Will Gulf Culture Go Extinct?

While it is often mentioned that the Gulf oil spill is the greatest ecological disaster in US history, less often mentioned is that this catastrophe may also emerge as one of the greatest single-event cultural and economic disasters in US history.

What shall become of the cultures dependent on the biodiversity of the Gulf of Mexico?

Human cultures also go extinct, and, as with wildlife extinction, humans are the dominant influence threatening cultural diversity. According to the UN, human cultural diversity is at risk as never before. For example, the UN estimates that of the approximately 6,000 languages spoken on the five continents, nearly “2,500 languages are in imminent danger of extinction; and an even higher number are losing the ‘ecological contexts’ that keep them as vibrant languages.” I will never forget my own visit with the last remaining Patasho Indians in Brazil, where they worked feverishly to produce a dictionary before their own language, and much of their way of life, was lost forever.

It is the living matter of the Gulf that has given rise to many of the unique traditional Deep South cultures and their attendant local economic knowledge.  The biodiversity and rhythms of the Gulf have intertwined spiritually and economically with the Deep South throughout US history, and now, with this unprecedented assault on biodiversity in the Gulf, that relationship is forever changed. Like Prince William Sound in Alaska, and like so many other regions polluted by out of control industrial greed and arrogance, the Gulf, the biological basis for so much of Deep South culture, will never be the same.

There will undoubtedly be generational impacts from this disaster, many never able to be repaired.  Generational economic consequences. Generational cultural effects.

Perhaps it is too late to note, but it is now clear that the most important economic value of the Gulf by far is not oil mining but that provided by fishing, land based and marine tourism, real estate, music and other art forms, public health, universities, and the thousands of businesses supporting these diverse economic drivers. All of those industries will be irrevocably and adversely affected by this catastrophe.  

So what is to be done? Somehow, plans to repair and protect surviving biodiversity in the Gulf must be undertaken with sensitivity to the human cultural context dependent on it. And while DC-based politicians obscenely equivocate about it, that obviously means ending once and for all the type of oil drilling that caused this disaster.