Native Americans first U.S.population to be relocated because of climate change

Parts of coastal Louisiana are being swallowed by
rising seas resulting from climate change.

The sacred land in coastal Louisiana that a small community of Native Americans has called home for more than a century has been all but swallowed by the rising sea, leaving residents with little dry ground and a fear they will lose their heritage.

Now a $48 million federal grant will allow the band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians of Isle de Jean Charles to move away from their vanishing home. The funding for the relocation will make the tribe one of the first—and so far the largest—populations in the United States to be resettled because of climate change.

The money, from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is part of a program designed to make communities more disaster-resistant. For the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians, that means moving their whole community north to higher ground when a suitable site is identified in the next several years.

The slice of land that has supported the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians through trapping fishing, and agriculture for 170 years is rapidly being swallowed by the Gulf of Mexico.

Read the Inside Climate News story - “Native American Tribe Gets Federal Funds to Flee Rising Seas.”