Deep Water Horizon Three Years Later

This conversation about BP, the oil companies, coastal erosion, and the distribution of the BP Settlement Fund took place at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska one week before the 3rd Anniversary of the Deep Water Horizon explosion.

Albert Naquin is Chief of the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, a subsistence fishing community whose traditional land and way of life are vanishing quickly.

Kristina Peterson is Pastor of the Bayou Blue Presbyterian Church in Gray, LA and a disaster recovery professional and researcher with the University of New Orleans Center for Hazard Assessment, Response, and Technology. Kristina was a speaker at First Tuesday Dialogues in Chaska, MN one year after the explosion of Deep Water Horizon. She returned with Chief Albert for this conversation on their way to a conference in Duluth, MN of indigenous people who live along the Mississippi River from its headwaters in Minnesota to its mouth in the Louisiana Delta of the Gulf Coast.

The off-camera voice later in the conversation is the editor of Views from the Edge and Pastor of Shepherd of the Hill.

“Something is very wrong with a system that puts corporations above people.” – Kristina Peterson

The Way to Love Jesus

A sermon three years after Deep Water Horizon on love, freedom, and caring for each other, the oysters and the crabs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Oil and the Gulf Coast

Chief Albert Naquin

Chief Albert Naquin

Return in a few days for the forthcoming commentary. I need time to sit with it before writing and publishing.

Yesterday Chief Albert Naquin of the Isle de Jean Charles tribe of coastal Louisiana and Kristina Peterson, pastor of the Blue Bayou Presbyterian Church of Gray, Louisiana came through Minneapolis on their way to a conference in Duluth. Kristina also works part-time as a researcher at the University of New Orleans’ Center for Hazards Assessment and Risk Technology, a Center that has maintained its integrity by refusing all funding from BP.

A three-hour interview with them will lead to a commentary on Views from the Edge on the effects of Deep Water Horizon, the ravaging of the coast by the oil companies since 1940, the distribution of BP settlement funds, and the life of these subsistence fisher people on a disappearing island.