The Indigenous Activist Fighting To Save The Bayou From The Oil Industry

This is how the models are generally framed: Some quantity of time in the future, New York City, Shanghai, and Mumbai will be underwater. As human beings continue to emit greenhouse gases, the heat trapped in our atmosphere raises the earth’s average temperature, melts the ice caps on the hints of the planet, and so, results in rising sea levels.


While most of them of people usually give attention to how major cities will be impacted, the fact is that several people’s homes are being washed away now. Smithsonian Channel’s Last Call for the Bayou highlights the impact speedily changing coastlines along the Mississippi River Delta has on the environment and the human beings who inhabit it.


The second episode of the web series introduces Kasha Clay, a 30-year-old sociology student at Nicholls State University and member of the United Houma Country, a state-recognized Native tribe of 17,000 people in Southeastern Louisiana. In 2016, Clay worked alongside researchers from University of New Orleans Center for Hazards Assessment, Response & Technology (UNO Chart) and Louisiana Sea Grant to group up oral histories from local experts and study the effects changing coastlines have had on the tribe’s culture. With each other, they turned that qualitative input into quantitative intelligence, producing maps that reveal how the area — and its residents’ way of life — has changed over time.


The project was brilliant for Clay, who practically grew up on her father’s shrimp boat and never understood why the people around her would seemingly rather adapt to new conditions than go up against the oil industry, which generally seems to have a hand in each segment of the local economy. “It's a really sore subject to talk about, because a lot of families live off of the oil industry and just big industries in general,” she tells MTV News. The industry is also, Clay believes, segment of the reason the Houma tribe has struggled to increase federal recognition for decades.


“I think if we were to be federally recognized, our tribe would have the ability to bring in federal cash that would help restore the land here,” she says. Although whenever she is also worried about “playing tug-of-war” with big industry, she also is aware about the change she and her tribe can affect in the interim. “There's so much we can do without that title,” she says. “And I think that's what I have been doing.”


While in a recent phone conversation, Clay spoke to MTV News about her studies, the cultural consequences of a changing environment, and her hopefulness for the future.


MTV News: Did anything surprise you as you were going through and collecting the oral histories that mapped out your land’s degradation over time?


Clay: There was a connection I found between our tribal healers — we call them traiteur, because our tribe is really connected to French culture because we did a lot of trading with the French here in the south. Through land loss, our healers in particular have not been able to use the same herbal medicines that they have in the past. And places that used to be fields of orange trees, mangroves, cattle, and things like that, they’re fully gone. There's actual cemeteries that are just fully washed away, nevertheless the tombstones are not even all of the way gone now. Old tombstones, half in the water, half not. They apparently moved the remains, although yet still you can visualize that there was a cemetery there that's washing away. As we speak, it’s still there. It's so weird. It's very scary, yet it's reality right there, you can't deny it.


MTV News: Something else that I was thinking particularly about this documentary is the relationship between the culture of a people and the land that they live on. I was going to ask if there were any characteristic of your culture that had been lost in the water — the cemetery is a clear one.


Clay: I would mention, certainly that — the memorials and also because the healers, and also a place that we used to have our powwows. We can't even use that place anymore and it's right now declared a Superfund site that’s so toxic. It’s in Grand Bois.


MTV News: That was within your lifetime?


Clay: Oh yes, certainly. Right now, the location where the cemetery was, they built a very high overpass — the LA-1 continuation road. … They built it as high as they possibly could for people to pass over it if there was a [tidal surge]. They just recently built it inside over the past 5 to 10 years. They built it over the original road, and that original road is where that cemetery is. It's basically washing away right now. That whole little town of Leeville, basically everybody moved out of it. … Which is so sad however at the same time it is so wild to be able to see. We rode up in the boat right next to the original road, and literally the water is lapping over the original road.


MTV News: You hear a lot about how, in the second 30 years, water levels are going to be high enough that New York City will be underwater, yet this isn't a problem for 30 years from now; this is a problem right now.


Clay: Yeah. Our tribal community, Isle de Jean Charles, had the initial community move. They moved those citizens off of that island to a community somewhere closer inland. I think it's the initial one in the country that they actually moved because of rising sea levels.


MTV News: Coming from the side of sociology, what is the value of collecting human stories in forwarding the environmental movement?


Clay: I think that a big thing is being able to communicate what I've learned to people that are on my level as soon as it comes to local Indigenous people. They can hear it so much, although up until someone that relates to them can actually explain things to them on their level, it doesn't make that much difference. It's been an excellent thing for me, being able to take this work and communicate it to people that really live these lives and are in these situations and to have them understand it. They don't have to go to a conference and sit through crazy terminology and jargon have the ability to pick up on what's going on.


MTV News: It seems like it's not a lost cause for the older generations to recognize that things don't have to be this way.


Clay: Oh yeah. I think if anybody, at any age, would go to that location where the water meets the road, that should make such a large difference in realizing what's going on and why dire the scenario is.


MTV News: The image that I have in my mind is haunting.


Clay: It's really crazy, although the sun does shine there. It might be very bright. There's porpoises all around. It might be cute, although it's just eye-opening. I'm such an optimist, I'll routinely visualize the cute things that are around us moving forward, however at the same time, it’s right in front of us.


MTV News: How do you take these stories that you've collected and these maps that you've drawn and communicate them to the industries that are damaging your land?


Clay: There's only so much we can do about that. It's just so over our heads. And the big thing is at a local level, they still argue for the same old, same old. … Nobody's really pushing for [clean energy] or really understanding that. So it really begins at a local level. If we had a bigger following of people that understood that, maybe we might would make a change. However everybody's fussing as the oil industry's moving to Texas. The complete government in this space is all funded by big industries, so folks are more scared than anything to speak out on it because everybody, everything, each person eats off of it.


And I'm not attempting to be that aggressive person that pushes people away, nevertheless how do you fight that mentality that we need to save this oil industry? Let’s use what we have the ability to change our direction and save our land by saving our livelihoods.


MTV News: You mentioned that you are an optimist. Having completed your project and working with your community, do you feel hopeful moving forward?


Clay: Yes. I certainly do. There really are quite a number of groups and companies coming through to teach the locals, like grassroots efforts of what's key why as well as how to move forward in a higher class of way. So I do feel hopeful for the future. A lot of restoration assignments are still attempting to come out of the woodwork. There really are a lot of things being done, nevertheless I think it still needs to be regarding more locals, as well, communities. I'm hopeful for that.


This interview has been edited and condensed.