing is shutting down this industry that gets in the way of our progress and the second part is
00:32:51.160building for a just transition as Monique just said they're understanding quite well that they
00:32:57.640need to get off get off fossil fuels and go to renewable energy in order to keep their systems
00:33:03.120going they get that right but in order for that to happen we have to build they're not still
00:33:08.520benefiting off of that we don't want them to come in with the solar power plant take advantage of
00:33:12.680people somewhere else and then get rich off of us putting solar panels on no we want something very
00:33:18.040we want systems change, right? We want in the renewable sector, we want that to come back to
00:33:23.520the people and to help support the people, especially in one of the most impoverished
00:33:28.440areas of the United States, which is where the Gulf is. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's a really
00:33:34.320important differentiation to make. The new green economy isn't just to replace the oil economy so
00:33:41.280that the same people are in power, enslaving and like you said, sucking off the natural systems,0.51
00:33:47.500the human systems and so forth. It's the system change along with how we're getting our energy.
00:33:53.300And I was wondering, you know, Monique, I know from watching your documentary that you have
00:33:58.560deep roots in Louisiana and seeing your grandma and it was just amazing to watch her resilience
00:34:06.800and her skill set. And I'm wondering, having so much family in Louisiana and being a part of the
00:34:14.400United Homa Nation. How are people in that community responding to what's happening with
00:34:20.880the oil? What could potentially happen with these newer technologies? And does the Homa Nation have
00:34:26.980any power? Do they have any land rights to stand up against this? Unfortunately, we've been silenced0.97
00:34:35.340and oppressed for a very long time and told that this is as good as it gets. So my cousins are
00:34:45.160happy to just have jobs because the mindset is that if we don't have oil and gas, then we have
00:34:51.880nothing. People are afraid to speak out. We feel like we've been put in a corner. Hopefully things
00:34:59.120will start changing. I mean, I think there are many people out there who want something better.
00:35:05.940It's just believing that we deserve it and really working towards it and challenging the old
00:35:12.820structure and system. But at present, there's not a whole lot of momentum there. People are really
00:35:19.280wanting to kind of live in this denial of what's happening, but also witnessing rapid change.
00:35:29.120We hear about South Louisiana as ground zero for climate change in the United States.
00:35:34.520I read South Louisiana loses a football field of wetlands an hour to sea level rise and saltwater intruding through man-made canals.
00:35:43.500One island, Ile de Jean Charles, has received a lot of attention since they got a federal grant to relocate all the island's residents.
00:35:51.960A generation ago, it was covered in abundant tropical mangroves, while today it's lost 98% of its acreage.
00:36:03.700So where my grandparents are from is a place called Ponochen, which ironically means Point of the Oaks, and all of the oaks there are dying, or have died already.
00:36:14.880So we have these ghost forests across our coastline. And Ile de Jean Charles is just a mile, two miles from Ponachan, which is actually more densely populated. And they're not in this federal grant that has been allocated now to the island where they're planning on moving the community.
00:36:35.860it's not that far north, honestly. But, you know, when you take coastal people who are tied to the
00:36:42.500water, who, you know, have this very close-knit community that's been there for generations and
00:36:48.060generations, and then you move them further north, you know, their entire way of life changes. And I
00:36:53.900mean, that's already been happening. The Great Migration has begun. So what is the band of0.96
00:36:59.740Ile de Jean Charles if they're not living on the island. And how we stay connected to our culture
00:37:06.120is very much so connected to us being in our land and in our waters.
00:37:15.280Yeah, BP came in and destroyed it and then laid workers off six years later. Now these people that
00:37:22.800weren't for work for BP at that point are now out of work and they can't sustain themselves off the
00:37:27.200land the BP destroyed it's crazy yeah about that I I just want to tell you a story like every year
00:37:33.980for the last maybe four years I've been going down to Ilda Jean Charles around Christmas time
00:37:39.120and taking Christmas gifts that we collect through a group that we have here and uh there's this
00:37:45.760little boy I met down there and I'm sorry I can't think of his name off the top of my head
00:37:48.500but he's a real sweet kid I met him first maybe 10 or 11 hopping around happy little guy you know
00:37:54.940and he's with uh il de jamban and all he talked about constantly is fishing fishing fishing fishing
00:38:00.360that's all that kid wanted to do and then the last time i went down there he's about 13 years old
00:38:05.340and his family had brought him there because they had actually moved off the island and moved up0.99
00:38:09.100into the town of homa and um he was just not the same kid i mean he was just like a shell really0.83
00:38:16.180kind of quiet and i realized 13th the time you're going through adolescence but everybody said at0.99
00:38:20.500same time like it broke his heart to leave that island because he had been there his whole life
00:38:25.100all he did he woke up in the morning go fishing that's what he did you know and somebody made the
00:38:30.120mistake of donating just for him a brand new fishing pole it was a nice pole like i knew he
00:38:35.260was gonna love it and i gave it to him and he did love it for about 15 seconds he lit up and then
00:38:42.100went dim again and handed it back to us he wouldn't take the fishing pole he said he had nowhere to
00:38:47.400fish that devastated me that this young man is so separate now not just from what he loved what
00:38:55.600made him who he was but also the culture his uncle still lives on that island his uncle said
00:39:01.160he will die on that island he will not leave again so this young man at the time in his life
00:39:07.080when he's becoming a man is now disconnected from the culture and the people that would have
00:39:12.940supported that that would have supported him traditionally through thousands of years in this
00:39:18.620place so it's devastating and it goes right to the heart of who we are as indigenous peoples
00:39:25.340you know these are people that were pushed during colonization to the very end of the earth
00:39:30.600and then those very safe systems that pushed them created a world that made the water come and take
00:39:37.100the earth from their feet. It's disgusting. It's beyond injustice. It's genocidal.0.91
00:40:07.100Chari, there was an article that recently came out in the New York Times
00:40:35.760about a lawsuit filed against you by the company ChemRisk,
00:40:40.180where in a strange twist, they are fighting to drop the suit,
00:41:20.560So there was no way they could go fish or shrimp.
00:41:22.120And so this was going to be their only means for the season.
00:41:25.100And we uncovered that there was a certain study that was done by a group called ChemRisk,
00:41:31.140which is now since then, now it's become Cardinal ChemRisk.
00:41:34.260And they had said that the pollutants that were in the air weren't enough to make the workers sick.
00:41:40.040Well, we know that wasn't true because the workers got sick.
00:41:43.140And I was there. I got sick myself. I know that it's a real thing.
00:41:47.340And so when they did that, they put out the study saying that the workers didn't get sick.
00:41:52.300By the way, the samples for the study itself was collected by BP and then sent to ChemRisk.
00:41:57.060Then they put out a study saying, hey, everything was OK.
00:41:59.840then BP's PR picked up that study and they put it all over the nation and all over the globe saying
00:42:06.640that the workers that were sick out there were just having heat problems that everything was
00:42:11.040okay they weren't getting sick because of the chemicals which everyone who lived here and was
00:42:14.600close to them knew that just wasn't true so we just wrote a simple story about that in the
00:42:19.280Huffington Post green it was read by I can't remember maybe 40 people back in 2013 well
00:42:25.200Well, immediately, ChemRisks, the person that used to work for the public company, got back to them, the one that publicized it, got back to us and said they were going to sue us.
00:42:33.800Well, we said, well, the article's legit.
00:42:36.520I mean, we'd done like a year, maybe two's worth of research by that time.
00:42:42.000And Huffington Post stood behind us and said they refused to take it down, but that any responsibility for being sued would be on myself and my co-author, which was Karen Savage.
00:42:54.180thoughts so depending on what the judge decided for damages they said that we defamed the company
00:42:58.960by stating the obvious and so that's been going on for years now it's like just been in litigation
00:43:06.200and out of litigation finally we gave them an opportunity to back out of it but they refused
00:43:10.900they wanted to keep pushing things forward we always felt like it was a slap suit we always
00:43:14.500felt like they were trying to keep us so busy that uh we would be able to continue to do the
00:43:18.240work that we were doing against BP. And we lost our chance to throw it out. We got to the discovery
00:43:25.160phase. So we decided, well, after we had looked at this guy, Postenbach, a little bit more, we
00:43:30.020realized that he also had said that some other pretty yucky chemicals were actually okay too.
00:43:35.760And so we thought, well, if we had this opportunity, since they weren't going to drop it, maybe we'd
00:43:39.740look into all those chemicals and do a little research ourself. And maybe we'd ask some
00:43:43.320questions about all, not just now, not just BP, but all these years back, all this time that these
00:43:50.200people have been, in my opinion, working for industry, in my opinion, putting out whatever
00:43:55.040the industry wanted, and in my opinion, causing murder, the murder or the death of probably
00:44:00.280millions of people, in my opinion. So what happened was we gave them this discovery with
00:44:05.360all these, I think there's like 60 some odd questions on there that we asked about everything
00:44:09.020from asbestos to the BP chemicals they used out there, Corexit. Come to find out, you know,
00:44:14.880they wanted to drop that lawsuit the very next day. They were done with this. They said it would
00:44:19.280cost them too much to answer the questions. It would be too time consuming. But what it was is
00:44:24.000they don't want to answer those questions. So what we did is we filed something saying, no,
00:44:28.700you can't. We're not going to let you drop the lawsuit. You're going to answer the questions,
00:44:33.060or you can write us a formal apology in the Huffington Post and, you know, you can pay for
00:44:39.680our lawyers and then maybe we'll talk about it. But then, of course, they're going to refuse to
00:44:43.620do that. So here we are now fighting to continue to be sued and they're fighting to drop the suit
00:44:48.620that they brought against us in the first place, which is a twist. It's so funny. I don't know how
00:44:52.880to deal with it. We have some great pro bono lawyers that have been helping us out. Just
00:44:56.280really wonderful. I don't know what to do without them, but I don't know what's going to end up
00:45:00.700happening. But honestly, I'm not going to drop this until I get the discovery and find out what
00:45:05.420these people have been doing for all these years regarding all these chemicals that are supposedly
00:45:09.640safe. But then decades later, we know they're not. How can we support you, both of you? How can
00:45:17.120the people who are listening to this show, what are some things that they can do to
00:45:21.600stand in solidarity with you both? I think one of the biggest ways that people can stand in
00:45:28.300solidarity with us right now is the 2017 to 2022. It's a five-year plan for offshore leasing in the
00:45:39.580Gulf and the Arctic. And there's a public comment period that is coming open. There's public
00:45:45.600hearings that are happening along the Gulf Coast as well as in the Arctic. And it's a really simple
00:45:52.100process you know you can go online even and make a comment to say that we want to keep it in the
00:45:58.960ground and we do not want to gamble with our future continuing to mine fossil fuels no new
00:46:09.160leases that's a huge way that people can help and if they can get to public meetings that's even
00:46:14.260better? I would say that we really need to support coastal peoples everywhere and understand the
00:46:22.340indigenous knowledge that's out there. Listen to our elders and really stand in solidarity to
00:46:27.620protect the systems of mother earth. You know, I would like to say to, if anyone can hear me and
00:46:33.100it gets this message to any peoples living in the Arctic, I just want you to know that the Gulf
00:46:37.960stands with you and that whatever our messaging is down here, we're going to make sure to lift up
00:46:43.940the arctic as well because it's time for oil drilling to go the way of the dinosaur i guess
00:46:51.120and i think that there's so few of us at this point we're standing in right now we have to
00:46:55.980really stand together and stand strong in solidarity with each other so i just want the
00:47:00.840people of the arctic whoever you are to know that the people of the gulf are with you standing strong
00:47:06.480with you and creating change for ourselves and for our future i think we have a lot in common
00:47:11.820both uh fishing communities both live off the land quite a bit and uh we were all here first
00:47:19.040so yeah that's i guess that's the number one thing man it's just if you see something like
00:47:25.040you know on social media or something please share that if it's a thing for public comments
00:47:30.340please put in your comments because we have to make sure we go through the proper channels
00:47:34.840so that we can say that we went through the proper channels as we shut this stuff down
00:47:39.480and if you can get to a hearing just go make your voices heard but also you know make sure your
00:47:44.340neighbor understands it too like you know talk within your communities and especially to our
00:47:48.820youth and they really need to know i'm not going to be here forever and honestly i don't even know
00:47:53.980like there's a lot of threats and stuff that happens for anybody that does this kind of work
00:47:57.900down here in the gulf so it's going to be up to my kids and my grandkids i'm afraid to really drive
00:48:03.180it home and put us where we need to be so that's what's going to happen but i will tell you this
00:48:07.320you know, with my dying breath. I'll protect their life. That's what a mother's supposed to do.
00:48:13.980And for me, this fight against new leases in the Gulf of Mexico is nothing less than
00:48:18.420protecting my children. It's my whole heart.
00:48:22.820Wow, thank you. And on a more local level to Louisiana and the coast, I'm wondering what
00:48:30.980other organizations or projects you support. I know there's people that are protecting the basin
00:48:36.380and reforestation efforts, we had talked about a little bit, restoration of the wetlands,
00:48:41.760people that you know of or people that you're working with that need support, whether that's
00:48:46.140hands, whether that's financial help to support the restoration efforts.
00:48:52.380Oh my goodness, yes. We have so many community organization and environmental justice communities
00:48:57.100down here in the Gulf of Mexico that need support. You know, sometimes it pains me to
00:49:01.080think about it, but all those big green organizations who I appreciate when they're
00:49:05.060helpful came down here and made so much money during the oil spill like putting stuff out there
00:49:10.260and saying like send five dollars a day so we can stop officer drilling and just a handful of those
00:49:14.700at this point don't even support us as we continue to fight that we have many many who do we have a
00:49:19.720lot of great big national organizations that do but the money and the resources never seems to
00:49:25.180get or very rarely seems to get down to the people who are actually suffering from this and i mean
00:49:30.040refinery communities. So if you support Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, Tejas,
00:49:36.060if you support Louisiana Bucket Brigade that works directly with those groups,
00:49:40.480Louisiana Environmental Action Network. I'm trying to think. Help me out, Monique. There's so many
00:49:45.260good organizations down here that do so much good stuff on such a small amount of money
00:49:50.740or just uplifting their stories. Yeah, the Gulf Restoration Network, you know, they do a lot of
00:49:57.280policy work there's the gulf future coalition which is an amazing group of community folks and
00:50:04.120i'm sure i'm forgetting a number of other the mississippi coalition of vietnamese american
00:50:09.680fisher folk and family that's a good one they're on facebook and then we have like all these like
00:50:15.360wedgwood uh pensacola all these environmental justice communities any community in cancer alley
00:50:22.980Tejas, Texas, all the whole border of Texas is basically refinery of chemical plants and all
00:50:27.980those. Look, Port Arthur, Texas, Hilton Kelly's group. Monique, can you tell, I would really
00:50:32.780like to get some of the work that you do in there too. What about like, probably you want in the
00:50:36.400seeds bank? Can you tell them anything? Oh, yeah. Doing as Cherie was saying, like to do this
00:50:43.240environmental work here in the Gulf, it's really challenging. And I've found that working through
00:50:50.500the arts helps to open up the conversation more. So there's an organization, if people are a
00:50:56.440project really, called CryU1. So Cry, C-R-Y-U-Y-O-U-1, which comes from an old Cajun saying
00:51:04.900that musicians would say, instead of saying, let me play you a song, they would say, let me cry you
00:51:09.900one. And there's a great multimedia platform. It's just cryu1.com. And there's a lot of community
00:51:16.400members here in the Delta telling their individual stories. And then there's a performance piece that
00:51:23.420goes along with it that has been traveling around as well to help raise awareness of what's
00:51:28.460happening here in the wetlands. I also have a project called the Land Memory Bank and Seed
00:51:33.600Exchange, which is trying to create a community record. So instead of having anthropologists or
00:51:41.660historians come in from the outside to tell our story, which we've been under the microscope for
00:51:46.620a long time, especially, you know, post Katrina and BP. So instead of other people coming down
00:51:52.160to tell our stories, how do people of the Delta tell their own stories for themselves? So there's
00:51:59.060that. And then we're also collecting and propagating native seeds that are for medicinal
00:52:04.740purposes and as well as restoration work so yep i would just like to end on whatever note either
00:52:14.140of you would like to end on as well as maybe just share whether that's a memory or an ecosystem or
00:52:21.440plants or whatever it is that reminds us how special this land is and why we're fighting for
00:52:28.220this why the both of you are standing so tall and courageous in this fight because it's something
00:52:34.560that is magical and worth our love and care. After Katrina, when I came home to St. Bernard
00:52:44.320and we drove past the major oil spill and residential community and I came to my
00:52:51.240grandmother's house and it was in shambles and everything was kind of turned upside down and
00:52:56.620we all looked around and thought, wow, we're not going to ever be able to live here again.
00:53:02.940And then the spring came, just as it's springtime right now here in Louisiana, and all the vibrant green from the cypress started to show their leaves.
00:53:14.400And then I realized, you know, Mother Nature has this incredible ability to restore itself if we just allow it to do what it's supposed to do and to respect that natural system.
00:53:28.380And it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier, that the Mississippi River Delta, which is my home, is a power point for the planet and, you know, what's happening here in the Gulf.
00:53:42.020So say the Arctic gets taken off the table for offshore drilling.
00:53:46.920If we keep drilling here in the Gulf of Mexico, those Arctic communities are still going to be affected by our offshore drilling here.
00:53:55.540and to recognize how we are interconnected
00:53:59.480and how the health of my community is important
00:54:20.800So what I've been thinking about for a long time
00:54:22.240is how we bring in and ask and invite like the natural world into these struggles like they're
00:54:29.500already at the front of it if you think about it like who suffers the most from these just bad
00:54:35.460practices right or these bad ideas bad systems right and yes people suffer for sure but but also
00:54:43.160like the endangered species the species that we have that are going extinct at unprecedented rates
00:54:48.320we had said down in florida they were trying to put at one point a walking trail through the
00:54:53.200middle of the everglades for some asinine reason i was talking to bobby billy down there and i said
00:54:58.300what you ought to do is tell them if they want nature you know get about 30 alligators ask them
00:55:02.400to come into your boat and they tell the people at the state house if they want nature so much
00:55:06.420you can have it but kind of there's this bigger question too that was a joke but it's kind of a
00:55:10.620a good question too of making sure that we be like really intentional about this struggle and
00:55:18.400really have a deeper larger understanding of the natural rights of the earth to exist
00:55:24.080and of everything that depends on her in order to create this new system I think we're going to
00:55:30.840have to take all and this is something that's in balance we need to take that all into consideration
00:55:34.920ourselves and so that to me like there's just nothing more beautiful than being out in the
00:55:40.720basin when the sun comes up or being out in the gulf when the sun goes down there's nothing more
00:55:45.400beautiful than watching dolphins dancing and there's nothing more beautiful than watching
00:55:49.440alligators roll around and lay on the beach for hours on and barely moving like prehistoric times
00:55:55.600right all those things that that's a part of who we all are as people like not just one group but
00:56:02.420But that's our collective source. All of those things, the Mississippi River, all of that is our collective source as humans on this particular spaceship, you know, this unique and wonderful and beautiful planet.
00:56:18.420and so i guess when you talk about coming from that particular place like it's definitely about
00:56:25.360the future generations but it's about the future generations of all living things on this earth
00:56:30.580not just the human ones not just the ones that walk on two legs but everybody and we have to
00:56:38.100start thinking about that what that unity and what that solidarity really looks like i mean the first
00:56:45.580time i met you was in paris we went a whole continent away to fight for this and that's
00:56:50.340that's important so anyway i love y'all thanks so much and always good to talk to monique who's just
00:56:55.340a a pistol man she's she got him on the run and but she comes from a from a really really good
00:57:01.640sweet honest genuine place and that's very important i think so thank you shrie because
00:57:07.900you're contagious we started to fire we know it
00:57:15.580You've been hearing from Monique Verdan and Cherie Foytland today