Can You Replace My Heritage?
“Can you replace my heritage?”
It’s a fair question, one asked by St. Bernard Parish fisherman Irwin Manassas and addressed to a BP oil representative at an angry town hall meeting. Manassas, not pleased with the executive’s runaround response, answered the question for him: “No, you can’t. And you got to understand it’s not just money. Â It’s more than money… You’re not going to replace me being able to teach my kid how to fish.”
Among the many devastating impacts of the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana–which is being discussed in environmental, economic, and political terms–there is the hard-to-define but still vital impact of the fishing heritage of the area. While fishing is a major industry, and its potential loss is hugely significant, Manassas touches on how labor and culture are entwined in his south Louisiana community. There fishing, shrimping and oystering provide food, livelihood, and leisure, yes, but they also give an intangible sense of being and belonging. The destruction of it all is enough to make even a Congressman cry.
circa 1946: "Each Labor Day Weekend, the Louisiana oil and shrimp fishing center of Mrogan City celebrates a traditional pageant honoring the bounty of its shrimp industry and its oil production." (State Library of Louisiana)
circa 1940s "Acadians searching for crabs" (State Library of Louisiana)
William L. Murfree, Sr., "The Levees of the Mississippi, " Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, 25 (November 1882-April 1883): 424
"Man on fishing boat, 1940s" (State Library of Louisiana)
WPA Mural "Louisiana Fishing Industry and French Market" by Hans Mangelsdorf (The Historic New Orleans Collection)
(Powerful as Manassas’s words are in print, it’s even better to hear the recording of the confrontation from a report by NPR.)
Last 5 posts by Leah Nahmias
- Teaching "What This Cruel War Was Over" - March 28th, 2011
- State of Siege and Public Memory at Ole Miss - March 25th, 2011
