PROFESSOR MOLLY OLSEN REPORTS ON HER SABBATICAL

What does the survival of New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian culture have to do with the BP oil spill? Potentially plenty, according to Hispanic and Latin American studies professor Molly Olsen, who has been conducting sabbatical research in New Orleans over the past year.

Grand Ilse, Louisiana - oil beds
Kiddie Pool for workers to clean their oily boots.	Mardi Graid Indian Tribe
Painted wall in Larose, La.	Trees killed by salt intrusion

During the nearly five years since Hurricane Katrina, Mardi Gras Indian tribes and the neighborhood organizations called Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs have struggled to regroup members and keep centuries-old traditions alive. African American community-based performance culture is alive and well in New Orleans, but Katrina displaced thousands of people, including many culture bearers, some of whom have yet to return to the city.

Moreover, in the wake of the hurricane, strategic recovery efforts that have restructured public housing and the public school system also have fractured some neighborhoods that are the creative motor of New Orleans culture. Add to all of this the pressures of the recession, such as unemployment and mortgage foreclosure, and one begins to see the confluence of stresses that New Orleans cultural expression has faced.

And now, in the Gulf waters just south of New Orleans and steadily working its way inland, is an enormous oil spill whose surface area is larger than the states of Delaware and Maryland combined. As the oil reaches shore and creeps farther into the marshes and wetlands of southern Louisiana, it’s killing birds, fish, and dolphins, as well as the marsh grasses that hold soil and protect against coastal erosion. It also threatens an entire coastal culture: As the spilled oil poisons the wetlands that serve as the nursery for oysters, shrimp, crabs and fish, it undermines a traditional way of life for Cajun and Vietnamese-American families who fish these waters for their livelihood.

And the oil spill could further imperil New Orleans culture. Even before Katrina, Louisiana was losing the equivalent of a football field of land every 38 minutes to coastal erosion, land that provides New Orleans with essential protection from hurricane tidal surges. As the spilled oil speeds up the loss of wetlands that help to diminish the force of hurricanes, New Orleans will become even more exposed to the massive flooding and tidal destruction that a hurricane can inflict. And the resulting demographic displacement and social disruption could deal yet another blow to a city and its cultures that are still working to recover their pre-Katrina vitality.

The Atlantic and Gulf hurricane season began June 1 and lasts until November 30.

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