Monday was Indigenous Peoples' Day, and to honor that in a small way, I wanted to share some reads about indigenous communities that we've had on Southerly, as well as others shared with me recently.
Last year, Irina Zhorov wrote for us about the Federally Recognized Tribes Extension Program, which was designed to educate and work alongside Native American farmers. But the program is chronically underfunded and only serves a small percentage of tribes in the South and across the U.S., making it difficult for some tribal communities to access agricultural services. You can listen to a version of this story on Gravy, a podcast by the Southern Foodways Alliance.
For years, there has been one dominating narrative about Louisiana's indigenous communities: how those calling Isle de Jean Charles home are going to be relocated as some of the first climate refugees in the region. But there are many tribes in coastal Louisiana, and a myriad of stories to be told about them. Earlier this year, Barry Yeoman wrote about how the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw used practices of self-isolation and sustainable food production to keep their number of COVID-19 cases low. In September, Christine Baniewicz wrote about how several tribal representatives have joined forces with a coastal scientist and the nonprofit Lowlander Center to pursue a restoration project informed by Indigenous knowledge of the landscape. It aims to protect at least 15 different tribal mounds along the coast through a strategy called backfilling.
Theresa Dardar, a member of Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe.
Photo by Julie Dermansky
The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians have seen extremely high rates of COVID-19 deaths: 10% of the tribe’s 10,000 residents have been diagnosed and it has killed at least 81 people. (photos in the story by NYT by Rory Doyle)
I just read "Even As We Breathe" by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. 100 Days in Appalachia interviewed her about the novel, set in 1942, which "tackle[s] the complicated intersection of class and race in western North Carolina." Cherokee One Feather also has am interview with her.
Something to revisit: This High Country News investigation called Land Grab University, which looks at the "10.7 million acres taken from nearly 250 tribes, bands and communities through over 160 violence-backed land cessions, a legal term for the giving up of territory," and given to land grant universities. (Here's an interactive map of the universities involved)
Outside the South: Buzzfeed's story on a 22-year old member of the Walker River Paiute Tribe in Nevada who is working on voting rights and voter turnout. High Country News on the consequences of a low Census count in Indian Country.
One of my big goals for Southerly for the next year is to cover Indigenous communities in this region more often, with more context and nuance, with more care and respect. I also want to work with more Native American writers — so please let me know if this is you and you'd like to pitch a story or know of any folks who may. And in the meantime, please send any good reads — books or articles — by Indigenous authors my way.
For Biloxi Sun Herald, Isabelle Taft examined the risks hurricanes pose to toxic sites along the Mississippi coast. Residents remember spills caused by previous storms, and are worried about the risks they face with more frequent and wetter hurricanes. “I know the safety measures you have,” one resident said. “But you can’t control nature. If something were to happen, there’d be nothing you could do to control the chemical leakage out here.” (Carly Berlin recently wrote for us about this concern in other areas of the Gulf Coast, too.)
The Montgomery Advertiser is covering a controversial plan to build new men's prisons in three Alabama communities, each holding 3,000 to 4,000 inmates. On Twitter, writer Brian Lyman wrote: "This week I spoke with people in two communities slated for prison construction. I heard a lot of worries about whether their rural communities could handle them, and a lot of anger that there was no contact with them ahead of the announcements.
News flying under the radar
Sarasota County, Florida commissioners approved a plan to double the height of a landfill from 100 feet to 200 feet. The county is counting on a vertical expansion to potentially extend the landfill’s life — but that means the trash pile will be higher than buildings in the area. More details in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
More than two decades after the cleanup of East Tennessee Technology Park — formerly the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, which was built in in the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project to provide enriched uranium for the world's first atomic bomb — the U.S. Department of Energy declared the 2,200-acre site cleaned up and ready for industrial reuse. It's the largest completed cleanup project in Department of Energy history, according to Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Mountain Valley Pipeline developers got permission from federal regulators to resume some construction on the project last week — but now the company is saying it needs to evaluate the cost and timing of the natural gas pipeline based on ongoing litigation and upcoming federal approvals.
In 1971, Miami-Dade County had 143,000 septic tanks. Despite calls for decades for ambitious sewage system upgrades, there are 120,000 still, and more being installed every year. Now sea level rise is worsening the problem. Alex Harris reported for Miami Herald.
According to WYMT, Kentucky officials reported a coal miner was killed while working at a surface mine in Bell County. He was struck in the chest when a coupling failed on a hydro gun he was operating.
Our editorial assistant, Cameron Oglesby, wrote for 9th Street Journal about the proposed development of hundreds of upscale homes and apartments that could level forest land and raise prices in Braggtown, a Black neighborhood in Durham. “We’re doing a lot of fighting. It’s not just for affordable housing. We’re fighting for the rights of people to have a place to stay and live comfortable and not feel like they are not included.” She also wrote recently about Durham's plan to plant 1,500 trees a year, nearly all of them in low-income communities — a plan in the works for three years that still hasn't come to fruition.
‘The culture manifests the landscape’: A Q&A with Southern writer Janisse Ray
The Ecology of a Cracker Childhood author talks the pandemic, climate change, and why we need to fall in love with our places. Read the story.
‘Dead in the water’: How TVA bottlenecked a community-driven solar project
Emails show the utility could be leveraging the solar array to keep an electric cooperative locked in a long-term power agreement. Read the story.
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How Europe’s wood pellet appetite worsens environmental racism in the South
An expanding wood pellet market in the Southeast has fallen short of climate and job goals — instead bringing air pollution, noise and reduced biodiversity in majority Black communities. Read the story, published with Scalawag and EHN.
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