United Houma Nation secures $56.5 million for climate resiliency plan

The big picture: The United Houma Nation's people are indigenous to some of the southern-most edges of Louisiana, and are among the first of the state's residents to weather storms as hurricanes get stronger and faster and sea levels rise.

• Artist and activist Janie Luster has previously told Axios New Orleans that she began noticing out-migration after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
• "Back then, the lifestyle was still on the water," Luster said. "But now [people] move into Houma, north of the parish, north of the state, and even out of state."
• That means cultural traditions become harder and harder to pass down, especially the ones that are rooted in the bayous of south Louisiana.

Zoom in: The grant will help resilience efforts for UHN residents in six parishes, including Lafourche, Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Mary, St. Bernard and Terrebonne, according to a press release.

• The UHN has already created a five-phase resilience plan, the press release says, and the grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will support four of them.

The plan calls for enhancements to a central community resilience hub at the current tribe administration building, and the establishment of new satellite hubs.

• It'll also strengthen and expand communications, and in phase four, which isn't supported by the grant, the plan aims to build economic development capacity.

State of play: The UHN will also explore "community-led migration" in a fifth phase, specifically phrasing it that way to avoid cultural barriers the term "relocation" brings up for indigenous people, UHN's Lanor Curole tells Axios New Orleans.

• "'Relocation' tends for many people to mean things that are being done to you as opposed to migration where you may make decisions," Curole says. "That process is heavily, heavily including community engagement to have more thoughtful, fruitful conversations with individuals of what exactly that may look like."
• That phase, Curole says, will explore the possibility of a tribal land trust, as well.

Go deeper: How the Houma preserve a climate change-threatened tradition.