WASHED AWAY? The Invisible Peoples of Louisiana's Wetlands - Donald W. Davis | Octavia Books | New Orleans, Louisiana

Start: 08/03/2010 6:00 pm

Please join us for presentation and book signing with Louisiana coastal researcher Donald W. Davis featuring his just released book, WASHED AWAY?, the first comprehensive look at the settlement, occupation and environmental challenges of these Louisiana coastal communities.

The coastal lowlands are to Louisiana what the Everglades are to Florida, the Rocky Mountains are to Colorado, or the Grand Canyon is to Arizona; they are an easily identifiable landscape symbol as well as Louisiana’s landscape icon. For person’s lacking any emotional attachment to South Louisiana’s wetlands, though, it is easy to see how this area was once labeled a “no man’s land.” Burdened with this moniker, the coastal lowlands became, in many ways, Louisiana’s forgotten human landscape. Many believed it served no useful purpose, yet the wetlands boasted a significant population—a strong, industrious group of people who prospered in the midst of inhospitable surroundings.

From Indian communities, marked by a range of pottery and stone tools, to relocations prompted by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike, these near sea-level marshes and swamps served a range of culture groups—Acadians, Dalmatians/Yugoslavians, English, Filipinos, African Americans, American Indians, Italians, Germans, Creoles, Vietnamese, Danes, Isleños, Irish, Portuguese, Greeks, Norwegians, Swedes, Poles, and Americans. To these permanent and transient settlers, the marsh and swamp was home, making the wetlands—first and foremost—a landscape of people.

“For too long, the history of the people of the wetlands has gone unrecorded,” says author Donald W. Davis. “WASHED AWAY? is my attempt to put a face on Louisiana’s wetlands and reveal the nearly invisible cultures that have prospered in this environment.”

In the past five years, though, damage inflected by successive hurricanes have resulted in staggering personal and financial losses to the families who considered the wetlands their homes, many of which can trace their ancestral connection to the marsh over more than 150 years. These hurricanes helped to heighten interest in Louisiana’s sea-level citizens and the role the wetlands play in protecting these inhabitants, however, restoration of the wetlands is a complex and time-consuming process and, in the interim, the landscape continues to wash away—at a great human cost.

Donald W. Davis has been involved in Louisiana coastal research for more than forty years as a professor at Nicholls State University and more recently LSU. He has always emphasized the importance of humankind in landscape evolution and change. Davis is currently administering a Louisiana Sea Grant project to develop an extensive oral history of the Louisiana Wetlands.