“TRYING TO FIND WAYS TO SAVE OUR COMMUNITY” The First Peoples Conservation Council
Pointe-au-Chien, Louisiana The Pointe-au-Chien Tribe has lived, planted, hunted, and fished on the land of Point-au-Chien, Louisiana for centuries, along with ancestors in the Chitimacha, Atakapas, Biloxi and Choctaw tribes. But their rich wetlands have been disappearing. Their shrimping industry was decimated by the BP oil spill in 2010. Oil companies have sliced through their land, in recent decades, and erosion has sawed off the coastline. Saltwater from the gulf has flowed into freshwater marshes. Pointe-au-Chien sits on Louisiana’s gulf coast, and barrier islands have disappeared, making the region more vulnerable to waves and wind. So when Hurricane Ida hit, it hit hard. There are eighty homes in Point-au-Chien from where the Point-Au-Chien tribal building sits, to the