The water keeps rising around Isle de Jean Charles, exactly as everyone predicted it would. The Gulf of Mexico consumes a little more land each year, just as the scientists said. The 26 families still living on the island in 2024 aren't denying any of this. They're just refusing to accept that survival means leaving on someone else's terms.
When Louisiana received $48.3 million in federal funding in 2016 for the nation's first federally funded climate resettlement project, the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation had been working for over twenty years to relocate the tribe together. The vision was reunification on higher ground—bringing together the 300 families who'd once called the island home, preserving their culture by keeping their people connected. Chief Albert Naquin and later Chief Deme Naquin had spent decades planning for a future where climate displacement wouldn't mean cultural dissolution.
But the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation isn't federally recognized. They couldn't apply for relocation funds directly. They had to partner with the state. And state officials, after receiving the grant, learned that tribal members weren't the only people living on the island. Federal guidelines prohibited determining housing eligibility based on tribal affiliation.
$48.3 million relocated approximately 100 people—nearly half a million dollars per person—to houses residents say are falling apart after three years.
What happened next is why most families chose to stay. State officials determined that any residents still on the island or displaced by a 2012 hurricane would be eligible to relocate. The tribal reunification vision ended. The process that was supposed to preserve the community by keeping it together instead scattered people based on individual housing applications processed by state bureaucrats. By fall 2024, 37 families had moved to "The New Isle" since relocations began in August 2022. The vast majority stayed.
Chief Deme Naquin stands on the island looking at his family's former home, asking:
"This is supposed to be a model. Not just for us. For the rest of the country, maybe the world. So why did it fail?"
The families who stayed aren't waiting for better options. They're weighing physical safety on higher ground against cultural survival on their own terms. They're choosing to live with rising water rather than accept a relocation process that stripped away tribal authority over their own future.
Land-based attachment runs deeper than practical concerns about flooding. The water will keep rising—everyone knows that. But accepting the state's relocation process meant accepting that their community would be defined by bureaucrats rather than tribal traditions, that their grandchildren would grow up in a place that's physically safer but culturally disconnected, that the land-based knowledge sustaining their people for generations would have nowhere to root.
Chris Brunet, whose family had called the island home for five generations, described leaving in 2022 as "one of the hardest things" he had to do. Three years later, he and other relocated residents report construction problems with their new homes. The houses designed to withstand 150 mph winds, built above the 500-year floodplain, turned out to be substandard according to residents living in them.
For the families who stayed, this confirmed their decision. They're living with rising water and deteriorating infrastructure, but at least they're not paying for the privilege of living in someone else's vision of their future.
Staying means accepting specific risks. Homes flood more frequently. Land disappears. Infrastructure deteriorates. But it also means maintaining the possibility of cultural continuity under tribal authority rather than state management. The families still on Isle de Jean Charles wake up each day knowing the water is coming, knowing their children will likely need to leave eventually, knowing they're choosing cultural sovereignty over physical safety.
They're adapting in ways the state's relocation process never acknowledged. They're maintaining traditional fishing practices even as they need to travel farther to reach fishing grounds. They're preserving language and customs that depend on specific relationships to land and water. They're teaching their children and grandchildren the knowledge that makes them Jean Charles Choctaw, even as the physical island shrinks.
The state won't say whether they consider the relocation a success. Tribal leaders compare it to the Trail of Tears. Some families got safer housing. The tribe lost control over its own future. Individual needs were met. Collective identity was fractured.
For the families who stayed, the calculation involved weighing immediate physical safety against long-term cultural survival. Relocation meant accepting that their community would be defined by state officials rather than tribal traditions. It meant living in a place that's physically safer but culturally disconnected. It meant their grandchildren would grow up without the land-based knowledge that has sustained their people.
What you're trying to survive determines how you answer. The families who moved prioritized physical safety and better housing, even if it meant accepting a flawed process. The families who stayed prioritized cultural continuity and tribal sovereignty, even if it means living with rising water.
The Jean Charles Choctaw Nation filed a civil rights complaint alleging racial discrimination in how the relocation was managed. State officials say residents "didn't really want either of the tribes to represent their interests." Individual residents wanting autonomy from tribal leadership, and tribal sovereignty being undermined by state control over relocation decisions—both happened simultaneously.
Three years after the first families moved to The New Isle, climate relocation can work. But can it work in ways that honor the communities being relocated, that preserve rather than destroy cultural identity, that treat people as agents of their own futures rather than subjects of state management? For the families still on Isle de Jean Charles, the answer has been no. So they stay.
Not because they don't understand the risk. They understand exactly what they'd lose by accepting a relocation process that stripped away their authority to decide their own future. The choice to stay reaches beyond the land alone. It's about who gets to determine what survival means for a people who have already survived too many forced removals to accept another one, even when it comes wrapped in climate adaptation funding and promises of safety.
The families keep staying. They're not in denial. They're making a different calculation about what matters most, choosing cultural sovereignty over physical safety, choosing the possibility of maintaining their identity as a people over the certainty of slightly higher ground.