ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La.—The Rev. Roch Naquin grew up on this island along the Louisiana coast, trapping muskrats and mink in the marsh beyond his family’s home and cutting firewood from a stand of oak trees.
The trees and the marsh are gone now, submerged under rising sea levels that have nearly engulfed the island, which has been home to the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw for generations. As the island slowly disappears, so, too, does the tribe’s way of life.
Isle de Jean Charles, a narrow strip of land about 90 miles southwest of New Orleans in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, has lost 98 percent of its landmass to rising waters of the Gulf of Mexico since 1955, when tracking began. An island that once encompassed more than 22,000 acres, now is only 320 acres. Scientists predict the island will disappear in 50 years.