"POINTE-AUX-CHENES, Louisiana — On a boat ride along a bayou that shares the name of his Native American tribe, Donald Dardar points to a cross marking his ancestors’ south Louisiana burial ground — a place he fears will disappear.
He points to the partly submerged stumps of oak trees killed by salt water on land where he rode horses as a kid, and to his mother’s home, gutted by Hurricane Ida. He and his wife have a mission: protecting Pointe-aux-Chenes and other communities at risk in a state that loses about a football field’s worth of wetlands every 100 minutes.
For years, Donald and Theresa Dardar have joined forces with the Rev. Kristina Peterson. Working with scientists and members of Pointe-au-Chien and two other tribes, they’ve set out thousands of oyster shells to protect sacred mounds, obtained financing to refill abandoned oil field canals and built an elevated greenhouse to save their plants and medicinal herbs from flooding."
Luis Andres Henao and Jessie Wardarski report for the Associated Press November 2, 2021.
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