From CNN:
Pointe Aux Chenes, Louisiana (CNN) — The marshes here have long been a refuge for the Native Americans living in Louisiana’s bayou.
“We came to live here because it was marshland, where nobody else wanted to live,” said Chuckie Verdin, the chairman of the Pointe Aux Chenes Indian Tribe.
The tribe is made up of about 700 members whose ancestors were forced from their lands and resettled to Louisiana more than 100 years ago.
That refuge, already strained from coastal erosion, is facing a new menace: the oil spill spreading uncontrollably across the Gulf of Mexico.
On Saturday, the same day that the state closed fishing in the area, Verdin addressed some of the tribal members in the town’s cinder block church.
Before the tribal meeting, the members recite a prayer in a French dialect, a language picked up by their ancestors from European settlers generations ago.
Turtle Talk 