VOICES OF THEIR ANCESTORS

摘要

ON a 90-degree day in June 2020, a few dozen people walk across a field in Louisiana's St. James Parish on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Tall grass brushes their waistbands as they head for a plot surrounded by a chain-link fence. They block the blazing sun with umbrellas and fan themselves with paper stop signs. Some hold bouquets of roses. With COVID-19 still a threat, all wear masks. When they reach their destination, they break out into song-"Oh, Freedom"-accompanied by a lone trumpet. It's Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating emancipation in the United States, and the group is standing among what they believe are the graves of enslaved sugarcane plantation workers, discovered during Taiwanese plastics firm Formosa's planning process for a new petrochemical complex. In 2019 the company hired archaeologists to check for remains, a required step in obtaining federal permits. Though a previous as- sessment had determined that no sites of historic or cultural sig- nificance were imperiled by the planed groundbreaking, the ex- cavators uncovered nails, coffins, and bones. The land had once been part of the Buena Vista estate, which had relied on hun- dreds of enslaved laborers-some of whom were likely buried there in unmarked graves. Formosa's archaeologists recommended a fence to protect the area from any disturbance during construc- tion, Alternatively, their report concluded, the company could exhume the remains and rebury them somewhere else.