Interviewer(s): D. Austin. Grand Bois, LA

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I met Marie Verdin when I was working with her daughter, Clarice, to document community perspectives regarding the Campbell Wells and U.S. Liquids oilfield waste disposal facility in Grand Bois. Marie and I became friends, and I would visit her whenever I was passing through Grand Bois. I told her that I was trying to interview more women about their perspectives on the impacts of the oil and gas industry in southern Louisiana, and she agreed to talk about Grand Bois. She lives with her mother, an 85-year old woman who speaks only French.

Marie was born in 1939 as the oldest of ten children and has lived all her life in Grand Bois. Her family was one of the first Native American families to settle in Grand Bois; her daddy's family came to the community in 1915 after a major hurricane in Golden Meadow. Her granddaddy and daddy were farmers, trappers, and fishermen; her daddy also opened a bar in the community in 1950. Her mama's family came from Pointe-aux-Chenes where her grandmother raised 7 children alone by taking care of cattle, fishing, gathering moss, trapping, and raising vegetables in her garden. Both her parents are part Indian, so their educational opportunities were severely limited. Marie left school after the second grade and began working in the fields and her daddy's bar. She also trapped, shrimped, hunted alligators, and farmed. In 1990 she and her son planted oranges, and she has been selling them in Houma for 8 years. All of her brothers became welders, working for shipyards and fabrication yards at various points in their lives. Marie notes that the biggest impact of the oil and gas industry on Grand Bois was the establishment of an oilfield waste facility in the community. A 1994 shipment of highly toxic waste from a cleanup at an Exxon facility in Alabama led to unsuccessful efforts to have the waste regulated and the facility shut down.