We Have Been Here Since Time Immemorial:
Demanding Climate Action Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar
I
Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar
choose to go out the back door because the woods are still there. The fruit trees, hummingbirds, and bees are still there. It’s a reminder that the people of the coastal bayous in Louisiana are still here. Our way of life is still here, despite the death taking place beyond my front door. When I was little, my brother and sister and I could run through the back yard from our trailer and make it nearly 1,500 feet before we hit the water. Today, when we go back to Shrimpers Row to visit family, my 4 kids can barely make it 400 feet or so before the land starts to disappear into the bayou. I’m only 39. I grew up in Dulac, Louisiana on a strip of land called Shrimpers Row, part of a community where nearly everyone knew each other or were related to one another. It was our own little world, and it was, in every sense, magical. But climate change has severely battered our physical community, and our traditional way of life is disappearing with it. In the lower parts of our bayou communities, the southeasterly winds bring in water multiple times a year and the flood water soaks our land for days. At my home in Chauvin, in the upper part of the bayou community where it doesn’t flood randomly yet, we planted squash, okra,
Home of Chief Shirell ParfaitDardar's aunt on Onezia Street in Dulac, LA, during a southeasterly wind flooding event. 12 • www. cs. org
and beans. We used several varieties of plant food. Still, plants would barely grow. Finally, using scraps of recycled wood— and in one case the frame of an old trampoline—we created raised gardens in the hopes that something would grow. But these raised beds, which sit one and a half feet above the ground, can only produce certain fruits and vegetables. Further south in our bayou communities of Cocodrie, Dularge, and Dulac, where sudden and severe floods are common, raised gardens never yield anything. And it is only a matter of time before the water comes for the upper communities as well. My ancestors lived here and were buried in Shrimpers Row. My father, grandparents, baby brother, aunts, uncles, and former chiefs lie here. The flooding is washing them away, too. Our cemetery predates the Civil War. Some of the ground vaults that hold the caskets of our dead relatives and friends have popped out of the ground and floated away. I watched my aunt spend several harrowing days trying to find my uncle’s displaced ground vault and return him to his proper burial spot. Our community is working with an agent to