This is an introduction to the attached chapter on Layering that was written in 2015 after the BP oil disaster written by Shirley Laska, Kristina Peterson Crystlyn Rodrigue, Tia Cosse’, Rosina Philippe, Olivia Burchett and Richard Krajeski
Outsiders we are to the trauma, recovery and constructive response of Gulf Coast residents. With them we hope to co-develop educational experiences that will spread this understanding throughout the communities and cultural groups of the region.
Residents of an area that is particularly subject to a seemingly unending litany of disasters, some of them extreme enough to be labeled catastrophes, cannot experience them as independent events especially with regard to the residents’ responses. There is a linkage and it is likely very powerful because the culture is molded by the need to respond, to survive, to return to “normal” after the events occur. These responses are not in a vacuum. And there is no doubt a learning curve from one to the next, even when it is not immediately evident or overtly articulated. Even if we do not consciously recognize the power of learning from one to the next to the next it has to be there.
Within the 21st century the northern Gulf of Mexico coast from Texas to the “bend” of Florida has experienced (1) Land loss and subsidence initially driven by damage done by oil and gas exploration and increasingly by sea level rise, (2) Frequent, powerful hurricanes, again increasingly exacerbated by climate change, (3) The massive Macondo rig blow out and expansive oil spill invading the coastal marshes and beaches, and (4) the downturn of the economy and the concomitant negative impact on the Gulf seafood industry and thus all of the occupations participating in it. This layering study examined the four events to better understand how the residents framed their experiences and the impacts of them. Now as we prepare a fresh discussion of the research we did in 2015 because yet another horrific catastrophe (5) the Corona Virus, has infected the City of New Orleans at the highest per capita rate in the United States, the motivation is more than a more complex analysis. It is rather to address the action question of what are the lines of learning and assessing done by the residents teaching themselves and us? Can we support the learning by better understanding what the Coastal residents have learned, have figured out that can be consciously transferred to the next age group of doers in a teaching, systematic way? We advocate for learning in so many other ways and for individual learning throughout our lives. Such a “wall” of experiences warrants a more conscious approach to enhancing resident capacity to have successful lives and communities with these risks present.
We encourage you to read what we learned five years ago and to think “out of the box” on how this knowledge can support cultural responses to a convergence of disasters, an experience that more and more of our population are and/or may experience.