This dissertation examines social, political, and cultural dimensions of displacement, resettlement planning, and climate change adaptation policy experimentation along Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. I draw upon four years of ethnographic research alongside Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribal leaders, during a period just before and after their resettlement plans garnered $48 million in federal financial support. Through participant observation and interviews with Tribal leaders, their allies, media-makers who covered the Tribe’s experiences, and state planners tasked with administering the federal funds, I examined social encounters produced as the Tribe’s resettlement plans were embraced, circulated, and transformed throughout international media and policy.
My analysis points to a number of tensions expressed as Tribal community-driven efforts to address historically produced vulnerabilities collided with government efforts to reduce exposure to coastal environmental hazards. I describe how policies, planning practices, and particular constructions of disaster and community encumbered Tribal leaders’ long-standing struggle for recognition, self-determination and sovereignty, land, and cultural survival. Ultimately, I argue that the state’s allocation of federal resettlement funds has reproduced a colonial frontier dynamic whereby redevelopment is rested upon the erasure of Indigenous histories; identities; and ongoing struggles for self- determination, land, and cultural survival. Using ethnography to interrogate the social encounters produced through adaptation may inform policies, planning processes, and activism in solidarity with those already regenerating social and ecological relationships threatened by racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and climate change. / Anthropology
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/268 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Jessee, Nathan |
| Contributors | Stankiewicz, Damien, 1980-, Levi, Heather, 1962-, Osman, Wazhmah, 1974-, Maldonado, Julie Koppel |
| Publisher | Temple University. Libraries |
| Source Sets | Temple University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 270 pages |
| Rights | IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/252, Theses and Dissertations |
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