Climate change forced an Indigenous community in Louisiana to relocate from their ancestral land: 'I will always have a feeling of being displaced'

• For decades, the residents of Isle de Jean Charles watched their homeland gradually sink into the Gulf of Mexico.
• Due to rising sea levels, the community led a first-of-its-kind resettlement to higher land.

The Isle de Jean Charles once spanned more than 22,000 acres of the lush Louisiana bayous; as of today, less than 2% of the isle remains above water.

As sea levels continue to rise and land erodes, residents of the slowly vanishing isle have been watching their home slip into the Gulf of Mexico. The island has been subjected to a number of major hurricanes and storms in recent years, including Hurricane Ida in 2021. They have been forced to close grocery stores and churches, and the community's only access road to the mainland, Island Road, often floods and severs any route to the mainland.

In 2016, recognizing that the Isle de Jean Charles was no longer a safe or sustainable place to live, residents made the decision to relocate the community entirely, embarking on a first-of-its-kind resettlement project as the first federally recognized climate-displaced population.

As of this summer, all residents are expected to have successfully relocated to their new home, 40 miles away from the original island.

'Storms were always a part of the environment'

Members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe have ancestral ties to the land spanning generations as the isle has been recognized as an exclusively Indigenous community since 1880. Since then, the 37 remaining families have witnessed surrounding oil and gas companies erode the marshland that has prevented flooding for years. Erosion paired with intensified storms have made the island nearly uninhabitable.

"Storms were always a part of the environment — my parents and grandparents told me about the ones they experienced when they were children," said Chris Brunet, a fifth-generation resident of the Isle de Jean Charles and a member of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe.

But for much of Southern Louisiana, what were once seasonal storms have turned into devastating floods. By 2000, the Army Corps of Engineers decided to implement a Hurricane Protection System to safeguard select parts of the region from Category 3 hurricanes and floods. Isle de Jean Charles, however, was not included in the system of levees and floodgates.

In 2010, tribal leadership partnered with local non-profits to create the blueprints for resettling with the goal to re-house remaining residents and those who have left in recent years.

The New Isle

In 2016, the state of Louisiana was granted $48.3 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC) for the official Resettlement Project predominantly drafted by Isle de Jean Charles tribal leadership. With the necessary funds, the Isle of Jean Charles residents were finally able to undertake their necessary resettlement to higher and drier land.

Pat Forbes, Executive Director of the Louisiana Office of Community Development, was tasked with assisting the use of funds for the island's residents.

"From the very beginning, once we got the grant, it has been a resident-centered process," Forbes told Insider. "Where the new community is, what the new community is, and what it looks like has really just been driven completely by the residents."

The office conducted weekly, in-home meetings to gauge priorities and concerns for a new location. Representatives collected site evaluations and input from residents. Through the Louisiana Land Trust, the NDRC funds were used to purchase 515 acres, 40 miles north of the current Isle de Jean Charles location.

Collectively, residents voted to rename their resettlement "The New Isle," and were able to make detailed decisions all the way down to the layout of the neighborhood and the color of their new homes.

The relocation efforts have been lauded as community-led pioneering efforts in the face of climate change. As of May 2023, 34 of the 37 families that once called the Isle de Jean Charles home have relocated to the New Isle, with the expectation that all families will be resettled by the summer.

Residents are still able to access their properties on the Isle de Jean Charles as their deep ancestral ties to the original land were an important part of negotiations.

"They respected the fact that we wanted it to keep our land," said Brunet. "HUD respected that we were Native Americans, that we were tied to the land, and that people on the land always worked together."

The future of climate relocation

While this resettlement could be seen as a success, questions remain around how future relocation projects would operate on a much larger scale. Climate relocation will only become a larger issue in the years to come — a study at the University of Miami predicts 60% of Miami-Dade county will be underwater by 2060, while a survey by Forbes found that nearly a third of Americans cited climate change as a reason for moving in 2022.

Those who contributed to the New Isle relocation hope that their experiences will bring new insight onto other resettlement projects.

"I think understanding the efficiencies that are going to be necessary for construction, affordability of housing, and outreach with citizens has great value on a larger scale," said Forbes. "Our efforts will certainly be illustrative for folks who are doing this in the future.

Residents, like Brunet, emphasized that while the resettlement was a success, the forces that led to their displacement still need to be addressed.

"If I have to partake in a $48 million grant that has to do with climate change, that is not a celebration, but a response," said Brunet. "I'm grateful for the work we've put into the community and optimistic for our future, but I think I will always have a feeling of being displaced."