"French-speaking Indians who live deep in Louisiana bayou, some 50 miles south of New Orleans, became the United States' first official climate refugees last week when the federal government awarded them $48 million to relocate.

The Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe has inhabited Isle de Jean Charles for centuries, but because of a slow-moving disaster caused by sinking land, climate change and oil exploration, they've all but lost the land they call home. With more than 1,900 square miles of land vanishing in the past 80 years – equivalent to the size of a football field lost every 45 minutes – the tribe members who live in Isle de Jean Charles have to find a new place to live.

A weather.com special report published last year called Losing Louisiana chronicled the tribe's plight."

Sean Breslin reports for the Weather Channel February 22, 2016. [2]