Growing Collaboratives for Adaptation with Love and with Justice: A Conversation with Kristina J Peterson of the Lowlander Center

Molly Johnson (MJ) spoke with Kristina J Peterson (KP) of the Lowlander Center about building collaboratives to address climate justice challenges facing communities.

MJ: What is the goal of your organization?

The Lowlander Center integrates resources, information, and knowledges so that lowland communities have more options to choose from, be involved in or be supported with. This way it is not just outside entities telling them what they can or cannot have. The communities can grow in their own knowledge and capacity to be able to make informed decisions for themselves based on a lot of information such as patterns of historical violence, different types of legal remedies, and different types of knowledges from Indigenous and other historied communities that can weave those things together. The goal is to problem-solve with communities, so that they have as much information as possible when faced with various obstacles.

MJ: Tell us about who you serve or work with?

​We link together communities who have raised questions or concerns about similar challenges, in order to form collaboratives, networks, and partnerships. For example, one collaborative of several coastal, Indigenous communities in Alaska and several Tribal communities in Louisiana worked together on a report submitted to the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment. Also, after the BP oil spill disaster, we worked with oiled communities across the Southeast, and connected them with the communities that were in Prince William Sound to learn from and guide each other. It included faith communities, government entities, health communities, fishers and subsistence fishers and more. We are also involved in a National Science Foundation grant through Haskell Indian Nations University that is connecting groups from Indigenous communities in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Alaska. They are sharing types of Indigenous wisdom and knowledge to be able to counter climate stressors. The collaborative digs into both historical knowledge and wisdom, and spiritual practice, to see how we can move forward in a healthy, good way. Additionally, one of the leaders from a Tribal community of Grand Bayou just returned from a meeting with the UN Rapporteur and the UN Human Rights Commission in Brasil. It's imperative on us to find the resources and opportunities to get people to these different types of gatherings. This way, their voices become part of the larger conversation, and not just a sidebar or a passthrough.

MJ: Tell us about your climate resilience project(s)? In particular, can you discuss how it connects to climate displacement?

The communities that are part of our collective are adamant that they do not want anyone to decide for them about “managed retreat”. It brings with it huge baggage - the trail of tears, the trail of death, of betrayal and other kinds of atrocities, including urban renewal. It usually means that people of color are sent or locked into conditions that are far from just or equitable, or with choice. So, we are working diligently on “what does adaptation look like?” Adaptation in place and in different kinds of forms - for stewardship of land, water, and the whole aspect so that you don't disconnect the human from the non-human brothers and sisters. 

Since climate displacement is not just about humans, it's about our whole living world - how do we heal that? How do we make repairs? How do we make the way with policies for rematriation and policies that take away the violence that separates humans and our more-than-human brothers and sisters?

It is creation care at its ultimate.  One project we’re working on now is with the Pointe au Chien Indian Tribe. Three years ago, Hurricane Ida - one of the largest, second most expensive, and most forceful hurricanes, second to Katrina - stayed eight hours over Pointe au Chien and it devastated a lot of the community. However, a greenhouse learning center that was just finished being built a month before the hurricane hit was not destroyed because it was built to the best standards possible, Fortified building standards. Several men of the Tribe built it as a collaborative. The survival of the greenhouse convinced the Tribe to do all the rebuilding of their homes in the same way. Because of where they're located, the severity of the storm, and reduced giving and volunteerism since COVID - Pointe au Chien was overlooked in the disaster recovery. Now that there are places for volunteers to come and stay, most of the resources from disaster funds have dried up and so there's no funds to do rebuilding, so we continue to fundraise. The project is about more than just rebuilding houses. It's reconnecting a Tribal community that has been attached to a place for thousands of years. For example, Pointe au Chien is also working on living shorelines with oyster shells to manage erosion. They've been working on canal projects to fill in oil and gas canals because 98% of the land loss in their area is due to the drilling and extraction of gas. We are on the fastest disappearing Delta in the world. The Delta is an incredibly important estuary to the waters of the Gulf, and a major flyway for birds and butterflies. Without it being restored, we're losing all that. In that, Pointe au Chien’s local knowledge of both the water and land of the estuary is exceedingly important to be able to do the kind of rebuilding that is necessary for the restoration of health of the estuary, and of the place. To have homes for the folks who know this, to live here, is paramount. 

MJ: What would you tell someone interested in pursuing a similar goal?

First, educate yourself about the problem. Second, if you can volunteer in any kind of way please do. Congregations or groups of friends that can fundraise to help in this restoration project are direly needed. You can reach out to us at the Lowlander Center and 100% of everything that comes into the organization goes into the projects that are being done. 

MJ: How does your work encourage “faithful resilience?”

You've heard the expression “it takes a village”. Well, the historied and Tribal communities that are “down the Bayou”, are the villages that have the mutual aid and camaraderie of understanding each other as brothers and sisters. They go beyond just the human element, but brothers and sisters kin to all the life-world around them. All of their decision making is done in that concept of all creation. It's not about the individual which is very different from many western communities where people make individual choices. This is more of the understanding of the early faith communities of really sharing in common. It's what we all need to get back to. 

And, when hospitality is in abundance in the face of austerity - how beautiful is that? How beautiful is it when a person goes out to shrimp, and brings the catch, it's the catch that was gifting them.

They weren't taking but there was gifting and the blessing of the water back for the shrimp. It's that kind of reciprocity that goes on and is understood as being a core value. It doesn't get any more spiritual than that. It's the core of love and it's the core of total respect.
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MJ: What is something else you would like the Creation Justice community to know? 

Social and environmental justice intersect and have to be one of the same. We have to address these issues in their complexity. We have to decolonize ourselves in every kind of way possible to be able to open our ears, our minds and our hearts to the violence that has happened - the violence of someone having privilege over others, and how that privilege goes into every element of our lives, which also hinders every element of other people's lives. We all need to do that kind of examination and we need to support those who are really striving to undo those ties and do it with love and do it with justice.