Capitalism's catastrophe reaches shore

We drive south on Louisiana Highway 55 towards Pointe-au-Chien. Incredibly green, lush forest gives way to increasing areas of water as we venture further south, until the road itself feels as though it is floating.

We cross over a small concrete bridge over a bayou and find ourselves square in front of the Pointe-au-Chien sign informing us that this is their tribal area. We've come to meet Theresa Dardar to learn more about how the BP oil disaster is decimating the indigenous populations of southern Louisiana.

She's a member of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe, a small community of self-described Indians who live in southern Louisiana along a small stretch of the Bayou Pointe-au-Chien. Now oil from the BP disaster threatens their very existence.

Historically, they have been reliant on hunting, fishing, agriculture and cattle. But due to, as Dardar puts it, "devastation of our land by the oil companies," the lack of protection of the barrier islands and lack of fresh water replenishment, and saltwater intrusion, the tribe has had to rely primarily on fishing to sustain itself.

The shrimping season was closed on May 29 in their area putting most of the tribe out of work. On June 19 shrimping season reopened when oil in nearby bays abated somewhat, but it was and still is only allowed in a tiny area.

Today members of Dardar's tribe, including her husband, spend their days contracting their shrimp boats to BP in order to lay out booms.

Outside her home, like that of her neighbours, huge green nets hang from trees. Other fishing gear sits idly in yards, life placed on indefinite hold.

Dardar invites us inside her home, located among several other elevated houses that perch on the bank of the bayou. It is an area surrounded by marsh - much more water than land. It's an amazing experience. The water is so close, and the land barely above it, that one often feels as though the water is actually higher than the land.

"We are praying we don't have a hurricane, because if we do it'll blow the oil up here. They'll condemn this place and not let us back in until we clean it up," Therese says.

Given the encroachment of what's left of their land by the Gulf, Dardar and the rest of her tribe intend to hold on to what they have.

They are a people used to looking after themselves. "We fend for ourselves," Dardar continues as we sit in her living room. "We can't wait for the parish or the state to help us. The only time we see a politician is during election time, or when they come after we have a disaster and we've pretty much cleaned everything up ourselves."

Dardar says they want to put a sign up near the bridge into their area that reads "No politicians allowed."

The livelihood of these people is now threatened on several fronts, but for now the most imminent threat seems to be the oil lurking offshore. According to Dardar, her tribe is now down to only 680 people and the majority of them live in Pointe-au-Chien.

Dardar speaks of their ties to the area in a reverential tone. To be removed from this place would lead to the disintegration, figuratively and literally, of her tribe.

"If we have to leave, we'll be spread out and no longer be a community," she explains. "We don't know where we'd go. BP should try to keep this community together because it's their oil that'll cause us to separate. Our attachment to our land is everything to us. We live off the land, so when you take us away, it won't be the same. It's like taking a fish out of water and seeing how long it will live."

She stops talking, and simply says that she doesn't know how to describe this.

Her 54-year-old husband has been a fisherman since he was 16. Now he's laying out booms for BP. Dardar tells me that he's angry at BP for having put him out of his fishing job, but he needed the money. It's a job that won't end soon, but when it does, he's unlikely to have his old job to return to.

She walks us outside where her brother-in-law Russell Dardar is sitting out near the bayou after having just returned from crabbing. He shows us one of his boxes of crabs. One of the blue crabs reaches into the air, pincher open. "He's giving you the peace sign," Russell says with a half-smile.

After looking at his photos of oil-affected marsh we climb into his boat. It's a tight waterway lined with shrimp boats that would usually be out harvesting.

Russell doesn't talk much, but when he does it is powerful. He tells me he used to work on a tugboat, work that is common with many of the people in this area of southern Louisiana, until a back injury led him back to crabbing and shrimping.

Dark rainclouds loom out in the marsh where we are headed. The rain begins slowly as we motor down the tight canal, green marsh on either side as we voyage down towards the head of the bay. The rain increases into a full shower and we're soaked within minutes.

Russell pulls us up among white booms bobbing in the small waves. They are held in place by flimsy white PVC pipes stuck in the mud. Bamboo poles hold them in other areas.

We are struck by how useless they are. Several oil-scarred areas of marsh lie behind booms that are sometimes unattached to their support poles. Others float 15 centimetres below the surface. In many areas, booms are washed ashore and sit amid oil-soaked marsh.

Russell takes us along many areas to show us more of the same sunken boom, boom washed ashore, oil-scarred soiled areas of marsh that is already dead.

"There was far more oil out here last week," Russell says. "But the high tides that reached here from Hurricane Alex pushed all the oil deeper into the marsh."

The rain slackens as we head back home. Incredible bird life fills the marsh as we motor back. Flocks of birds are everywhere. I wonder how long they'll last.

As we arrive back at the marina, I see that it has been turned into a staging area by BP. As though to intentionally underscore the futility of the so-called clean-up effort, mountains of booms sit in plastic wrap on the shore waiting to be taken out into the marsh. To the right of the marina building a statue of Jesus stands near a US flag, facing the mounds of booms, his arms outstretched as if he is questioning the futility of it all.

Later we sit down and feast on the crab casserole and fried shrimp Theresa has made us.

"About two weeks ago a BP spokesman held a town hall meeting," she says. "He said, it's not if but when the oil comes here again. There was not one state or parish official at the meeting. BP is running things here now.

"We hope we don't have to wait as long as the Alaskans did for our marine life to come back," she says, referring to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. "They had to wait 17 years for their shrimp to return, and they are still waiting on their herring."

It's a slim hope given that to date 14 per cent of the 250,000 barrels spilled in the Valdez disaster have been recovered. Even by the most conservative estimates the ongoing BP disaster has gushed many times that amount of oil into the Gulf. Higher-end estimates suggest that an Exxon Valdez worth of oil is injected into the Gulf every two-and-a-half days.

"I'm worried about health problems associated with this disaster," Theresa tells us before we leave. "And we're hoping we can avoid the divorces, suicides and alcoholism that hit so many communities up in Alaska. I'm telling people to stay busy and not think of the oil. Otherwise you'll drown in it."

Read more of Dahr Jamail's journalism at dahrjamailiraq.com. His new book The Will To Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan is out now published by Haymarket books.