Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore

For much of this chapter, Rush recounts a conversation with Chris Brunet. Like many residents of the community on Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, Chris is of Choctaw ancestry. Rush and Chris see a dolphin swimming up the manmade waterway near Chris’s home. To her, this dolphin symbolizes the degradation of the wetlands. To Chris, the dolphin symbolizes the destruction of his community. Over the last several decades, 90% of the island’s residents have left. Because of worsening storms, residents are continuously having to rebuild their homes. For many, this rebuilding simply became too tiresome and expensive.

Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly difficult to live off the land, which many once did. Dalton, Chris’s nephew, describes how:

[M]y papa used to go out into the marshes just south of the house. He would be gone all day and would return with a sack full of dead ducks. He gave ‘em to people. That’s how many ducks he had. My pa was a good hunter, but back then there was also enough to hunt, enough to go around (34).

While duck, fish, and homegrown vegetables once filled Dalton and Chris’s refrigerators, this is no longer the case. Duck and fish have disappeared with the vanishing wetlands.