Elder, Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe

Rosina Philippe lives in Grand Bayou Indian Village, a community that is entirely based in water. The homes and church can only be reached by boat. This was not always the case. “We had solid ground beneath our feet,” she recalls. “We had garden spaces. We had fruit trees. We had lots of land where you can walk for miles.”

The Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha are a subsistence tribe, and have long relied on the bounty of the land and water: harvesting seafood, foraging for persimmons and wild celery, growing vegetables, and hunting deer, ducks, and rabbits. Always, they’ve been guided by an ethos of taking only what they needed. “There was no such thing as overharvesting or just taking and hoarding away,” Rosina says, “because the life around us makes us possible. And as long as they were here, then we were here.”

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They are still a subsistence tribe. But with much of the land gone, some of their traditional foodways have become difficult or even impossible to maintain. Disappearing wetlands also mean less protection from storms. Most tribal members have moved away, returning to Grand Bayou with their families for holidays.

But Rosina remains, along with about a dozen other households. “I say that we’re placemarkers,” she says. “A table is here and it’s set and we’re like a place card holding the place for others to come. I stay because of my love for my life, my life choices, my lifeway, for the ways of being with this place. I stay because I believe that the Creator in his infinite wisdom has placed my people where we belong. This is our place. This is where we were supposed to be.

“And I stay because I feel that I can make a difference. if I just inspire one person, and that one person can inspire somebody else, and so on, then we continue our inhabitation.”

Grand Bayou residents have been developing innovative ways to remain in the community, even without solid land. Their houses are elevated and the roofs are designed to weather storms. They’re exploring the possibility of floating houses. They’ve developed a prototype for a floating garden box. And they’re looking to other communities, like Pacific Islanders in Hawaiʻi, who for millennia have cultivated food forests.

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On the day she realized her village was threatened:

“I think it’s the day that I became an adult in my mind. I must have been about 11 or 12 years old. And it was the aftermath of a hurricane.

“We came back to the village because we evacuated in our boats. Finding safe harbor—that was our way to avoid the storm. And the water was still up. The tides were still high, but we were in the boat. And my dad and my mom, we came and we docked next to the wharf. It had some really tall pylons, so he was able to tie off onto the pylons. But the house was still submerged, still underwater. 

“That particular day, I was playing with my siblings on the boat. We were playing tag, running around the boat. And my mom was standing there looking at her house and everything that she had tried to save. It was all wet, a lot of it destroyed.

“My mom was a very quiet woman. And I remember something just stopped me in my tracks from running. And I just looked at her. She was silently looking at her house and just had tears running down her face.

“I think in that moment, my life changed. And I recognized that the devastation that continued to plague our village and our home, it had some really significant impacts. Life was not just, ‘OK, storm is coming, leave, come back.’ There were some consequences to the things that were happening.

“Seeing those impacts, that moment woke me up to the changes. I was no longer looking at these things through the eyes of a child.”

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“My name is Rosina Philippe and we’re here in the Grand Bayou Indian Village on the coast of southeast Louisiana. We are an Indigenous community, water access only. And we’ve been here for millennia. I’m happy to say that we’re still here.”

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On advocating for the community:

“I push back against policy that’s drafted in a vacuum. A lot of people that draft policy, they work in silos where they’re not all-inclusive and there’s no invitation to the people who will have to live with those policies. That’s a gaping lack of foresight.

“I believe that policies that included the community voice at the table, at the onset of concepts being proposed, and then flesh it out into something that when it’s done, it will enable people to live in the real world—I think they would be more beneficial.

“But that’s not what we have. We have outsiders looking in and making the decision that this is what’s needed, never engaging with the community.

“I would like to see policies where people don’t just look at a map and see my community. Come here. Get in a boat. Talk to people. I don’t care; stay a week. Get the feel of the place. And don’t just come here when there’s blue skies and sunshine. Come during a storm. We’re not going to let you drown. 

“We have a lot of people that are elected in our government to serve us. Those people can send their chosen representatives to find out what’s really happening in the communities, in the environment, and then decide co-productively what should or should not happen. That’s in an ideal world. And that’s not happening.

“So how do we maintain a presence and continue to advocate for the things that we want? We just have to show up, become engaged. Oftentimes we do that, and to our lament, the things that we share never make it into the final document. But that doesn’t mean that we stop. You can’t stop.

“I can’t see myself quitting, because my story is not just my story. It’s from those who came before me. And what I live today, I also share with our younger members, and when it’s their time to step onto the path of leadership, they will be ready.”

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From John:

After our interview, Rosina and I walked outside to figure out the portrait. It was hot. The sort of hot that makes you sweat through your shirt in moments and the sort of humid that makes a lens from an air conditioned room steam up and stay that way.

Slowly we put together the elements. “I feel like we need it to relate to the water.”
“I can get in my boat,” she said.
“We’ll need the light to be close to you, but not in the water.”
“Maybe LaDonna can get her boat, too.”
A moment later, Rosina’s sister LaDonna Sylve appeared.

It’s not the sort of thing I’d have been comfortable asking for. It seemed like a lot of logistics, but everyone was willing and able, so we chased down that path to see how it would all come together. LaDonna at the tiller of the support boat. Rosina seated in her own boat. One intern holding the light. Another with a pole to stabilize the boat in the shallow water. I was on the dock framing up the portrait and Barry was on shore, cheering us all on.

It was a good shot. And when we were done, Rosina said, “I want to do one where you can read my shirt.” So we did that, too.

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LaDonna asked if she could take us in her boat on a tour of the village, and we gratefully said yes.

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To read the introduction to this series, follow this link.
Still Here: Stories from a fragile coast

To listen to our podcast, follow this link or find us on the platform of your choice.
A Peace of My Mind on Buzzsprout

Credits:
Interview and text: Barry Yeoman
Photos: John Noltner
Editing and production: summer interns Kate West, Sawyer Garrison, and Kaitlin Imai
Audio engineering: Razik Saifullah