The southwestern region of Louisiana includes Allen Parish, home to an assortment of small towns with a population of a little more than 25,000, including the Coushatta tribe and its 667 members in Louisiana.

More so than I have seen in previous storms,” Sickey said. Entire properties are mowed down, and you can clearly tell there were many, many tornadoes. “I have never seen the level of damage to the forestry here in the region. The storm killed 28 and caused an estimated $1.6 million in damages. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved more than $110 million for 21 parishes in Louisiana. 28, President Trump approved Louisiana’s disaster declaration request, allowing federal aid to flow to the state following the displacement of tens of thousands of residents. Sickey argued that the devastation from the hurricane in the entire region of southwest Louisiana was “not being adequately given exposure” by both the media and policymakers. It’s desolate and isolated and there’s no power and no water,” she said. There’s the smell of dead animals and all of our beautiful 100-plus year-old oak trees are stripped bare. “Our once lush and beautiful, green grass is now brown and muddy and dead. “And it’s with help from people like David Sickey and the Coushatta people who came here and installed that generator that helps us start to get our economy back and running.” The tribe, meanwhile, has helped repair public roads and offered resources to fellow local leaders like Clair Hebert Marceaux, the director of the Port of Cameron, Sickey said. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) two weeks after the storm hit in which the senator expressed his support “in any way he possibly can for the Coushatta tribe.” He said there was limited outreach from the federal government to the tribe beyond a brief conversation with Sen. That level of support has not been matched by the federal government, according to Sickey. “The tribe, even as their lands were compressed and taken away from them over these hundreds of years, they have stepped up for the community,” Rodgers said. Tom Rodgers, a member of the Blackfeet Nation and a strategic adviser to Sickey, described how the Coushatta tribe provided shelter, water and power to first responders and helped local public and private entities immediately before and after the hurricane. More than three weeks after Hurricane Laura made landfall on the Gulf Coast, the Coushatta tribe of Louisiana is rebuilding after sustaining what tribe Chairman David Sickey called “unprecedented and unreal” damage from the storm.īut the destruction could have been a lot worse for the nearby community.

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