40 Ways in 40 Days: Remembering the Survivors of Katrina (Day 21)

[Plaid Adder]

Day 21, Way 21

Today's way comes to us in kind of roundabout fashion. I started out looking for something involving counseling, since I figure people are only going to need that more as time passes. Sorting through all the stuff Google scraped up I happened across the website of the United Houma Nation, a Native American tribe whose population is concentrated on the Louisiana gulf coast. They got hit by Katrina and then flooded by Rita. This got me interested to find out more about how what was being done to help Native American communities recover. The National Congress of American Indians announced in September 2005 that they would coordinate hurricane relief for the Native American tribes in the affected regions. At the Airos Native Radio Network there's a list of the affected tribes along with links to related news stories. Unfortunately, the NCAI fund doesn't seem to still be active--apart from that September press release there's almost nothing about it on their website now--and at at the United Houma Nation website, there's this interesting and carefully worded statement:

"The United Houma Nation would like to publicly acknowledge and thank NCAI for their generous contribution of $15,800 to our tribes hurricane relief efforts.

At the same time we are compelled to clarify a public misconception about the NCAI donation. In numerous press releases NCAI has stated that they have collected 5 million dollars for hurricane relief and that they would evenly distribute these funds between the tribes affected by hurricane Katrina and hurricane Rita. NCAI has recently stated that the 5 million dollars was calculated to reflect a total that included various donations other than just monetary.

The United Houma Nation does not want to negate NCAI’s positive contribution to our hurricane relief effort but we are compelled to give an accurate account of our fund raising efforts."

OK...well, whatever the story is behind that, I'm pretty sure I don't want to get into the middle of it. However, the United Houma Nation has gotten support from a number of other organizations, including Veterans For Peace--if you can get that side to load on your browser, let me know what it looks like; all I can see is a blank background--and an organization I had never heard of, but which has become today's way:

Plenty International

You guys just gotta read the history. In 1971, a group of 250 'young people' (in period parlance, "hippies") got together and started a farm (or, as some might call it, a commune) in Tennessee. Three years later they were growing more food than they needed, so they started Plenty as a way of getting the surplus produce to their neighbors who needed it. As they found out more about the region they started doing some disaster relief, and the in 1976 they went to Guatemala to help rebuild after a devastating earthquake. This was the beginning of an international effort to promote "village-scale" development in poor rural communities at home and abroad (during the late 1970s apparently they also ran an ambulance service in the South Bronx and trained 200 EMTs to work in the area). Plenty International has always focused on indigenous populations, which is how they came to be a friend in need to the Houma. There's a list of their Katrina relief activities in 2005.

As you can see, they are doing this on a much smaller scale than many organizations with a similar focus; but that's one reason why I think they're worth supporting. Back in the 1970s, when Plenty was establishing itself, I had a record called "Free To Be You And Me" which included a song with the lyric, "Some kinds of help are the kind of help that helping is all about/ And some kinds of help are the kind of help we all can do without." The US government has sponsored a lot of massive international aid efforts, some of which wind up doing a lot of harm along with the good. What I like about the history is that it appears that the folks at Plenty took the attitude that instead of riding in roughshod and telling everyone what to do, they should find out from the people affected what they needed and then see if they could help them get it. From the individual reports on Plenty's website it appears that they have taken the same approach to Katrina relief. A number of these stories involve finding supplies that have been delivered by companies or agencies and then never got to their recipients because there was nobody on the ground making sure that happened. Elaine Langley writes about getting a truckload of food and toiletries that would otherwise have been thrown out to a food distribution center that had had to shut its doors because they had no food left. This is the basic idea behind Plenty's relief work: there's too much in some areas and not enough in others, and if we could just do a better job with distribution everyone would be OK. It's also the kind of work that is easier to do with a small organization made up of people who believe in improvisation.

If you'd like to support the good people of Plenty International's Katrina relief efforts, you can donate here. (Online donations will be processed through Network for Good, the same people who process donations to Common Ground International; otherwise, you can mail a check or phone it in.) There's also an announcement about setting up a memorial fund for Katrina rebulding in the name of one of their Native American members, but I can't find anything that tells you how to contribute to it, so it may be they haven't set it up yet.

Or, if you'd rather help out the United Houma Nation directly, they'll be thrilled to have either your money or your time.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder