Navigating Neutrality and Bureaucracy among Property Owners and Descendant Communities as Government Representatives in Matters of Cemeteries and Human Remains in Louisiana's River Parishes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "*SE New Orleans and Its Environs: Historical Archaeology and Environmental Precarity" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Louisiana's River Parishes between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, alternately known as "the Industrial Corridor" or "Cancer Alley," has long been a place and landscape with clashing interests of industrial uses, economic development, environmental justice, and historic and archaeological preservation. This area is home to vast communities of descendants of enslaved peoples from the antebellum plantations that lined this historic highway of commerce. To and through the 1980s, the interests and concerns of descendants took a backseat to industrial and economic development, with massive international corporate plants—producers of pesticides, petroleum products, and innumerable other chemicals—being constructed on former plantations. Beginning slowly in the 1980s and reaching unrivaled heights today, communities have gained traction in bringing historic, prehistoric, and especially cemetery sites directly into the crosshairs of judicial and extrajudicial disputes with local, state, and federal governments, and corporate interests. From the perspective of governmental employees, we attempt to examine the intersection of legal issues, archaeological resources, and community interests. Recent case studies in the Louisiana legal system highlight areas intended to advance guidance and efforts of all stakeholders as relationships, however tenuous, may continue to build protections that serve the interests of the many rather than the few.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• *SE New Orleans and Its Environs: Historical Archaeology and Environmental Precarity   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37881.0